The labour force has gone through a lot in the past few decades. Things like division, expansion, and acceptance are all apart of the labour force we knew, know, and will come to know. This post is going to discuss the division of labour and its affect on women in the past, present, and future.
In the past, it was normative for women to take care of the home, their children, and their husbands. These responsibilities of women elicit three normative expectations that society had for women. These expectations were that women were to have children, get married, and have a home. All of which made a woman successful in society.
In the past, a man and a woman would take specific paths in their life in order to gain social acceptance, the man being more privileged than the woman. Both would marry but the paths before and after marriage were very different. Men would be sometimes educated and then work to provide for their family. After work, men would come home to a meal prepared for them, house chores done, and kids taken care of. The woman did all of these things because women were held responsible for all of the cooking, cleaning, and all of the needs of the children. Because of these pathways that were expected of each gender, when a man or woman moved away from the normative expectation of them they were seen as socially deviant.
To grasp a better understanding of this, think of your grandparents. Did your grandma ever have a job? If she was employed, was it at a grocery store, as a server or something along those lines? Now think of the males in your life. Your grandfather probably worked his whole life to provide for his family. Now think of your grandmother again, is she the one to usually cook and clean the house? All of these questions have expected normative answers for the period our grandparents grew up in, and because of this, most of our answers are based on these expected norms. With thoughts of your grandparents in the labour force, it becomes more evident that these normative expectations of gender influenced the division of labour because of the roles each gender was expected to play based on assumption of success. A woman wasn’t welcome in the work force because she was deemed incapable. Incapability often leads to low success rates. This is a very gendered concept but it was the way of life in the past that created limits, boundaries, and held caps over the success of a woman and the rising of a woman in society.
In the present, employment circulates around equality. Even though workplaces are still not as equal as they could be there is an extreme improvement than in the past. According to Statistics Canada, in 1965 31% of employees were female and today 60% of employees are female. This is a great expansion in the labour force. With most constrictions lifted of females being incapable, the lack of division in labour is not affecting women in such negative ways as it did in the past.
In the past women were not given the opportunity to build on their own, they had to build based on a man providing for them. This was extremely limiting in that if a women was not married, there was a very high chance that she was not successful based on norms, values, and expectations of society in the past. Without work, women could not expand to their full potential where as now women are able to flourish.
Not only is the workforce different today, but the expectations of women are too. Women aren’t completely viewed without gendered stigmas. A lot of the stereotypes are not followed as they were decades ago, which leaves women to be socially deviant in the lens of the past but also socially developing in todays lens. This allows women to be independent; to help lift damaging stigmas, to excel just as their male counterparts do, and it allows women to rebuild their socially perceived role.
I hope that in the future, the wage gap in the labour force will be smaller and women will be viewed in completely equal lens, as men are and have been since the beginning. If wage gaps are eliminated more and more conflict between a woman’s capabilities and rights will hopefully be understood in a gendered equal paradigm.
We have already come more than half way with women in the labour force, lets hope that the only affect it has on women in the future is positive.
Geraldine
References:
Statistics Canada. (2011-11-22). The Changing Face of Canadian Workplaces. Retrieved from http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/eng/labour/employment_standards/fls/resources/ resource01.shtml#cn-cont
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