Preferences dictating gender roles

[Jadefeather7]

Hi

I was hoping one of you wonderful mumsnetters could help me.

Currently in a discussion with someone who thinks preferences should dictate gender roles eg if there’s a study shows women overwhelmingly like men who are breadwinners, women should be housewives kind of thing. I want to give an example of why preferences shouldn’t determine gender roles by giving an example of a preference which we accept as one that we don’t want to promote. Can anyone think of anything? Would be so grateful!

From memory, there does seem t9 be something in the object rotation.

It's why women make better map readers, provided they are not forced to read a map the default Male way.

Men seem to find it easier to read a poorly orientated map and will outperform women on that rather specific task , whereas women tend t9 do better if they are permitted to turn the map anyway they want,

It may be socialisation that makes men worse map readers as it's probably socialisation that stops then orientating the map. But they do think it stems originally from a marginal better ability with spacial/shape based stuff. To balance, women do tend t9 be better at colour recognition..more men are colourblind also.

Both are postulated as being relevant in prehistoric communities. Although map reading is still useful today.

more men are colourblind also.

Because it’s a recessive gene on the X chromosome. Women have two X chromosomes so they can have one with the recessive gene and still see full colour because of the other. Men only have the one.

@Apple31419 I've read those data and a lot of them are from former Eastern Bloc/planned economies so I assumed they told women to do STEM because they needed engineers etc and you didn't get a choice of what to study at university.
I imagine the same will be true in India except at family level (you do something that earns proper money). I've also worked in a much poorer country where few people even got to secondary school so you did the training you could. Lots of male nurses. Some frustrated artists working as mechanics. Primary teaching wasn't a degree but you could work your way up so some did that to get a degree in the end.

• @Apple31419 I've read those data and a lot of them are from former Eastern Bloc/planned economies so I assumed they told women to do STEM because they needed engineers etc and you didn't get a choice of what to study at university.*

It’s also plausible that STEM was never coded sociologically as a “male thing”, thus fewer women turned away.

Once you reach a certain frequency of women in a career training path they tend to stick with it. Very few physics major women in the west because they are seated with a room full of men (in co Ed colleges anyway).

You cannot logic the religion out of people. Stop trying. It is a total waste of your energy.

Why are you engaging with such a knobhead?

@NonnyMouse1337 @drspouse absolutely agreed! One of my parents was from a poor country but also very strict and I had wondered if that's same dynamic was happening in Indian families too. In my case "if you're going to go to uni it needs to be worth it!" Was the rhetoric! Economic need trumping social, personal, or any other influences.

Of course, whenever a job or profession becomes dominated by women, it loses status. Think of 'typewriters' when the machines were new - a highly skilled, high-status job for men until it turned out women could do it, too, for less - and GPs in the old USSR. Bank clerks, primary teachers, nurses, librarians and perhaps even solicitors, soon. Fewer men climbing quickly through the ranks to the top tier and the bulk of women doing the heavy lifting for less. 🤷🏼‍♀️

See also computer programming. Coding used to be viewed as a kind of typing in the 1980s and so it was dominated by women. But, as more men entered the profession its status and financial remuneration rose...

www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding

Intersting piece on how gender roles change over time

@NewlyGranny

Of course, whenever a job or profession becomes dominated by women, it loses status. Think of 'typewriters' when the machines were new - a highly skilled, high-status job for men until it turned out women could do it, too, for less - and GPs in the old USSR. Bank clerks, primary teachers, nurses, librarians and perhaps even solicitors, soon. Fewer men climbing quickly through the ranks to the top tier and the bulk of women doing the heavy lifting for less. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Yes, this is historically very true. Conversely when a job gets more men doing it, it gains status. Originally all childbirth was done with female midwives. But when man-midwives started, the function of attending women in labour and catching babies was elevated to the status of a type of doctor- Obstetrician. Same with nursing. Once men entered nursing, the pay for nursing increased dramatically.

Yes! All those rows of comptometer operators. I'm old enough to remember that.

Jadefeather7 wrote - "according evolutionary psychologists and surveys men and women prefer Traditional gender roles."

Perhaps cavemen and cavewomen gave untruthful answers when they filled in their evolutionary psychology questionnaires.