Kennon Bordelon PSYC 2250 Changes of Gender Expectations in the United States The United States participation in World

War II made many people question the traditional gender role expectations, and expectations continue to change today. When my great grandparents were kids during the Great Depression, the women in the family were expected to clean the house, take care of the children and feed the family. Men were expected to work the fields or in the factories and provide for the family. This way of thinking was not produced out of sexism, but simply fit into the economic and social aspect of the time. Men were stronger laborers doing a very physically demanding job, and women were better suited for doing the work in the house that needed to be done. Most women were content with their position in society and took pride in their important position in the family. During the 1940s things changed when mens jobs in factories and sometimes even farmland became vacant while they were off fighting the largest war in history. It was time for American housewives to test their physical abilities and become part of the worlds largest labor force yet seen. Women became a necessary workforce for world freedom, and took part in the global dream of righteousness instead of watching men make all of the moral decisions themselves as they have for thousands of years. The gender role of women being restricted to housework was shattered forever by men begging women to help them produce weapons and other goods necessary for the war effort. This was a big change in how the country thought of women because it showed that women are a lot smarter and more competent than the pre-war stereotypes displayed them as. More importantly it showed women themselves what they are capable of. This was the biggest change in gender role expectation that America had seen yet, and it was the start of more changes to come.

Women wanted to continue to make changes more important than cooking or cleaning, and there was a huge rise in the number of women attending colleges during the 1950s and 60s. Women became a vital part of the American workforce as we fought the Cold War for economic and social influence throughout the world with unprecedented levels of global trade. The restrictions of women being housewives were eventually going to cease if the economy continued to improve. A factor supporting the housewife role however was the baby boom in the late 1940s that demanded a lot of work to take care of children, and women mostly did that work. The United States culture will always contain flexibility about the roles of women, but the dream of the perfect life with a housewife will always be present whether it is realistic or not or offensive or not. The reality that we as a country are dependent on our workforce of both men and women means that flexibility of gender role expectations will be more accepted. A wife in a family making more money than the husband is not uncommon today, and will become even more common in the future. Many women are more competitive about their educational pursuits than men, and will therefore get better jobs than their future husbands perhaps making them the provider of their future families. Most people want to either maintain or increase their standard of living, and getting a good education is the closest way to guaranteeing your financial stability in the future. Women want to have a good life just as much as men do and will try just as hard if not harder to attain their goals if they have the passion. The many laws that protect womens rights make it much more possible for women to attain their goals, and sex is not as much of an issue as it was before these laws. For example, many female doctors are just as respected as male doctors not that it is legal for women to be doctors. Men still have the upper hand in many career fields, but this is definitely open to change in the future. The workforce is definitely the driving factor in American societys changing expectations of gender roles.

Psychologically it is not women that are thinking more like masculine, but actually men thinking more feminine. The masculine desires of power and dominance have no place in a modern society where performance at the workplace is the driving factor of who survives or not. The feminine view of seeing what it essential and necessary to survival is becoming more common than pursuing dreams of power and personal or military glory. The male archetypes are continuing to become harder to imitate because there is no place to prove them outside of sports. The Western world roots are defined in classic Greek mythology and present the ideal male as powerful and normative. The powerful and normative male is becoming rarer in a society where the most creative person who manipulates the rules the best comes out ahead. The 1960s began with superstar bands like the Beatles becoming popular for creating art that reflected male emotions for women that was completely unseen before by society, but probably very evident to every man. This strong desire for unity behind all emotions is evidence of the idea of woman within the self. This means that all men are capable of all the emotions that women are capable of. Subconsciously this is understood by everyone, and the healthiest people are those that are able to share any emotions sincerely with the greatest number of people. The best art represents a form of suffering, and also a way out of that form of suffering. The vast majority of todays art usually depicts a unity of man and woman, and this represents a complete revealing of emotions to a lover as the ideal situation for the common male. Since we still live in a patriarchal society, the number of males expressing usually feminine gender traits will inevitably increase as men chase dreams of never ending intimacy with their suffering inner female. The biological female that they are with is simply a projection of the suffering female within themselves. Females watch this happen and can easily outsmart a male on many emotional matters if playing according to this. This female simple awareness of a mans true emotions is why many men find

women so terrifying outside of normality. Civilization will always produce males that will become feminine, even in the United States.