Guest post: “Gender stereotypes hold us all back”

[MumsnetGuestPosts]

It’s that time of year again when large employers are reporting their gender pay gaps. This year we (unsurprisingly) find that 45% are reporting bigger gaps than they did last year. So what is going on? Undoubtedly, the fact that employers are not required to have an action plan in place is one of the issues. We have to focus on the action required and hold employers to account for that, rather than just requiring them to report the gap. But we also have to get behind the numbers and the regulation to address the underlying causes, and the elephant in the room is gender stereotyping. By that I mean the social norms and expectations that limit what women and men or boys and girls should do.

Take who does the caring, for example. We build our parental leave system around a 1950s model of family life. Yes, we have shared parental leave, but it is structured in a way that means fewer than 1 in 10 dads take it up because it is paid at too low a rate. It starts from the assumption that it’s the mother’s leave to give to him and not a dedicated entitlement for fathers. Pregnancy discrimination drives 54,000 working mothers out of their jobs each year. Many mothers find themselves trapped in low paid part-time work. Working mothers experience a 30% pay gap by the time their first child is 20. All of this is underpinned by the expectation that mothers should be at home caring for children and not in the workplace, and that fathers should work to provide for the family. You may think we have left all this behind, but Fawcett research suggests that we haven’t.

Another cause of the gender pay gap is occupational segregation. This is where we see men concentrated in some sectors or roles and women in others. Take childcare and teaching, for example: both are grossly underpaid and undervalued (because women do them) - just 2% of pre-school teachers are men. Take as another example engineering, where just 7% of apprentices are women; or physics where just 20% of A levels are taken by girls. This is after decades of trying to ‘encourage’ and ‘inspire’ young women into STEM subjects. Girls’ attainment at GCSE is equal to or better than boys, but at each subsequent stage girls fall away. By the time they graduate or complete their apprenticeships, there are just a handful left. So why isn’t it working?

The answer to all of this is the way society is straight-jacketing our children into harmful gender norms and stereotypes. Often, as parents, we do it unwittingly. Sometimes we are simply so bombarded by the ‘pinkification’ of life, as campaigners like Let Toys be Toys have so powerfully demonstrated. Sometimes we give in and think ‘What harm can it do really?’ (I have four children, so I understand how hard this is). But, as our research shows, the truth is that pushing children to conform to gender norms is indeed harmful. It’s gender norms which make us reward men who ask for a pay rise but regard women who do the same as ‘pushy’, or which treat women in leadership roles as ‘imposters’. It’s gender norms which create the expectation of visual perfection for girls and which contribute to one in five 14-year-olds self-harming. It’s gender norms which limit boys to be one version of masculine, and which reinforce and normalise aggression in boys from a young age.

It is tempting to feel helpless in the face of such an enormous problem. But evidence suggests that all is not lost. Research shows the wiring in our brains is soft, not hard. Professor Gina Rippon argues we can mould our ‘plastic brains’, even as adults. The truth is, though, that we have a better chance of change if we intervene early on. This is why Fawcett is launching an exciting new Commission on Gender Stereotypes in Early Childhood and we would love Mumsnet to be involved. We have to get to the underlying causes and make some fundamental changes to our education system, our parenting, and the commercial world too. Gender stereotypes hold us all back, but if we can change them, we can change the future.

You can read more about Fawcett’s Commission on Gender Stereotypes in Early Childhood here.

Sam Smethers will be returning to this post on the 1st of May to answer some questions

[MIdgebabe]

Women carry and care for the youngest babies. It might take 2 years from a working life of 50 years, for the women who have children. (Average, that means some people take more time out). It hardly justifies a huge pay gap does it?

Beyond that, it is society that expects women to take the hit on school pick ups, sick children, sick parents and neighbours, and men expect not to have to do this. It’s not a free choice when you have been groomed to a certain behaviour. It requires a huge amount of mental effort to break the training and to go against societies expectations.

[SciFiScream]

Why aren't you calling this sex-stereotypes? It's not based on gender. Surely everyone knows you can choose your own gender now? And from a list that has over 70 choices! Are you really going to investigate 70+ stereotypes? Just think! Don't like the stereotypes of one gender? Then simply pick another that suits you better. Easy.

No, what you mean Sam is sex stereotypes. Please say what you mean

I cancelled my membership of Fawcett because of your acceptance of the mantra TWAW

[User7777]

Nyusha, your arguments confuse me. Either you are unaware (are you male? That could explain your not being aware?) or willfully ignorant.
Men are very over represented in media. To say this isn't influential on society is naive or obtuse. And to say that's because men have got to that position of influence is a circular argument! If men are paid more for heavy work which women can't do - that shows society / capitalosm values mens skills more. Male football is more profitable? mens skills are literally valued more. The very fact that caring is not profitable and low paid shows that capitalism does not value caring work. Women's jobs are literally valued less.

Another way women ate affected is that paying maintenance for your child is not easily law enforceable. Therefore men have a choice to reproduce and not contribute. Maybe instead of blaming women and their choices we need to look at why men make their choices and how that disadvantages women, their supposed 'partners'. Why men choose to not do unpaid caring. Why men choose to not go part time and help raise their kids. Why men choose to not do as much housework.
As for 'I happen to think women prefer working with mainly other women'. Wtaf?

[ArabellaDoreenFig]

There is no way you will be able to close the paygap if you won't acknowledge that women are oppressed and discriminated against because of our biology

This. To move women’s rights forward there needs to be a fundamental acceptance that women are discriminated against because of their Sex

To move all of human rights forward there needs to be a fundamental acceptance that gender stereotypes are harmful.

The Fawcett Society needs to look at its values and ask why it is promoting gender stereotypes, instead of leading the fight to break them.

[truthisarevolutionaryact]

A Commission on gender stereotypes in early childhood
That's such an irony that the Fawcett Society - having been a bastion of supporting women's rights - is now advocating an ideology that promotes gender stereotyping tat the most extreme levels for children.
Sam - suggest you have a look at this thread and share it with your colleagues at the Fawcett Society- it encapsulates what has happened to your once fantastic woman centred organisation:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3541908-Regulatory-capture

[BuzzPeakWankBobbly]

I thought of Nyushka yesterday while reading an article about some "feral children" discovered in Russia.

I was contemplating how the little girls in that group weren't acting instinctively maternal towards the boys, nor were they playing any "womanly" roles that this poster seem to think females are hard wired into.

Then i saw a picture of a social worker trying to interact with her.
She was pushing a Barbie in a bright pink ballgown at her.

FFS. She's only just escaped a living hell and already here comes the pink girly things! THAT is how it starts.

[unflushable]

Take childcare and teaching, for example: both are grossly underpaid and undervalued (because women do them) - just 2% of pre-school teachers are men.

With the culture that exists today regarding the massive distrust of men around children, you can expect that number to fall even further.

[S1naidSucks]

Of course we will not get an answer to any of the questions regarding
Transwomen being included in the statistics. 🙄

[Carriemac]

how are we supposed to take anything the Fawcett society says seriously whenit feels that trans women are women and should be allowed to access single sex services? Humans cannot change sex.

[drspouse]

Why do these organisations that support self-id even bother coming on Mumsnet?

[happyon]

God, this is precisely why some of us have left Fawcett. How can you expect to be taken seriously when you speak about ‘gender stereotypes’?
I imagine that the decision to support the idea that TWAW was a difficult one. But you made the wrong call as most of the posts here suggest.

[Beamur]

Not so much a question than a request. Please stop conflating the terms sex and gender. They don't mean the same thing. By doing so you are actually participating in a new way of oppressing women which doesn't bode well for the reason for the Fawcett Society existing.

[PrincessMargaret]

Even my husband, who is in his 60s and quite Neanderthal in hjs thinking on certain subjects, doesn't agree that men can self ID as women and can see the damage this is doing. It's beyond me how a Feminist organisation can take this view. I find it positively frightening.

[Nyushka1]

I'm interested in how you've reached the conclusion that women are oppressed and discriminated against because of their biology and would be interested to read the evidence of these claims as its something I haven't noticed.

User7777

You don't seem to have a solid understanding of the meaning of value when referred to in a work environment. Value is not measured by how much people can be forced to pay you. Value is a measure of what the fruits of your labour are worth to someone else. This isn't something of a conspiracy and the very notion of capitalism dictates that competition will thrive where there is a deficit in value.

What people are calling for on here, possibly without considering all the facts, is that mandates are put in place to force people to pay a certain amount based solely on the fact that someone is female (or male).

This is not only unfair but will actually lead to females being significantly undervalued and disadvantaged over broader areas.

To explain, let's say a company who's 50 50 work force were all employed chopping down trees and stacking them up. That company would see off the competition by producing more trees so as an incentive offers a bonus to any workers who stack more than 5 trees per hour.

On average most of the men could manage 6 (I repeat on average) but the women usually had to work in pairs to carry the trees to stack so often didn't make the bonus.

Then comes change, equal wages were mandatory so no bonus only a flat tarrif average wage. Now the company realises it has to pay the women, who earn the company less money, the same as the men. This means that there is now a large incentive for competing companies to hire the most valuable workforce to make the most profit.
Its not discrimination on the part of men to hire men just because they're men. Someone's sex alone doesn't determine their value. What they are able to produce in terms of labour measures value in the workplace, and where someone is undervalued there will always be someone else to take advantage of that because your undiscovered value potential can be freely exploited.

Would you encourage the use of force to enter into an intimate relationship based on how attractive you felt you were, or is it ok to do if it's in the name of fairness, after all they live like this in North Korea and that population will tell you its great and that their Great Leader is the fairest in the world!

The poster mentioning feral kids. There will be exceptions of all kinds to any rule that doesn't mean that because there are exceptions that we can't consider a norm. Anyway if it's the programme I think you're talking about it was largely dramatised, and if you look at the actual in depth studies on these cases (which the programme used to find them) you'll soon realise none of these were true feral kids but rather cases of parental neglect of kids with severe mental illness from an early age whose parents couldn't cope with the demand and levels of care needed.

Oh, and I'm female, always have been, always will be.

[AssassinatedBeauty]

Why is it always walls of text with the sexism deniers? Tedious.

[User7777]

I do have a solid understandung of value in a work system. I understand economics and capitalism. However, I think the system is ultimately patriarchal and disadvantages females. Which might not matter to capitalism as a system, but doesn't mean I agree with it. It also doesn't make me a communist. Capitalism isn't a perfect system.

[Nyushka1]

IAlso, as it seems there is little doubt to the fact that males and females are different;
if there are differences between subjects there will inevitably be inequalities which are a consequence of these differences.

Those shouting loudest seem to be, in a sense bitter, that the evolutionary biology of female anatomy has negative consequences on success in the workplace and is unwilling to even consider the notion of this as a reason to explain this inequality. A small number of mainly extremist individuals still insist that it is some male conspiracy to keep woman oppressed without giving any evidence or explanation of even why this might be the case.

Gender or sex stereotyping.
Again without putting their thinking caps on just repeat the terms cause they like the sound of them I presume, what should be the solution? Don't stereotype anything? As humans we use the outcomes of events to work out how to perceive the world and how to judge whether a situation is normal or not.

Should we start by lying and convincing ourselves that these don't exist and that we are built the same?
Males and females have evolved throughout history to serve two different evolutionary roles.

You do realise humans naturally fall into these roles?
Is the Chimp society and the social constraints that monkeys live in suffering the same problem? Only, it would seem surely strange that even without all the societal stereotypes that there is some natural tenancies for animals to arrange themselves into structures where the women form matriarchal bonds to care for the young while the men protect the rest and bring back the goods so to speak.

It would be strange and a massive coincidence if it was society that was to blame and not just our natural proclivity to carry out these roles anyway.

[AssassinatedBeauty]

I'd be intrigued to know what the Fawcett society would suggest to address/challenge people who hold a very deeply held belief that women and men are fundamentally different in terms of psychology/abilities/brains.

How do you challenge the idea that women should simply accept being penalized for bearing children, and accept this as an unarguable natural state?

[User7777]

Of course female biology puts us as a disadvantage. But we arent at the mercy of our biology anymore are we. We can and should address those disadvantages socially. We aren't chimps. Or bonobos.
By saying that, in our highly developed intelligent society, women are still the natural child carers is wilful ignorance. And where does that leave single-dads? Is he not a natural carer because he's male?

Unfortunately gender stereotypes (which most evolutionary biologists believe are plastic, not innate) just reinforce those disadvantages.

[FuzzyShadowChatter]

Nyushka1 Social animals, like humans, socialize each other and have societal stereotypes. Chimps included. There is plenty of research on animal psychology and behaviour on this in many different species - they change and adapt. Even non-social animals get in on the act though there is less research there that I've seen.

Plenty of female animals abandon their young to die. Or kick and stomp their babies to death or eat their young. That's nature. Human children are abused and abandoned and killed by their mothers. As a society these days, we tend to try to be better than our nature and prevent such natural things. In general "natural" or "evolution" are not really good excuses for much unless you want to argue we should go back to living in trees. Appeal to nature is a well known logical fallacy and doesn't make sense at all, but certainly not in a discussion on how to make things better which is usually better than any natural baseline.

It's not a 'coincidence', it's just not simple - these things are complicated, It's why the nature vs nurture debate has gone on as it has, socialization happens from birth and now often before, the brain and the rest of our bodies change to our environments, we cannot in any real meaningful way divide the two with absolute certainty when it comes to behaviour and even less on things like wages which have so many factors to them. Other species barter for resources and status very much comes into play into the value something is considered to have - same is true with humans and our work.

Teachers and secretaries have not always been mostly female - there was plenty of time and in some places still where it is male dominated - and within the last decade or so we've seen many other professions have sex ratio changes which have knock-on effects to their status in society and in wages for those in those jobs. There is no way to make a causality study on wage issues or many other issues that cause this, but pretending sex doesn't come into play, that women's bodies don't come into play even if we think there are biological reasons for that (which means our bodies because we don't exist or have evolutionary traits without them), is shite analysis.

[Yabbers]

Women aren't "drawn" to low paid work. Women end up in those professions because they tend to be more family friendly, more open to flexible work patterns, and because they are not encouraged at a young age to go for the more male dominated professions.

There is also the problem that female blue collar work is routinely valued less than male blue collar work. A street sweeper paid more than a care worker, why is that? Glasgow City Council has lost a case on that recently and more will follow for sure.

Why do we keep pretending it's a real choice? Why do we think we can concentrate on how girls look rather than their brains, plaster their clothes with "born to sparkle" rather than the "born to lead" on clothes targeted at boys, and still expect them to strive for the top?

We do women a great disservice by not looking at the barriers in their way.

[Shutuptodd]

@Yabbers couldn't have said it better myself. The only reason I now work in a school is because as a single mum it fits around my children. I was never drawn to be in such a role in fact I wanted to be a builder but after years of being told that was stupid gave up on it.

As you say I feel women end up in alot of these roles. Alot of women I know work in schools for the same reason or as carers as they can fit round their partners hours so less child care is needed.

[Nyushka1]

FuzzyShadow

I don't think anyone's attempted to make an argument or tried to pretend sex doesn't come into play. I've specifically stated the differences between the 2 sexes and as such means that it will come into play in variable amounts depending on the specific areas that are being examined.
Appeal to nature is a well known logical fallacy and doesn't make sense at all, but certainly not in a discussion on how to make things better which is usually better than any natural baseline.
I'm not sure I understand your meaning that it's fallacy as a simple appeal to nature doesn't give any broader context. I've never suggested anybody should appeal to nature or that they should be made to act a certain way.

Having a background in clinical psychology I've always given topics like this quite a broad analysis and I'm always looking into the reasons of why things may be a certain way.

If you look over my posts I don't state that being evolutionary or natural are excuses for anything; but of course while you can't state absolute certainty on reasons for these differences then if you're going to use logic then you have to go with what the evidence suggests.

I've actually kept my own opinions to a minimum and tried to keep any arguments to those based on the evidence I've read, and I read a lot. I'll keep my age to myself but I've probably been about a bit more than most too but my mind is too young for gransnet.

The only moral way to go about the wages a person is paid is for the government to keep out of it. Value, you're quite right, is based on several complex factors but at least no body can argue they aren't given what they are worth.

And yes teachers haven't always tended to be female, but if you think back only 30-40 years ago teaching wasn't considered a particularly caring profession. I'm not sure when there have been more male secretaries though I wouldn't agree on that.

And as for why a street cleaner is paid more than a care worker I think the case you referring to is the council workers who claimed they were given less than some male based jobs. We could argue all day about tit for tat court cases like the 23 male Welsh University employees who have just received payouts for sex discrimination being given less than same paid women workers. Both of these are just greedy lawyers finding little loopholes. It's the public that loses out when the councils are having to pay all their money out in compensation.

You were asking why a street sweeper gets paid more than a care worker. If they do in fact get paid more than a care worker it will be because they are worth more i.e they are valued more which you admit is a complex issue.

I suppose you're going to play the "because they are men's jobs" card? However it can be proved to be incorrect as there are women who also work as street cleaners that are paid exactly the same as the men. There are also men that work in the care sector that get paid the same as women.

So therefore the wages that are paid are not based directly on the sex that usually apply. What would be the benefit of any employer to decide to do this. I can't think of 1 good reason. That wouldn't make sense at all!

Stuttaoild

Right, the reason you chose to go into teaching would probably be a common reason many women choose to be teachers, the primary reason of which is taking into consideration the caring role you play in your family.

It has been suggested that the evolutionary more caring side to women has actually centered around the wellbeing and care involved with keeping a stable and healthy family.

I think it's great to see women in typically male roles although I think it's safe to say that the average woman going in to be a builder would put their employers at a significant disadvantage and would be the rare exception to make a successful career from it. I know when my husband did our extension there was things I would have loved to help with but just wasn't capable to manage a fraction of what the guys could and Ive never been physically weak even for a woman.

Surely that wasn't being discriminated against?
That was just a fact I wasn't able to even lift off the ground the things the guys handled with ease, so I was of little VALUE to their operation.
Why should anyone be paid more wages than their intrinsic value in barter for reward in the workplace? That's just using the threat of physical force against others to take money from them that they don't believe you're worth. Its not far off stealing really, and some would say it is!

Assassinated Beauty

I'm not denying sexism exists. I'd like to fight sexism too. Its not very effective to just keep shouting sexism though without the words to backup where it's happening and what to do about it. As I've said before if you could point out where the sexism exists and I could see clear evidence of it in our current system then we could all fight it together. I just maybe haven't experienced it the same so enlighten me.

[grasspigeons]

Men were secretaries until WW1ish then the value and status fell.