Brett Lavenstein

Gender Inequality
How history is changing, and
how history is impacting women s efforts in the workplace now.
Gender inequality, when men and women are not equal or treated equal under certain
circumstances, can be found almost everywhere within the United States and places of the world.
Gender, like race, is a race unfortunately constructed by society only to separate and group
people unfairly when the difference is very small. The gender inequality to be discussed in this
essay will revolve around the effects of such socially constructed differences in the workplace.
Every day, women are denied several opportunities in the work force because of their gender,
race, sexual orientation, and sex in general. The social barrier that is most prevalent is being a
woman.
Women in history have always been seen as the weaker sex mentally, physically, and
overall, socially. It wasnt until the 20
th
century that women begun to receive rights legally such
as the right to vote, and to have major educational and laborious barriers, known as glass
ceilings, demolished. During World War One (early 1900s), men were being called for duty for
war. Their jobs in factories needed to be filled, and the better way for that was to have women
fill their empty spots. The kind of labor women were needed to was nothing special in the way
that there was no room for promotions, raises, or improvement overall. As we all know a career
is different from a job as a career is a profession, women were only hired for jobs. Wages were
low; no education was needed for factory duties, etc. Professions in the medical area, for
example, were viewed as not possible. To begin, there were absolutely no higher up academic
institutions that would accept women as students (medical school), nor have them as professors.
Brett Lavenstein

Jobs in the medical field for women were absolutely nonexistent, and areas that became more
complex over the years started to exclude women as well.
The telephone, invented in the late 1800s, was a simple tool for communication and the
management of the device was also simple. Simple enough (subjectively to men in that era)
women could perform simple tasks such as managing switchboards, and connecting people to
each line. As the telephone device became more complex, men were nave enough to believe
women werent smart enough to manage such a technology. Time after time, women were
kicked out of such jobs and replaced by men who came back from war years later in the lower-
mid 1900s. Soon enough, by the 1920s, the era of womens rights begun, as said before, and
again later in the 1950s. The ratio for labor in this time period was for every 43,000 men working
professions, there were only 18,000 women working jobs.
Fast forward a generation and a few decades, the struggle for women to get jobs and
professions is still just as hard, but in a different world. The social problem still exists, but in a
different form. The race of the woman in the workplace may not matter as much, but it, just as
gender does, still hinders any opportunities that would be available as they would be for men.
The idea that women are the dumber, weaker sex still exists, as it has been passed on through
the generations of relatives and portrayed through the media. American culture loves double
standards, as we think just because a person expresses themselves as a man with internal and
external male sex organs; theyre automatically the better sex. We dont care about the
individuals themselves, as just because a person has female sex organs and characteristics means
theyre automatically not as capable as that of a man. A woman could have tons of years of
experience, a ton of years of education, but she would still be labeled as the weaker sex.
Brett Lavenstein

We need to get rid of this housewife image of women and instead prove that women
can accomplish anything that men can. If one looks closely, they will see that because women
were stuck at home being a housewife that would alter a mans image of a woman regardless of
her capabilities being unaltered by the society they live in. We can see an increase in the
participation rates of women because as society has changed over the 1900s, so has women and
their ideologies. Due to wanting to participate in the labor force and be an independent woman,
women remained single more often. They didnt want to be stereotyped and be that image of a
housewife, but instead make their own image and be independent to society. To break away from
this image, women stayed in school longer with the opportunities that were given to them as time
progressed. They tried for better paying careers through fighting academically for higher
degrees. Continuing, we all know the perfect family ceases to exist only except in rare cases. The
image of a perfect family has changed over recent years, as women arent housewives anymore.
Instead, more and more women are entering the workforce even as mothers and wives, and even
as divorcees, especially. Because there is more time when not engaged in a relationship, we can
also see a correlation between single, non-married/divorced women, and participation rates in the
labor force.
Gender inequality in the workplace is a serious social issue that needs to be confronted
over time by not only women, but by men as well. We have read what has happened in the labor
force for women over time via looking at historical context, but there are still underlying issues
that prevent us from making progress in the present and the future. We still have issues that men
feel uncomfortable being equal to women, as men are majorly behind in the feminist movement
as compared to women. But with time, glass ceilings will not exist in our culture and men will
not feel threatened by women in the workplace, but instead will embrace their unity.
Brett Lavenstein

Works Cited
Compton's NewMedia. (1995). Women's History in America. Retrieved from Women's International
Center: http://www.wic.org/misc/history.htm
Gender Inequality In The Workplace. (2014, January 15). Retrieved from TriDiversity:
http://www.tridiversity.org/gender-inequality-in-the-workplace/
Sepulveda, R. (2008, October 10). Gender Inequality in the Workplace and How Women Can Navigate It.
Retrieved from Career Center:
http://careercenterpeers.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/10/gender-inequality-in-the-
workplace-and-how-women-can-navigate-it.html
Women in World War Two. (2005). Retrieved from History Learning Site:
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/women_WW2.htm