Changing Gender Roles

By Zaharie Laura Cristina

Overall, the influence of feminism ggggggupon marriage and family roles has had both positive and negative effects. The negative effects have been that some argue that full equality will never be achieved due to the inherent differences between men and women. There will always be people who fight against change and want to keep things the way they have always been. Positive effects have been that women are being treated with more equality in society and business. However, there is still a long way to go. Women have the opportunity to influence local and national politics and policy by exercising their right to vote. This affects not only women, but their children and families as well. Women can: hold public office, pursue their education, pursue their careers, and overall provide opportunities for more personal fulfillment making a positive difference in the lives of others. Men are not treating women as property and can celebrate their contributions to society. The effects of feminism are varied; sometimes the influence of feminism upon gender roles within a marriage works and sometimes it does not. Some people can adapt to the new thought patterns and help give new meaning to the roles of the husband and wife and how these roles work in a marriage. Others are not able to or do not want to change with the times. However, the changes that feminism has brought to our society in the United States have been positive. In the past, clear gender roles for husband and wife had been understood within the context of the marriage. Today there are fewer clearly defined models for contemporary marriage gender roles and how these roles ought to be lived out. It must be admitted that in some cases, a lack of clear gender roles weakens the marriage. However, when a husband and a wife have the freedom to bring to a marriage his or her whole self, and not just live a traditional gender role, the American marriage has been strengthened by feminist theory. As Elizabeth Cady Stanton asserted over 100 year ago, There is one kind of marriage that has not been tried and that is a contract made by equal parties to lead an equal life, with equal restraints and privileges on either side. Change is not easy, but change is happening. My hope is that through education, more people will see the benefits offered to contemporary marriage by these changes. The role of women in society was profoundly altered with growing feminism across the world and with the presence and rise of a significant number of women as heads of state outside of monarchies and heads of government in a number of countries across the world during the 1970s, many being the first women to hold such positions. The Feminist Movement in the United States began in the 1960s, carried over to the 1970s, and took a prominent role within society. Most efforts of the movement, especially aims at social equality and repeal of the remaining oppressive, sexist laws, were successful. Doors of opportunity were more numerous and much further open than before as women gained unheard of success in business, politics, education, science, the law, and even the home. Though most aims of the movement were successful, however, there were some significant failures, most notably the failure to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution with only three more states needed to ratify it. The original feminist movement largely ended in 1982 with the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment, and with new conservative leadership in Washington, D.C. American women created a brief, but powerful, third-wave in the early 1990s which addressed sexual harassment and violence against women. The results of the movement included a new awareness of such issues amongst women, and unprecedented numbers of women elected to public office, particularly the United States Senate. Traditional education creates, in time, an incomplete image on familys gender roles. From generation to generation children interiorize theirs parents model known as separated worlds myth - a wife and a mother only cooking , doing laundry and taking care of the child contrasting with a husband and a father working or fixing different things. According to this mentality each partner has established responsibilities in private and public life that other one couldnt take over.

Changing traditional gender roles seems to be difficult not because woman or man dont have the necessary skills for other ones tasks but because everyone carries on a symbol of his world. Societys evolution especially on woman valorization redefines gender roles promoting a woman more active, ambitious and independent and a man more emotional ad involved in household tasks. Women of our days have more liberty to choose between the family model- these ones are being more obedient and anchored in tradition (the feminine type), the feminist model- whos priority is the career (the antifeminine type) or the middle model adopted by the double career type of woman - profession and family. On the base of any of these choices are variables like social-status, race, education level, cultures values etc. We are assisting to a reprioritization of woman needs and so professional success became more interesting and even attractive than family one probably because it brings something new. Women are motivated to choose the career by elements as the wish for financial independency, the need to prove her capacities, to open and better integrate in modern society and the possibility to control and not being only controlled. All this reasons offer her a psychological equilibrium. Most of the men consider womens career as a conflict source having arguments like: women will neglect theirs family attributions, the imminent change of mans authority, his incertitude concerning the professional competition and the risk to deteriorate the marital relation. Even at first side man and children are felling the stress generated by the new status of woman, shes living an interior conflict as well. Woman need to understand her need for self-accomplishment but the remains of traditional mentality still affect her modern vision. So our children should make a difference on gender roles perspective but we are in a vicious circle because every family is raising their kids for a passed time, influenced by their own mentality and resistance to change. The main idea is that both women and men should consider this roles exchange like a challenge and also accept that a man as well as a woman can do anything with willing. The concept of family has changed and sometimes it was for the best, sometimes for the worst. Although women have more rights, divorce is commonplace in our current society and many children live in one-parent households. Women are still discriminated against in American society and some us still do the majority of household work regardless of how many hours we work per week or if we have a househusband. But we now have opportunities that would not have been imagined fifty-years ago. Children do not have to see their mothers treated like chattel and we almost had a female President of the United States. Nothing remains the same - ever. The constantly changing landscape of the American family owes a lot to the women of the 1950s.