My Mother

A Sociology Essay & Case Study about Gender Roles

What is Gender?

The word gender refers to social characteristics that are not tied to biology, but instead includes what society considers as proper behaviors and attitudes like gender-specific clothing, speech, movement, activities, thoughts and feelings, although these norms may vary according to place, time and culture.

Gender roles

play a highly impactful and important role in many societies as they are what society defines as the acceptable extent of femininity and masculinity in behavior.

Positive & Negative Sanctions

Gender roles can be reinforced with positive and negative sanctions.

For example, men who are breadwinners and women are who mothers and homemakers are encouraged with positive reinforcements and those who refuse to conform to gender roles (e.g. mothers’ boy, lesbian or tomboy) are discouraged be it directly or indirectly with negative reinforcements.

My Family

In my current household, I am living with two older sisters and my mother. My father, whom I keep in close contact with, has always been supporting the family together with my mother since I was born.

Unfortunately, due to marital problems my mother and father had broke up whilst I was still in my childhood, putting my mother in a very tough position as the sole breadwinner of three kids, herself, and my late grandmother.

Patriarchy Theory

Part of the Patriarchy Theory refers to the social consequences of human reproduction. Due to the eventual happening of a woman’s childbearing, a woman is expected to pursue and learn feminine skills like child caring and cooking, whereas men will be able to attain skills, power, and knowledge when partaking in masculine activities.

This theory applies well with relation to my mother as she not only has overcome gender inequality at the workplace and in education, she has also experienced first-hand the consequences of entering a male-dominated industry.

Gender Inequality In Workplaces

My mother has been working as the head of a publishing firm, overseeing the production of many renown magazines and books.

4.4% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women worldwide, in Singapore only 24% of MPs in Parliament are women, and only 9.5% of women represent directors in SGX-listed companies.

Yet, my mother had managed to overcome the challenges and difficulties of gender inequality at workplaces and despite these odds, she had rose to the top of the publishing firm and attained the highest-ranking position available.

Gender Inequality In Education

Contrary to her current job, in her polytechnic days she had entered and pursed an architecture diploma, even though it was known to be a heavily male-dominated industry. In the United States, even though nearly half of architecture school graduates are women, only 18% of licensed practitioners are women.

Gender inequality in education presents that even though more women attend colleges and universities, gender tracking causes aspirations, educational paths, and career choices to be linked to sex and reinforce male and female gender roles. Despite gender tracking, she decided to pursue one of the most heavily-male dominated fields (architecture, engineering, math and sciences, etc).

Gender Stratification

refers to the inequalities and unequal access between women and men regarding wealth, power, and opportunities.

Confronted with lower salaries, given fewer career-building opportunities and lacking mentors, female architects are given less opportunities to higher ranking positions and pay, which ultimately leads to female architects leaving the field.

After attaining the diploma certification, my mother had decided it wasn’t her calling to do architecture for the rest of her life and then seek to work in a publishing firm instead. Perhaps it was her own disinterest, or it could have been due to gender stratification that dissuaded her from pursuing that career further.

Conclusion

After writing this I really had learnt so much more about how gender affects all of us in our society. I had not realized how much my mother had not only went against all odds to not only take on a diploma in a male-dominated field, she had also attained the highest position in a publishing firm.

I was able to open my eyes to all the problems we are currently facing in society with gender inequality in our society and in Singapore, and now I am able appreciate the tough choices and work my mother had to make and strive through to be where she is now.