Workplace Gender Inequality Research Paper Sample

How can Parenthood Affect Gender Inequality in the Workplace?

Gender inequality exists in most circumstances, and has been since ancient times. This is a theme that is discussed thoroughly since the beginning of recorded interactions between men and women. Though at first sight it appears a sociological input, there are works that advocate for this matter to include a sociobiological and evolutionary psychological background. Pragmatically, any idea is a product of education, so we will consider how parenthood can contribute as a catalyst to this gender bias.

The classicist theories on gender bias certainly play an expansionist role in the labor division of today’s society. Freud (2017, p. 11) spoke about each one of the human participants as bound to a continuing psychological scheme, formed of several milestones. Both children are to explore within themselves the values to be whether a guy or a woman by gradually passing through certain periods that become determinant within their future representation as an able person that can establish a relationship similar to that of their parents in something of values. In this scheme that he clearly divides both of the gender roles by the sense of their anatomy, where the boy is complete and the woman must compensate a deficiency by becoming a wife. Later on, Erik Erikson (1994, p. 42) consolidated this theory, describing that “something in the young woman’s identity must keep it self open for the peculiarities of the person to be joined and that of the children to be brought up…”

Further on the gender bias comes up to be strengthened by the evolutionary psychological perspective that provides as a criterium of appreciation the word of parental investment. It renders how genetically women and men are woven into this ball of thread in the hands of destiny, where that they had nothing to accomplish but to adapt to the natural habitat of that period (Buss, 1994). Females may actually invest more into parenting than males, as bound to the mammal specific features of fertilization and of providing nutrition until the offspring is weaned, in comparison to men whose investment is as little as the sperm produced throughout copulation, and therefore males aren't essential because of the biological evolution of the offspring in to reaching its adulthood (Geary, 1998). And that fundamentalist idea is kept as a labor distinction stereotype today. Nonetheless, the biologic determinism is opposed by the modern evolutionary psychologists, arguing that out of this perspective human nature includes evolved psychological mechanisms that want input, such as for example cultural beliefs and social norms because of their operation (Trivers, 1972).

Considering the current gender situation in the workplace, we have observed vast changes since the Victorian period and its determinist ideologies, but the inequality still persists due to the US Census Bureau report that scales women’s earnings to 80% of what men are paid. In a Q& A article, Mary Brinton, sociology professor at Harvard University, speaks about the nurturing seed of this problem, which is the fact that we all are prone to engaging in stereotyping. She offers a possible solution for this matter for the workplaces to accept the idea of adapting to “the whole person” both male and female and recognize the contributions that each individual, male or female, can make to the workplace and to relationships at home (Brinton, n.d.).

Parenthood doesn’t have much to complete alone being an object of change on the job. First of all we're to deal with the roots that developed the notion of gender bias in labor division and that has started with the analytical thinking seen in the psychoanalysis of Freud and the evolutionary psychological perspectives of Buss and Geary. Though at their turn, they can’t be seen as false, while they contain academic truth that had offered support for further investigation of the main cause, even if we possibly may see this as determinist and unilateral by today’s standards. Their works surely have played a fundamental role in the interpretation of the society of gents and ladies, which consolidated the idea of what we see today whilst the unequal labor division, nevertheless the new era came up with new professionals, such as for instance Robert Trivers, in the domain which has balanced just about the ideatic aspects of gender in society.

All things considered, as Brinton states, the focalization of the individuum should fall onto its contribution to the workplace, whatever the gender, rather than on its chronological adapted stereotype, rooting from its fundamental ancestral role.

REFERENCES

Buss, D. M. (1994). The evolution of desire: Strategies of human mating. Ny: BasicBooks.
Brinton M. (n. d. ) Gender inequality and feamales in the workplace. Harvard Summer
School. Retrieved from https://www.summer.harvard.edu/
inside-summer/gender-inequality-women-workplace
Erikson, E. H. (1994). Identity: Youth and crisis. Nyc: W. W. Norton.
Freud, S. (2017). Three essays on the idea of sexuality. London: Verso Books.
Geary, D. C. (1998). Male, female: The evolution of human sex differences. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Trivers, R. L. (1972). Parental investment and sexual selection. In B. Campbell (Ed. ), Sexual selection and the descent of man, 1871-1971 (pp. 136-179). Chicago, IL: Aldine.