The Changing Gender Roles and their Impact on the Modern Society

The Changing Gender Roles and their Impact on the Modern Society
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The Changing Gender Roles and their Impact on the Modern Society
Gender roles play an essential role in shaping society as they determine how males and females think, speak, dress, and interact with each other in the social context. These roles are embedded within the society and are adopted during childhood and dictate what men can do and what they cannot do. They also dictate what women can engage themselves in and what they should not engage themselves in. these gender roles have been changing with time as the cultures continue to change. While these changing roles have improved the society’s productivity by allowing women an equal opportunity to work, it has resulted in work-family conflict as women struggle to balance between work and family.
Traditionally, the female gender were perceived to be an inferior gender whose role is to take care of the family at home. Men and women were socialized to accept their positions of relative power at home, where the men assumed a more superior role and had a final contribution in any discussions at home. These traditional gender roles were marred with gender inequality as women were exposed to more violence and overburdened with house chores as the men fended for the family (Cerrato & Cifre, 2018). As children grew into adulthood, the society gradually shaped them into the specific expectations based on their gender. Young girls were taught how to take care of their homes, whereas men were taken through apprenticeships to provide for their families.
These roles have gradually changed as more women assume the functions previously reserved for men. In several cases, women have become the sole breadwinners in their homes, waking up every morning to work and ensure that the children do not lack in anything. Currently, women continue to negotiate for better positions at the workplace and equal pay, unlike in the past, where they were paid less than their male counterparts. These changes have culminated in women assuming powerful leadership positions (UN Women, 2021). Several countries, including Germany, New Zealand, Namibia, and Tanzania, continue to have women leading them. Contrary to the traditional beliefs, these women have shown impeccable leadership skills, challenging the status quo in gender roles.
However, these changing roles have led to a work-family conflict, whereby men have refused to accept the changes and left the women to deal with the home chores and at the same time go to work. These women still face several challenges, including gender bias at work, unequal pay, poor security, lack of proper family support, and mental and physical harassment. These women have to fight the prejudice that they still have to take care of the homes even in cases where men do not go to work. A working woman married to an unemployed man will still have to do house chores after work because the man would not want to be seen as being weak (Rao, 2019). In such scenarios, the woman has to come back after work, cook for the children, ensure that the dishes are washed, and the house is clean before going to bed. The women repeats the same procedure on a daily basis leading to extreme exhaustion on her part.
The work-family conflicts result from the inability of the women to balance between work and home chores. As Velma and Mulani (2018) note, sometimes women have to bring their work at home, which reduces their hours of sleep. This lifestyle creates more stress among these women and affects their productivity. Waking up early, ignoring her health issues, and preparing the children for school as well as herself to get to work is a huge challenge. On average, these women lose approximately 2 hours of sleep everyday while engaging in these chores besides their routine work. The stress increases in cases where the family is big because the women has to carry the whole burden. This stress is often too much, and such women are likely to make mistakes while at work.
At the workplace, these women still have to fight the male superiority complex because most of the societies still believe that men are supposed to be above the women. Under such circumstances, women realize that they have to constantly outperform their male colleagues to get any promotions. Even in cases where the women manages to the managerial position that reduces the amount of work they have to do, they still face other obstacles such as insubordination from their male juniors (Babalola, du Plessis, & Babalola, 2021). Some of these male employees still hold the belief that women are not supposed to command men. Such men do not dedicate their efforts fully on work where they have been directed by a woman. Eventually, work may not be done to the expected standard, which is also blamed on the woman leader. The situation is worsened by the fact that women colleagues also do not lend support to their own woman leader at the workplace. Working under such conditions makes the work experience more stressful for the women.
Another key challenge that these women face because of the work-family conflicts is the lack of personal space. All people, irrespective of gender, require some private space to reflect on their lives and re-energize. The process requires taking time off from the daily interruptions, such as work sche...