Gender Norms and Gendered Preferences
From a young age, men and women are socialized into specific gender roles that dictate how they should act. These gender roles then cause men and women to develop gendered preferences for work, or preferences based on the gender norms they have been socialized to accept. These gendered preferences then lead to gendered choices, in which women choose primarily occupations that are both lower in pay and lower in status.
Read more about this topic: Occupational Segregation, Causes
Famous quotes containing the words gender, norms and/or preferences:
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)
“There is a totalitarian regime inside every one of us. We are ruled by a ruthless politburo which sets ours norms and drives us from one five-year plan to another. The autonomous individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“This is the great truth life has to teach us ... that gratification of our individual desires and expression of our personal preferences without consideration for their effect upon others brings in the end nothing but ruin and devastation.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)