A patient is brought into the emer­gency room. The sur­geon says, ​“I can’t oper­ate on this patient: he’s my son.” The sur­geon is not the patient’s father. Why can’t the sur­geon oper­ate? This clas­sic brain­teas­er works – and it worked on me – because of the hid­den assump­tion that sur­geons are male. The answer: The sur­geon is the patient’s mother.

The literature on fatherhood sends a stark message: All fathers are not equal.

The rid­dle high­lights that most jobs are gen­dered. Only 13 per­cent of occu­pa­tions are sex bal­anced, in the sense of inte­grat­ing men and women beyond token lev­els. And most high-pay­ing jobs, blue- as well as white-col­lar, are asso­ci­at­ed not only with men but also with mas­culin­i­ty. Thus the per­son­al­i­ty traits com­mon­ly assumed to make for a good engi­neer or tool-and-die mak­er (good at tech­ni­cal sub­jects, not high on peo­ple skills) are con­sid­ered mas­cu­line. So are the very dif­fer­ent skills assumed to make for a good exec­u­tive or fac­to­ry fore­man (force­ful and assertive, high on peo­ple skills).

No log­i­cal rela­tion­ship exists between these two sets of per­son­al­i­ty traits and skills. Their rela­tion­ship is his­tor­i­cal, based on the high val­ue placed on qual­i­ties asso­ci­at­ed with men and mas­culin­i­ty. Before sep­a­rate spheres arose in the late 18th cen­tu­ry, many women worked as black­smiths, wood­work­ers, print­ers, tin­smiths, brew­ers, tav­ern keep­ers, shop­keep­ers, shoe­mak­ers, bar­bers and ship­wrights. So long as these women were wives act­ing as ​“deputy hus­bands” for men who were away, this seemed appro­pri­ate and unob­jec­tion­able. Women doing jobs tra­di­tion­al­ly per­formed by men did not yet jar sen­si­bil­i­ties because men and women were not chiefly defined by their sep­a­rate spheres.

Women pre-1800 were defined by their infe­ri­or­i­ty. The premise was that men, as heads of the house­hold, had the right to expect obe­di­ence not only from their chil­dren but also from their wives. Women need­ed men’s guid­ance because they were not only phys­i­cal­ly infe­ri­or to men but also intel­lec­tu­al­ly and moral­ly inferior.

The Enlightenment’s dec­la­ra­tion that all ​“men” were equal desta­bi­lized estab­lished notions of women’s infe­ri­or­i­ty. Grad­u­al­ly, women came to be seen as equal, too – in their sep­a­rate sphere. They went from being seen as moral­ly weak to being con­sid­ered moral­ly supe­ri­or. Under sep­a­rate spheres, the ​“moral moth­er” was expect­ed to coun­ter­bal­ance men’s pur­suit of self-inter­est in the mar­ket sphere, which, still new, was paint­ed as ruth­less, ​“red in tooth and claw.”

It turns out that our 21st cen­tu­ry com­mon sense faith­ful­ly chan­nels sep­a­rate-spheres ide­ol­o­gy. Thus today’s typ­i­cal man is seen as inde­pen­dent, ambi­tious and com­pet­i­tive, nat­u­ral­ly suit­ed to mar­ket work and the bread­win­ner role. Mean­while, today’s typ­i­cal woman is seen as nur­tur­ing, expres­sive and respon­sive to the needs of oth­ers, nat­u­ral­ly suit­ed to home­mak­ing and the emo­tion­al work required by sec­re­taries, flight atten­dants and nurs­es. These basic tenets of sep­a­rate spheres con­tin­ue to shape our default under­stand­ings of men and women, repro­duc­ing stereo­types that sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly advan­tage men and dis­ad­van­tage women in the workplace.

These stereo­types lead to pow­er­ful social expec­ta­tions that link our sense of what one needs to be suc­cess­ful in his­tor­i­cal­ly male pro­fes­sions to mas­cu­line per­son­al­i­ty traits and tra­di­tion­al­ly mas­cu­line life pat­terns. One promi­nent physi­cist put it this way: ​“In par­tic­u­lar, our selec­tion pro­ce­dures tend to select not only for tal­ents that are direct­ly rel­e­vant to suc­cess in sci­ence, but also for assertive­ness and sin­gle-mind­ed­ness.” In oth­er words, physi­cists are expect­ed to have stereo­typ­i­cal­ly mas­cu­line per­son­al­i­ty traits: to be force­ful, proac­tive, assertive – ​“agen­tic,” to use social psy­chol­o­gists’ cho­sen term.

Physi­cists, the quote reminds us, are expect­ed to be not only assertive but also sin­gle-mind­ed. Hard-dri­ving lawyers, neu­ro­sur­geons and invest­ment bankers – indeed, all his­tor­i­cal­ly male high-sta­tus jobs – also require some ver­sion of assertive­ness and sin­gle-mind­ed­ness. In oth­er words, such jobs are designed around mas­culin­i­ty and men.

Mas­culin­i­ty holds the key to under­stand­ing why the gen­der rev­o­lu­tion has stalled. As long as men con­tin­ue to feel threat­ened by the pos­si­bil­i­ty of being per­ceived as wimps and wuss­es unless they live up to the norms of con­ven­tion­al mas­culin­i­ty, we can expect lit­tle eco­nom­ic progress for women.

It has been said that mas­cu­line norms make Amer­i­can soci­ety ​“an affir­ma­tive action plan” for men. Fem­i­nists need to be on the front lines of doc­u­ment­ing how con­ven­tion­al mas­culin­i­ty dis­ad­van­tages men as well as women. Con­se­quent­ly, the social regard for stay-at-home fathers is even low­er than for stay-at-home moth­ers. Think of every­day lan­guage: When moth­ers dream about their daugh­ter mar­ry­ing a ​“suc­cess­ful” man, most are think­ing of pay­checks, not Snugli child carriers.

The lit­er­a­ture on father­hood sends a stark mes­sage: All fathers are not equal. Bread­win­ners mar­ried to home­mak­ers earn 30 per­cent more than those in two-job fam­i­lies and encounter favored treat­ment at work. One study found that fathers were held to low­er per­for­mance and com­mit­ment stan­dards than were men with­out chil­dren, pre­sum­ably because respon­dents assumed that since a father ​“has a fam­i­ly to sup­port,” he will work hard. This study reflects the nor­ma­tive father, a bread­win­ner with a wife who is respon­si­ble for chil­dren and home. In con­trast, a father who dis­clos­es that he has fam­i­ly care respon­si­bil­i­ties faces job risks. One study found that men are often penal­ized for tak­ing fam­i­ly leave, espe­cial­ly by oth­er men. Anoth­er found that men with even a short work absence due to a fam­i­ly con­flict were rec­om­mend­ed for few­er rewards and had low­er per­for­mance ratings.

The choice is clear. Be a man­ly, suc­cess­ful, ide­al work­er. Or be a wimpy, nur­tur­ing father. This scorn for men seek­ing to ful­fill fam­i­ly respon­si­bil­i­ties is com­mon­place – and unam­bigu­ous­ly ille­gal. Grant­i­ng parental leave rou­tine­ly to women but deny­ing it to men is a vio­la­tion of fed­er­al law. So is cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment hos­tile to men who seek parental leave (or, even more brave­ly, demand flex­i­ble work arrange­ments). Ille­gal as well is retal­i­a­tion against men who are coura­geous enough to ignore the sneers and play an equal role in fam­i­ly caregiving.

A key agen­da for mod­ern fem­i­nism is to work with men to decrease the penal­ties encoun­tered by those who flout the expec­ta­tions that stem from con­ven­tion­al mas­culin­i­ty. When ide­al-work­er norms police men into bread­win­ner roles, this hurts not only women. It also hurts many men who can­not live up to the bread­win­ner ide­al. Since most Amer­i­can fam­i­lies can­not live com­fort­ably on one income, many work­ing-class men, as well as many mid­dle-class men, find them­selves in the painful­ly demor­al­iz­ing posi­tion of being unable to ​“sup­port their families.”

Men are caught between an old-fash­ioned bread­win­ner ide­al and an eco­nom­ic era that no longer deliv­ers the fam­i­ly wage, and are left fac­ing two choic­es: They can feel ter­ri­ble about them­selves, or they can help to change an out­dat­ed ide­al. Fem­i­nists need to engage men on this issue.

Adapt­ed from RESHAP­ING THE WORK-FAM­I­LY DEBATE, by Joan C. Williams, pub­lished in Octo­ber 2010 by Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Press. Copy­right © 2010 by Joan C. Williams. Used by Per­mis­sion. All rights reserved.