Saturday, November 26, 2011

Women's Work: Job Gendering in America


In the United States, there is a clear and distinct "gendering" to jobs. This means that various jobs are seen as female or male appropriate. While this isn’t an exclusive list, a recent article by AOL stated that the most common jobs American women hold are 1) secretaries and administrative assistants, 2) registered nurses, 3) elementary and middle school teachers, 4) cashiers, and 5) aides (nursing, home health, and psychiatric).

In the modern American world of supposed political, economic, and social equality between genders, it’s a bit puzzling why there is such an incredible division in employment choices. There seems to be specific jobs that most women flock to. This leaves men free to dominate and excel at a large majority of others. For example, women head only 12 Fortune 500 Companies. In a society that seems keen on channeling women towards a limited, specific amount of jobs, I wondered if there were any cases where women broke into male-dominated fields.

One example that caught my attention was that of Natalie Randolph. What makes her story rare is that she’s the first female coach in the history of high school football. Hired in 2010, school officials said she was the most qualified of any candidates- a former University of Virginia track star, a receiver for six years with the D.C. Divas of the National Women’s Football Association, and an assistant coach for three years for another high school football team. Her rookie season the team finished 4-7. The next year they went 8-1, winning a trip to the town’s coveted Turkey Bowl. In my opinion, this is proof that you don’t have to be male to succeed as a coach in football.

When asked by reporters if she paid attention to the sociological aspects of being female, Natalie responded, “People have kind of forgotten about it, so that makes it nice… but it’s always been about football. It’s never been about gender or whatever, at least not for me.”

In my opinion, assigning genders to jobs in America limits valuable contributions from the opposite gender. This not only prevents advancement in fields, but contradicts the American belief that equality exists everywhere. I want to illustrate this point with an example. There used to be a popular myth that black athletes were thought unable to assume positions of leadership in sports. Today this view is discredited by the athletic brilliance of Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, Kevin Durant, and hundred others. Think of how vastly different the sporting world would be if these incredible athletes were denied leadership opportunities. Just as race was once deemed essential for success, I believe modern times will slowly see the fallacy of gender requirements as well.


Works Cited

White, Joseph. (2011). A novelty but also a winner: Female high school football coach has team in D.C.’s title game. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/a-novelty-_-but-also-a-winner-female-high-school-football-coach-has-team-in-dcs-title-game/2011/11/22/gIQA0beHlN_story_1.html

Mandel, Lisa. (2010). Where women work: 20 most common occupations. AOL. Retrieved from http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2010/07/27/where-women-work/

No comments:

Post a Comment