Gender Imbalance Rooted From Our Gender Schemas
Why are nurses, flight attendants, public relations officers supposed to be feminine occupation? Why are police, firemen, engineers supposed to be masculine occupation? Why are female usually thought to be emotional and weak? Why are male regarded as rational and strong? These are all about our gender schemas! Gender Schema is a set of implicit, or unconscious, hypotheses about sex differences which play a central role in shaping men’s and women’s professional lives. It is more significant and inflexible in a field where gender imbalance is substantial, for example, in the rural areas in China where boys are much superior to girls. In this reflection paper, I would like to discuss the application of gender schemas in different areas including at work and in family. The effect of such implicit expectation will also be investigated so that we can have a deeper understanding of this phenomenon.
For decades, people have rooted a rigid concept in their mind: each person should do what they are supposed to do depending on his or her gender. Male are considered as rational, with stronger leadership skills and problem-solvers. Conversely, female are considered as emotional and just followers to men. This makes the two sexes have specialized into different careers. People will think that it is not appropriate for a man to be a nurse; for a woman to be a head of a group of men. This perception may actually deprive a person of having an opportunity to further develop his or her talents. For instance, a female with strong leadership skills is really capable of being a general leader of an organization. However, people normally still cannot accept this because they think that it is better for a female to be a subordinate of male instead of the reverse one. A male who has great interest in making cakes may be considered as doing feminine things and be interpreted as gay! I think gender schemas here is really very powerful. It may make our society to wrongly...
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