Ever since civilization started, there has already been a division of efforts in the

traditional family home. Men are supposed to go outside and work for a living while women
stay at home to tend for their familys needs. Gender discrimination has always been there as
fas anyone can remember, however in the past it was not that big of an issue because women
are supposed to be responsible in maintaining the family home, and having such responsibility
would make them not equally as great like men in terms of an ideal worker. Until such a time
when women started to work for a living like men, as time and financial needs of the family
demand it. The disadvantage that women has is that they just dont work for a living for their
family, but they also need to dedicate their time to care for their family.
In the book by Joan Williams entitled Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work
Conflict and What to do about it, the author discusses about the grounds for gender
discrimination in work places and how we can go about removing such malady in our society.
She also explained how such thing existed, and the different factors that are causing it. She
started her discussion around Domesticity, which is a gender system comprising most centrally
of both the particular organization of market work and family work that arose around 1780,
and the gender norms that justify, sustain, and reproduce that organization. The author gave
2 defining characteristics of domesticity, wherein: 1) organization of market work around the
ideal of a worker who works full time and overtime and takes little or no time off for
childbearing or child rearing and 2) its system of providing for caregiving by marginalizing the
caregivers, thereby cutting them off from most of the social roles that offer responsibility and
authority.
As what has been mentioned, the author was able to attest on what are the main
factors why gender discrimination still persists, and clearly this is because unlike men,
womens priority has to be her family than that of her profession and other responsibilities
that are demanded from her by her work. This makes the woman an unideal worker. On the
other hand, we must also take note that the book was published in 1999. So much has
changed as the years have gone by. Women now are as empowered as men, and in some
cases, men are now the ones who stay at home and tend for their families. Gender
discrimination has not been absolutely eradicated in a typical community, nevertheless most
of the companies nowadays believe that men and women are co-equally the same
hardworking individuals, regardless of their gender.