The Evolution of Roles

Men and women have declared a cease-fire in the war that raged between the sexes through much of the last half of this century. In its place, they face common new enemies – the stress, lack of time and financial pressure of modern life.
A new national survey has found that after nearly a generation of sharing the workplace and renegotiating domestic duties, most men and women agree that increased gender equity has enriched both sexes. But both also believe that the strains of this relatively new world have made building successful marriages, raising children and leading satisfying lives ever more difficult.
The problem that now unites them, as warehouse operations manager James Lindow, 35, of Green Bay, Wis., put it, is "the lack of time you spend with your life."
Large majorities of more than 4,000 men and women questioned in a series of surveys last fall placed high importance on having a successful marriage and family. At the same time, equally large majorities of working men and women said they felt bad about leaving their children in the care of others, and wished they could devote more time to their families and themselves.
Surprisingly, although men and women agreed they should have equal work opportunities, and men said they approved of women working outside the home, large majorities of both said it would be better if women could instead stay home and just take care of the house and children.

Majorities of men and women believe there still are more advantages to being a man rather than a woman, and that most men don't understand the problems women face. And the survey shows that in some areas, the reality of daily existence for two-career families still has not caught up with changed attitudes.


Most men in the polls said they were happy to share child care and domestic chores with wives who work outside the home. Yet household duties remain sharply divided along gender lines. Working mothers still do twice as much housework as their husbands, and more than half of all women questioned expressed at least some dissatisfaction with the amount of help their husbands provide around the house.
"I think men are beginning to get it, at least some are, some of the time," said survey respondent Traci Hughes-Velez, 34, of Brooklyn, N.Y., director of compensation for a major corporation. "But there are times they don't. My husband just doesn't seem to get it when I tell him that I feel I'm always on duty. When we're at home, I'm the one who always has an eye out for our son, making sure he's eating on time, things like that."
The survey shows that real differences in perspective and perception remain between the sexes. Men are more likely to support increases in defense spending; women more favorably disposed toward health care for uninsured children. Women are more likely than men to be religious and to value close friendships; men are more likely than women to want successful careers and wealth, and more likely to value an "active sex life."
But rather than emphasizing their differences and blaming many of life's problems on each other, men and women share a sense of conflict and confusion about how to make it all work under today's pressures. To a large extent, the politics of resentment have become the politics of fatigue.
Over the next five days, The Post will examine how men and women are managing in this transformed world based on a series of five nationwide surveys sponsored by The Washington Post in collaboration with researchers from Harvard University and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
The people surveyed came from all walks of life and all parts of the country. They included people like B.J. Sande, a 32-year-old mechanical engineer from Chattaroy, Wash., and Phyllis Wilkes, a 68-year-old San Franciscan retired from waitressing in a restaurant called Clown Alley. A sewing machine operator, a preschool teacher, a woman on welfare, a man looking for a job – they all spoke with conviction about how their lives are mostly better but definitely harder.
Today's story describes some of the consequences of the gender revolution, as revealed in survey data, in conversations with men and women, and in interviews with social scientists. Subsequent stories will examine women and men in the workplace, where expectations openly collide with the old ways of doing business; how changing gender roles have affected love and marriage; and how new research into the world of boys is posing troubling questions about how we raise our sons.

Men and women have declared a cease-fire in the war that raged between the sexes through much of the last half of this century. In its place, they face common new enemies – the stress, lack of time and financial pressure of modern life.
A new national survey has found that after nearly a generation of sharing the workplace and renegotiating domestic duties, most men and women agree that increased gender equity has enriched both sexes. But both also believe that the strains of this relatively new world have made building successful marriages, raising children and leading satisfying lives ever more difficult.
The problem that now unites them, as warehouse operations manager James Lindow, 35, of Green Bay, Wis., put it, is "the lack of time you spend with your life."
Large majorities of more than 4,000 men and women questioned in a series of surveys last fall placed high importance on having a successful marriage and family. At the same time, equally large majorities of working men and women said they felt bad about leaving their children in the care of others, and wished they could devote more time to their families and themselves.
Surprisingly, although men and women agreed they should have equal work opportunities, and men said they approved of women working outside the home, large majorities of both said it would be better if women could instead stay home and just take care of the house and children.

Majorities of men and women believe there still are more advantages to being a man rather than a woman, and that most men don't understand the problems women face. And the survey shows that in some areas, the reality of daily existence for two-career families still has not caught up with changed attitudes.

Poll Data This series of stories was based on the following polls, conducted for The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University on these dates:  Aug. 14-Sept. 7, 1997   Nov. 17-23, 1997   Nov. 20-23, 1997   Aug. 14-Sept. 14, 1997   Dec. 19-23, 1997

Most men in the polls said they were happy to share child care and domestic chores with wives who work outside the home. Yet household duties remain sharply divided along gender lines. Working mothers still do twice as much housework as their husbands, and more than half of all women questioned expressed at least some dissatisfaction with the amount of help their husbands provide around the house.
"I think men are beginning to get it, at least some are, some of the time," said survey respondent Traci Hughes-Velez, 34, of Brooklyn, N.Y., director of compensation for a major corporation. "But there are times they don't. My husband just doesn't seem to get it when I tell him that I feel I'm always on duty. When we're at home, I'm the one who always has an eye out for our son, making sure he's eating on time, things like that."
The survey shows that real differences in perspective and perception remain between the sexes. Men are more likely to support increases in defense spending; women more favorably disposed toward health care for uninsured children. Women are more likely than men to be religious and to value close friendships; men are more likely than women to want successful careers and wealth, and more likely to value an "active sex life."
But rather than emphasizing their differences and blaming many of life's problems on each other, men and women share a sense of conflict and confusion about how to make it all work under today's pressures. To a large extent, the politics of resentment have become the politics of fatigue.
Over the next five days, The Post will examine how men and women are managing in this transformed world based on a series of five nationwide surveys sponsored by The Washington Post in collaboration with researchers from Harvard University and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
The people surveyed came from all walks of life and all parts of the country. They included people like B.J. Sande, a 32-year-old mechanical engineer from Chattaroy, Wash., and Phyllis Wilkes, a 68-year-old San Franciscan retired from waitressing in a restaurant called Clown Alley. A sewing machine operator, a preschool teacher, a woman on welfare, a man looking for a job – they all spoke with conviction about how their lives are mostly better but definitely harder.
Today's story describes some of the consequences of the gender revolution, as revealed in survey data, in conversations with men and women, and in interviews with social scientists. Subsequent stories will examine women and men in the workplace, where expectations openly collide with the old ways of doing business; how changing gender roles have affected love and marriage; and how new research into the world of boys is posing troubling questions about how we raise our sons.

The Stereotypical Family

As Eagly suggests, gender roles are closely linked with gender stereotypes. Stereotypes are "overgeneralized beliefs about people based on their membership in one of many social categories" (Anselmi and Law 1998, p. 195). Gender stereotypes vary on four dimensions: traits, role behaviors, physical characteristics, and occupations (Deaux and Lewis 1983). For example, whereas men are more likely to be perceived as aggressive and competitive, women are more likely to be viewed as passive and cooperative. Traditionally, men have been viewed as financial providers, whereas women have been viewed as caretakers. Physical characteristics and occupations have also been considered consistent or inconsistent with masculine or feminine roles.

Traditional gender stereotypes are most representative of the dominant (white, middle-class) culture. Hope Landrine (1999) asserts that although race and social class may not be mentioned when inquiring about gender stereotypes, most people will make assumptions about these categories. Her research suggests that when race and social classes are specified, different gender stereotypes emerge.

Gender roles and stereotypes affect couple and family interaction. Often, for example, the division of household labor is based on gender. Traditionally, white women in heterosexual couples remained at home and completed most of the domestic labor, while their male partners worked outside the home to provide the family income. Although women have increasingly joined the workforce over the past thirty years, they continue to do the majority of the household labor. Lawrence Kurdek (1993) studied white, heterosexual, gay, and lesbian couples without children. He found that heterosexual and gay couples were more likely than lesbian couples to divide household labor so that one partner did the majority of the work. Lesbian couples were most likely to share domestic tasks or take turns doing the tasks (Kurdek 1993).

Gender roles often become more differentiated when men and women become parents. Overall, women provide more direct care for and spend more time with children (Walzer 2001). This care includes taking responsibility for the mental work of gathering and processing information about infant care, delegating the tasks related to infant care, and worrying about infant health and well-being. In sum, the unequal division of both household labor and childcare, with women doing the bulk of the work, is thought to contribute to the reported lower marital satisfaction for women (Walzer 2001).

Gender roles and stereotypes affect men and women in other ways. Specifically, men and women may be judged by how well they conform to traditional stereotypes. In his theory of masculine gender role strain, Joespech Pleck (1976) asserted that boys and men are pressured to fulfill a standard of masculinity. Boys and men, for example, who do not fulfill the standard often suffer from low self-worth (Pleck; Sonnenstein; and Ku1993). Other lifelong consequences befall men who experience traumatic socialization practices such as rites of passage that entail violence. Even men who successfully fulfill the standard of masculinity suffer psychologically or emotionally from rigid constraints on acceptable parenting roles for men (Pleck; Sonnonstein; and Ku 1993). Richard Lazur and Richard Majors (1995) contend that gender role strain is pronounced with men of color. Men of color must balance the dominant standards of masculinity with their cultures' standards of masculinity in an effort to fulfill both satisfactorily. In addition, men of color must overcome prejudice and other obstacles to fulfill the standards of masculinity. The result is increased gender role strain for men of color (Lazur and Majors 1995). Likewise, white women and women of color may be constrained by standards of femininity, such as the pressure to have children.

Gender stereotypes can also affect men's and women's performance. Stereotype threat is defined as "an individual's awareness that he or she may be judged by or may self-fulfill negative stereo-types about her or his gender or ethnic group" (Lips 2001, p. 33). Research indicates that stereo-type threat can negatively affect performance by increasing anxiety. For example, Steven Spencer, Claude Steele, and Diane Quinn (1999) found that women performed significantly worse than men on a math test when the participants were led to believe that the test would probably produce gender differences. In contrast, women and men performed equally well when the participants were led to believe that the test did not produce gender differences. These findings suggest that negative stereotypes can and do negatively affect performance even when the stereotype has not been internalized or incorporated into the view of the self.

Gender roles in Modern Family

Traditional education creates, in time, an incomplete image on family’s gender roles. From generation to generation children interiorize theirs parent’s model known as “separated world’s 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 couldn’t take over.

Changing traditional gender roles seems to be difficult not because woman or man don’t have the necessary skills for other one’s tasks but because every one carries on a symbol of his “world”. Society’s 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”- who’s priority is the career (the anti-feminine 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, culture’s 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 women’s career as a conflict source having arguments like: women will neglect theirs family attributions, the imminent change of man’s 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, she’s 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 role’s exchange like a challenge and also accept that a man as well as a woman can do anything with willing. – Psychologist, Nicoleta Cramaruc