Success in the Hands of Women and Men
Success in society is euphoric, especially for women, but the turmoil and conflicts that arise are not known to the public. Women have the struggles of maintaining a work-life balance and constantly trying to exceed the societal expectations that dawn upon women. These conflicts not only continue to become internal issues that women face, but daily issues that they need to overcome in order to set a certain ‘balance’ in their life. They sacrifice their personal happiness to gain their success, which is critical to their mindsets. Because women are known to be more family-oriented, they tend to have more frustrations on choosing whether to prioritize their work, their loved ones or what they love to do. It plays an unfair role in society for women because it is thrown-out that they have to work harder into order to receive the same validation as men in society.
Women are known to be the ones tending to the family, though when success is on their plate – it is quite difficult to balance between work and life. They sacrifice multiple things in their life in order to keep that specific ‘balance’ that fluctuates daily. This includes: family and personal happiness. For women specifically, those two can be connected because of their maternal instincts. Mary Matalin, President Bush’s assistant, portrayed this struggle as she said, “I finally asked myself, “Who needs me more?” And that’s when I realized, it’s somebody else’s turn to do this job. I’m indispensable to my kids, but I’m not close to indispensable to the White House.” (sec. The Half-Truths We Hold Dear; par.19). Matalin uses the word ‘indispensable’ as the base of what she was trying to emphasize. Indispensable means to be absolutely necessary by all means and she was trying to claim that though she is a woman of a high-societal career, high to even be working with the President, she believed that she was more needed by her children. I believe this context shows the emphasis of a women’s perspective on their conflict with balance between work and life because it shows one of the possible outcomes that could happen and in Matalin’s case – she is someone who decided to sacrifice her job to keep the stability and connection with her family. Though, in some cases, some mothers cannot afford to give up their job, so they are faced with the struggle of either decreasing their shift hours or decreasing the amount of time they spent with their family. Four-in-ten working mothers (42%) mentioned that they had to reduce their shift hours in order to care for their family and children. (Parker) Consider having a filled schedule at work along with coming home to a family to tend to, especially if you’re a mother who is stereotypically expected to clean, cook and care for the family as you are at home. It would be excruciatingly tiring, and it would lead to the consideration of sacrificing one thing to have another flourish.
Societal expectations play a role in creating this pressure for women to overcome. In the past, it was a social stigma for women to have high-societal jobs, but many women now have obtained jobs are of considered ‘high-profile’ whether it would be a surgeon, a political leader or judge. Though, “Globally, women have fewer opportunities for economic participation than men, less access to basic and higher education…” (Peace Corps) and that creates a problem for women as it fluctuates with the expectations that they are trying to overcome. Women for years, have had this stereotypical label on their back of how they are supposed to be specifically meant for building and caring for the home. Sheryl Sandberg, the author of Why Women Still Can’t Have It All, conveys this concern when she mentions: “Women are not making it to the top. A hundred and ninety heads of state; nine are women. Of all the people in parliament in the world, 13 percent are women…” (Slaughter). Though women do have the opportunity in the present 21st century to obtain a job in high-profile, they are still a minority in terms of percentage comparable to men.
Though women do struggle with a work-life balance, men play a similar struggle with women. Men are known to be people who are the ‘breadwinners’ of the household, but this doesn’t mean that they don’t struggle as much as women do when it comes to finding a perfect balance between work and life. Researchers analyzed survey data from more than 250,000 individuals on how much there was a conflict between work and life and the statistics summed up to a correlation of 0.017 which meant that there was no gender difference in work-life balance struggle. (Pappas) However, “Every male Supreme Court justice has a family. Two of the three female justices are single with no children.” (Slaughter) Yes, though there is statistical evidence that there is no difference between gender when it came to work-life balance – there is still evidence in the employment of high-societal careers that women sacrifice more comparable to men. As men have more time to have a family, because of the conditions that women are in for their career, they are not able to conceive a family during their career.
Society has expectations for each gender. As stated previously in the paragraphs above, women have a role where they are the family-caretaker while men are the family breadwinner. Though what is unseen is that men struggle with the pressure of constantly being ‘masculine’ to please society. There are times where a man’s wife is pregnant, and he may need time off from work to take care of the baby along with his wife, so he will have to ask for a family leave. Though, this gives a man a femininity stigma whereby ‘acting like a woman’ deprives them of masculine agency. (Dorment) Men in society do not want to look weak because that is not how they were positioned and grown up to be, they have societal expectations where they are expected to be men who are constantly brave and assertive. Men also have increasingly become primary caregivers for young children (PTI) therefore increasing the femininity stigma that occurs. While it is true that men suffer from society expectations of being always ‘masculine’, they still uphold many of the high-profile careers in the world. This includes being a president, CEO, or even a surgeon or engineer. Women only make about 19% of all surgeons in America (Kirk) while men take up the rest of the 81%. This shows that though men still are more successful than women when it comes to careers.
The pressures of society will never disperse and will be present for a long time. Gender norms and expectations will always play a role into that. For women, the biggest struggle would be a work-life balance along with constantly trying to exceed the set expectations that society had put onto them. Men also tend to struggle with the same conflicts as women, though in smaller doses rather than becoming a larger issue. Women’s struggle in society needs to become more acknowledged such as: having the opportunity to fluctuate work and family schedules in a balanced organization and also having the opportunity to increase the amount of high-profile jobs to extend the current percentages that is given.
Works Cited
Dorment, Richard. “Why Men Still Can’t Have It All” They Say I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, edited by Graff, Gerald and Birkenstein, Cathy and Durst, Russel. W. W. Norton & Co., 2018, Page 630.
“Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment” USAID, USAID, 8 Nov. 2017, https://www.usaid.gov/what-we-do/gender-equality-and-womens-empowerment. Accessed 24 Oct. 2018.
“Gender Issues: Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment” Peace Corps, Peace Corps, https://www.peacecorps.gov/educators/resources/global-issues-gender-equality-and-womens-empowerment/. Accessed 24 Oct. 2018.
Kirk, Noreen. “Fostering More Women Surgeons” UConn Today, University of Connecticut, 14 Feb. 2014, https://today.uconn.edu/2014/02/fostering-more-women-surgeons/#. Accessed 23 Oct. 2018.
Pappas, Stephanie. “Why We Need to Stop Talking About Work-Life Balance As a ‘Female’ Struggle” Live Science, Live Science, 27 July 2017, https://www.livescience.com/59960-work-life-balance-not-just-female-struggle.html. Accessed 24 Oct. 2018.
Parker, Kim. “Despite progess, women still bear heavier load than men balancing work and family” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 10 Mar. 2015, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/03/10/women-still-bear-heavier-load-than-men-balancing-work-family/. Accessed 24 Oct. 2018.
PTI. “Men struggle as much as women to maintain work-life balance” The Economic Times, The Economic Times, 29 Jul. 2017, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/men-struggle-as-much-as-women-to-maintain-work-life-balance/articleshow/59823097.cms. Accessed 24 Oct. 2018.
Slaughter, Anne-Marie. “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” The Atlantic, The Atlantic, July/Aug. 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have-it-all/309020/. Accessed 3 Oct. 2018.