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

I am so tired of these big long posts completely denying that sexism exists. Always show their agenda with the "bitter" accusations too. I was going to pick up on numerous fallacies in the first few of them but gave in, my time is too valuable and the content too predictable.

One thing I will say is that not all jobs where men are paid more than women are because men are physically stronger than women. In fact, few of these jobs require strength. And in jobs where heavy lifting is required, these jobs could be performed better by both sexes if lifting aids were utilised, which would also stop men (and women) being injured at work.

Different physical strength between men and women is a terrible excuse for a gender pay gap. In fact, if the key skill of a job was a being moderately fit and strong, then that would not be a job that should be particularly highly paid, because most of the population could do it.

To whoever commented on the male teachers and hysteria over child abuse (or however it was worded), I don't see why the fact that men (as a class) are considered less safe to be alone with children than women should mean that the women who are preferred in those jobs should be paid less. If anything, the opposite is true. Being of the class who is considered only 5% as likely to be unable to control their impulses and not abuse their position of power is something which should add to women's value, not reduce it.

Jessie9323, my only comment on your post is that you are still on maternity leave with your first child. You don't know what things will be like when you go back. Your colleagues have, so far, treated you as an equal, because you haven't inconvenienced them yet by being a female who has used their uterus. You don't know if they will once you go back. Will you be able to work as many night shifts once you have a child? Travel at short notice? Stay late last minute when you have to do nursery pick-up? How will you afford two or more children in childcare and all the mortgage and bills?

I say this as someone who works in a similar (male-dominated) industry, one which pretends to support women on the surface. I have seen women enter as graduate engineers on the same terms as men and work and progress exactly as men for 10 years, who then start a family (just like all their male colleagues have done) and then, despite the her going out of her way to continue as before when she returns, she still suffers discrimination.

If your employer does make adjustments to enable you to balance work and a family life, then you will have feminism to thank for that. If it doesn't, you'll understand why we still need feminism. Not all employers support women, but if yours is one of the few that does then instead of gloating about how you're a special type of woman who just tried harder and made better choices, maybe you should think a bit more critically about the ways in which other women directly or indirectly have those choices removed from them.

Sorry Jessie9323, one other thing (I am not picking on you here, I just recognise some of my own previous misconceptions in what you are saying). You say that your employer offers 6 months mat leave at full pay. It's very easy for employers to offer this when they are a large company with a handful of women (eg Network Rail or similar). When they start offering 6 months at full pay for men as well, then you will know it's because they really do support women and balancing family with work, and it's not just performative tokenism. Ask yourself why companies which employ hoardes of low-paid women don't also offer 6 months at full pay?

Also, you say that you were off for months during your pregnancy, did you start your mat leave a few months before the birth and go back when your DC was a few months old? Many women wouldn't be well enough to do this even if they wanted to (I was one). And yet, I was only paid enhanced maternity pay, (which was half pay) because my illness was related to a problematic childbirth. Whereas if a man was off work unwell (even if that was, say, a MH condition due to becoming a father), a man would have got full pay for 6 months.

Fair? I don't think so.

So women should expect employers to pick up the tab because they can't do the things you've said?

Without wanting to speak for someone else, I imagine the issue is that women are expected to take on the bulk of child caring responsibilities (leaving for the nursery run, caring for sick children) while men largely carry on they did before their children were born. Therefore, men continue to expect to be able to work late or travel at short notice confident in the assumption that it is the mother who will look after their children, and it is a woman whose career is expected to take the hit (and generally does). This isn't really a question of what the employer should be expected to do, but rather that mothers and fathers should be treated equally by society.

There are plenty of examples of this subtle but very damaging discrimination in the workplace. For instance, while my husband was technically allowed to share parental leave when our youngest was born, he was entitled to only statutory pay, which is less than 20% of his regular wage and a non-starter. Had he been the mother, his company would have paid him full wages for a few months, but as a father he was entitled to only the legal minimum. He was massively disappointed by this as he really wanted to take some of the leave, but this policy is really only window dressing and is both preventing fathers from taking on the caring role, and ensuring that is HAS to be the woman who stays at home, thus reinforcing the gender stereotypes that we're all talking about to the next generation. People are saying there are thousands of examples because most of us see it every day - whether it be the assumption that mothers have to leave early so they aren't given certain tasks, to negative comments when a father takes leave to look after children. My husband, who does his fair share of pick ups and sick days, has had to endure many such comments, including one from his boss who questioned why his wife wasn't doing it. Until society changes these attitudes the gender imbalance will continue. In my field of academia there is a real awareness of the issues, and institutes put a lot of effort into trying to overcome the indirect discrimination - for instance to qualify for an Athena Swan award they need to ensure all meetings are within the hours 10-4 to allow people (largely women) with nursery runs to attend and not be disadvantaged.

Ok so as I've previously said that would mean you'd also have to agree that it's ridiculous that mothers are assumed to have parental responsibility and that the greatest benefit to women would be to hand this legality over to the fathers?

Then what do you do about disparity that occurs because of obvious differences, do we just brush it under the carpet and pretend it doesn't exist.

We should be celebrating these differences not artificially trying to merge them.

Women used to be the glue that held families together. That matriarchal figure of empathy and compassion for her family was what laid the corner stone of wellbeing and solidity in most families. Men just aren't as good as woman in creating this and if they were I don't know many people that would feel there fathers would or could have done this just as well. It's sad that women aren't that passionate about being with their family anymore and don't want to take on that role more than men.

Maybe it's personal choice but I couldn't imagine choosing to further my goals above being able to take the primary caring role in and of my family, and I've found that to be very instinctual. I'd thought that was a trait most women shared, clearly not, and the impact its had shows what a mess families are nowadays. I think it would suit a lot of woman if they were never able to have kids full stop.

If man should be given equal maternity/paternity leave what about one of the most obvious common stereotypes. It's a basic bodily function yet no employers have provided women with urinals in the bathroom. I may prefer to be given the choice of pulling up front and pissing into one of those than being expected to take a seat just because I'm a woman! Should differences really not count for anything?

Why do we have stereotypes? Did someone invent the notion and choose from a list who would be put into each different stereotype, or do you think they might just be our own observations that have developed bases on the way we perceive different groups to act to get a sense of our own identity and how we should go about life. To attempt to get rid of them is to attempt to alter an entire populations perception of reality. What kind of a person would do this? That's just evil, forget being fair!

You don't and can't 'get rid' of stereotypes. What do you want to do start blindfolding people at birth and plug their ears? It's like arguing that we should stop evolving! It certainly doesn't make sense and shows that anyone arguing this really hasn't thought it through beforehand.

@Nyushka1 I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you didn't mean to be so blatantly offensive both to women who love their children dearly but see a balanced family life as a good thing, and to men who are more than capable of being said 'glue' in family life and also relish time with their children (while wishing they had the opportunity to spend more time with their kids).

You seem to be conflating broken homes with mothers working, which just isn't borne out by the facts. I'm sorry to say that the children running wild are much less likely to come from a home with two professional parents than they are from a home with at least one (or possibly both) parents not working at all. You have stated yourself that poverty is the key factor, and this has sod all to do with women going back to work - surely this would bring more income into the house?

We really need to be getting away from this idea that the differences are innate - they aren't, they're the product of a lifetime of social conditioning which starts when babies are very impressionable. This is what the bulk of neuroscience is saying. Your experiences determine your brain patterns, and giving children different experiences can literally change their brains. You can clearly see this when you compare different cultures. We also need to get away from this mum-shaming bollocks that implies that for a woman to be a good mother she needs to sacrifice all aspects of herself (while not asking the same of men of course) - some sacrifice is inevitable, obviously, but it is good for children to have parents who are happy and content.

Interesting article refers to the study I mentioned previously.

www.thecut.com/2017/04/heres-the-biggest-study-yet-on-sex-based-brain-differences.html

Its stereotyping to assume that all women are concerned about is being good mothers! There will be many women who would much rather further their goals than sit and worry about their mothering skills or family matters.

@Nyushka1 did you read the article you just linked to?? Point (3) in the key findings section states exactly what I’ve been saying! Basically you can’t draw conclusions from the differences in brain structure bacause if women and men are socialised differently from a young age this will cause differences in brain structure, especially when the people in question are middle aged or older.

Nyushka1, why did you respond to my comment about "fair?" without commenting at all about what I was talking about (which was why is mat pay less than sick pay, even when the woman is sick)?

You've said you don't believe there is any sex discrimination, and I've just given you a blatant example in mat pay vs sick pay. So why are you ignoring it in order to blather on and on and on about how some women shouldn't have children and employers shouldn't have to employ disabled people? (fucking hell, man. What a despicable human you are).

How is maternity pay and sick pay related to sexism. I didn't answer as it didn't make sense.

Is sick pay different pay for men and women.... Nope

Is maternity/paternity leave pay different for a man and woman... Nope. Shared parental leave is commonly taken.

OK I'll give you that one it is a bit sexist as it favours women slightly as many places offering enhanced maternity leave only offered standard parental leave meaning the woman was entitled to an extra 2 weeks money than the man.

So far I don't see how this helps your argument that its women suffering?

I hope this has helped you calm down a bit too.

And please don't play games taking things completely out of context. I've never said anyone shouldn't have to employ disabled people. I believe they should be treated equally. We're debating a topic let's not start getting underhanded and sly about it. If you read what I wrote the wrong way I suggest you read it back.

Woman has baby, has difficult birth and is ill. She is not well enough to return for 6 months, but only gets Mat Pay, which is (in most companies) significantly less than sick pay).

Woman - has baby, is fine but later gets sick and is unable to work for up to 6 months, still only gets mat pay.

Man - is ill and unable to work for 6 months, gets full pay for 6 months.

Man - is ill due to MH issues caused by birth of child (so connected to his 'choice' to have a child) - he still gets sick pay, which is higher than mat pay.

SonicVersusGynaephobia
That's just plain incorrect. Parental leave must be 18 weeks paid. After that your doing well if your getting paid at all because they don't have to pay any more

Woman get SSP the same as men on return.

You will not be able to claim SSP after a period of unpaid additional maternity leave if you have not had average earnings of at least £116 per week in the previous 8 weeks whether you are male or female.

I don't know why I'm even bothering to set this out. ALL of your employment rights are equal. If a specific employer if flouting these you need to take them to court but even the odd employer doesn't make sexism systemic, it makes it individual minority cases.

Y0uCann0tBeSer10us

Nice try, it doesn't prove what you're saying as it doesn't say that social influences WILL lead to the differences. What it said if you read the paper itself is that it couldn't possibly take that into account so it's always going to be a possibility. You would have to conclude that the differences between the physical structure of our brains were the sole result of the negative constructs of our social interactions alone. That's a longshot. Especially when you compare it to similar observations of very young male and female brains and the results show similar findings. They also correlate to areas of function that we would expect from our stereotypes.

Regarding the Athena Swan organisation, I consider that a sexist and oppressive 'movement' and from conversations with my daughter she's told me of the shame and embarrassment this organisation cause her whenever she sees the name. She's done well in her career and finds it offensive and humiliating to be told "it's ok your a woman you need the extra help", and has never felt that her gender has ever stood in the way of her progressing. I've seen many things that have stood in her way, but her sex has never been one of them. Neither her father nor myself ever directed her toward STEM cell research but I could never have guessed how important it would be to ensure she knew to keep away from that never ending victim train going round and round. Its damaging the work environment where everyone felt inspired to work. Now the grants arent given to the best, there given to those with an AS award based on women in the workplace instead of the meritocracy that instilled the pride and competition in the industry. If DD decides to leave she's made to feel like just another negative statistic so I know what AS is and I think it's dangerous.

You've completely ignored the point yet again, but I can't be bothered engaging with you any longer. Your agenda here is too transparent.

And boring.

If it's boring then read something else.

SonicVersusGynaephobia

It's convenient to say I'm the one that's missed the point instead of admitting you were mistaken.

I think it's perfectly obvious when we have people present who work with Anetha Swan and should be the experts that can reel off a ton of examples of sexist employers and policies but still there's none given.

It all reinforces that I'm not just a one off case of someone that has never felt in anyway inferior or disadvantaged by my gender in any workplace I've been in and my view that trying to push it is damaging to what have been fantastic progressions over time.

Instead, because they've had to concede that, alright, there's no actual sexism and nobodies actually doing anything wrong, so they say, actually the problem must be (buzzword alert) 'indirect' sexism.

Its desparate, now if a report of harassment or bullying is made do we have to ask "were you bullied directly or indirectly? "

FFS it's rediculous! Grow up.

@Nyushka1 you're not engaging with the points people are making. You're dumping massive repetitive posts with little content, riddled with inaccuracies and absurdities.

Indirect discrimination is very much a real thing, whether it’s against women, parents, disabled people or whatever. It’s often unconscious, like arranging meetings for 5pm or planning a retreat somewhere with no disabled access, which is why organisations like Athena Swan encourage people to think things through a bit more. I doubt many people deliberately sit down and plan how best to exclude women from the workplace. (I’m not on the committee btw, but like everyone in my institute I have done diversity training.)

I actually agree that there is something insulting about women only fellowships and positive discrimination, as another woman who made it in a man’s world on her own merits, but I’m not so naive so as to be blind to the disadvantages women and girls face, not least because of a heavily gendered world that they’re exposed to since birth. I’m in favour of removing the barriers by removing gender stereotypes rather than lowering the bar for women further down the line.

And it is simply bollocks to suggest that structural differences between male and female brains (very small compared to the similarities), excluding those directly connected to sex like reproductive control areas, are because of inate differences rather than biased socialisation. The authors of your own article acknowledge that, as do many other neuroscientists like the one in the link I posted upthread.

Grow up.

Et tu.

Your 'posts' are just utter drivel.

This biased socialisation doesn't exist with other mammals though so how do these genetic differences that you say must be as a result of 'stereotypes', appear to mimic themselves over a diverse range of creatures i.e. aggression is normally higher in males, they tend to be more assertive.

The study I gave reference to wasn't 'my' study. My interest is generally more psychology of sociology which is where there is the most evidence to suggest they are natural differences. I found that brain study interesting as it backed up just what we expected. That is the areas of brain responsible for the various differences correlated where expected according to the psychologically expected outcome. It had been thought previously to be physically the same but slowly it showing that its actually not

For more definitive evidence study wise I'd look to tests like that repeated with 18 month old babies who are given the choice of what toys to play with. the results show by a large margin that girls would prefer to play with the dolls and boys would almost always want to play with the trucks.

The problem with arguing that stereotyping is the reason for that, is that it's universally accepted that at 18 months they are still far too young to understand their gender identity or form any understanding of the fundamental differences.

It was shown in an investigation somewhere in the states that a large company taking on men and women in one area showed that the starting salary for the exact same job was around 30% higher for men. It looked like sexism, but having looked at all the factors of the 20 men and 20 woman it was found that 17 of the men had asked for a better starting salary compared to only 3 of the women.

That's because men tend to overestimate their abilities more than women which shows itself nowhere clearer than looking at the almost zero drownings of women due to misadventure compared to men.

Experiments with young children are the most telling. When put on a real bike with a virtual surrounding they simulated near misses and dangerous situations like colliding head on with an object. Almost all the girls exhibited fear and braking times were very quick. When repeated with boys fun and excitement was the most common sensation and the times at which they applied the brakes, if in real life many would have serious injuries.

These are tests that have been repeated with kids from all different backgrounds and it's extensive, I'm just giving some examples, I just can't see that stereotyping is the reason why these results differ and would be far too greater difference that could be changed just based on how our parents stereotype.

When you say you'd like to remove gender stereotypes, while I understand what you're getting at, I would still question whether you've fully thought that through.

Where would you start? When you consider that a stereotype is just based on what we have observed as a normal behaviour in other groups.

What do you remove? A thought? If it's only what we perceive to be reality, then surely to remove it we would have to remove, or change the reality? But if the key to changing the reality is removing the stereotype?
Do you see the conundrum? When do you say enough is enough and draw the line?

Everyone has better things than they did say 30-50 years ago, technology has made life so much easier, we've all got spare money to buy cool things, we all own a car, and we're all being paid more year on year, we've got nothing to complain about. We owe all of that to capitalism and its meritocracy, so sorry if I get pit in my stomach when we're considering policies that involve holding a gun to the head of employers demanding what they pay demands instead of using a mutually agreed voluntary contract.

Scandinavia have the strictest laws in the world to force the differences out, but the actual disparity has grown to the highest in Europe.

Its the proof that the further the social construction is arranged to decrease the differences, and force it, that the wider the actual differences become. So the more they try to equal the gap the more it goes in the opposite direction to the outcome they want.

AssasinatedBeauty

Another one who has tried to say I've ignored points that have been raised without being able to point to something. If you're stretched by having to consider things at a level deeper than you're used to then try an easier thread. The reason I've had to type so much is to enable to fit most of the issues in that have been debated.

sackrifice

your posts are just utter drivel

And yet you're the 1 dumb enough to keep reading??

If you want some engagement with your lengthy posts, then at least give links to the studies you are quoting, otherwise you are expecting other people to do lots of searching to try and find any of them...

@Nyushka1

In response to your point about it's universally accepted that at 18 months they are still far too young to understand their gender identity or form any understanding of the fundamental differences., I wondered what you think about the Fawcett Society's position on this? Taken from this document, on page 4:

www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=e8096848-cbdb-4e16-8713-ee0dadb3dcc5

"When children are born, they are unaware of gendered expectations and attitudes. But by the age of two, most children are conscious of the social relevance of gender, and by the time children reach the end of infant school, they have already developed a clear sense of what is expected of boys and girls and how they are supposed to behave."