Since President Obama’s State of the Union address last Tuesday, there have been several op-eds in national publications lambasting his statement that women still make 77 cents for every dollar that a man makes. The Daily Beast’s Christina Hoff Sommers argues that when one takes into account variations in jobs and college majors, the wage gap decreases to only five cents on the dollar — a gap that could be “a result of discrimination or some other subtle, hard-to-measure difference between male and female workers.” The notion that something enables female workers to be paid less across the board is problematic at best, misogynistic at worst — as is her claim that women do not want to enter STEM fields. In Hoff Sommers’s view, cultural pressures do not play a role in men or women’s job choices.
They do. Women “appear to be drawn to jobs in the caring professions,” Hoff Sommers claims, while men gravitate toward the STEM fields. Ignoring the multifaceted and subtle ways that culture encourages different paths for people based on perceived gender is reductive and ignorant.
People also rarely acknowledge the pressure that men face against pursuing what Hoff Sommers calls “the caring professions.” In much of the country, male students are still pressured into joining the football team instead of performing in the school play. This was assuredly the case at my rural Texas high school, where men would be teased if they were considered too sensitive or flamboyant. It may be different in our Ivy League bubble, but most of the country (and most of the culture) exists outside of it. After all, less than 20 percent of middle and elementary school teachers and only 5 percent of child care workers are men, according to 2011 U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics.
If men are pressured away from pursuing the “caring professions” at an early age, they will be more likely to go into comfortable, male-dominated fields like the STEM professions. In doing so, they reinforce the male-dominated aspect of that professional sector. And when women are pressured away from STEM fields and into “caring professions,” the similarly female-dominated concept of those professions will remain. It’s a double-edged sword. The issue needs to be attacked from both sides for an egalitarian middle ground to emerge.
Certainly, there are differences between men and women. But these differences should not be generalized into stereotypes that promote differentiated expectations of professional capabilities. If girls are surrounded by a culture that sells them needlessly gendered Easy Bake Ovens and Little Mommy baby dolls, while going through a public school system populated by largely female teachers, it is no wonder that they internalize notions of what careers are deemed normal for them to follow. The reverse is just as true. Where are the toys that teach boys to cook, take care of children and be good fathers? Where are the male teachers and counselors and principals they can look up to as role models?
Freedom of choice is not true freedom when mainstream culture will judge or mock or despise you for your career decisions. We need more female chemical engineers and CEOs, and we need more male elementary school teachers and nurses. The idea that certain professions are inherently gendered is a product of an unequal society, not an absolute difference between men and women. Hoff Sommers cites the overwhelming disparity in majors and professions when it comes to gender, but she does nothing to deconstruct the underlying biases in those trends. It is time to acknowledge such biases as they affect everyone. Gender equality means equal opportunity (both structurally and culturally) for all, no matter what one wants to pursue.
