Male Centric Jobs
In today's age you would expect that all jobs hold equal footing between men and woman. But that appears to not be the case, as a recent study from PageGroup, showed that "4 out of 5 children, think banking is a man’s job and nursing is a woman’s."
Similarly, the typical aspirations of children seem to still be ruled by gender.
With girls primarily saying that they wanted to be: Teachers, Vets, Nurses and hairdressers
And boys saying: footballers, policeman, pilots, and rugby players were the jobs they wanted.
When assessing these results, Dr Richard Woolfson, a child psychologist and author on child development said:
“The psychological danger of stereotypes like this during childhood is that children’s future career ambitions and employment aspirations can be unnecessarily limited by their own rigid job-gender perceptions and expectations, irrespective of their actual ability, and that children might fail to even consider job possibilities associated with the opposite gender.”
Typically, the following have always been considered very male centric jobs over the years:
Setting jobs precedents can create dangerous one dimensional views for children, and this can then lead to them not trying to pursue certain skills, subjects and careers as a direct result. This can then further enforce these gender job stereotypes, as less workers of the opposite gender will exist, and thus the cycle will continue again and again. This can then lend into the other harmful ideologies about how men should act and behave, and how everything is predefined.
But how do you solve such a large issue, especially when gender roles are everywhere in society, after all toys like barbies, or action figures, could potentially be linked to further gender segregation in children. For example a boy might be given firefighter trucks, and figures, whereas a little girl might get barbies or princess ones. This is largely why the majority of young boys choose the jobs they do as their career aspirations, and also why girls, choose the way they do too.
So where do you draw the line, and in what form?
While removing male and female centric job views is vital for our society to continue towards equality and help negate the gender stereotypes. Is it right to start imposing such ideologies on children and what they play with?
Or is it a good thing, that is necessary to help shape their mindsets towards how both sexes can play with whatever, or aim for any career they desire.