ESSAY 17

Women and men are commonly seen as having different strengths and weaknesses. Is it right to exclude males or females from certain professions because of their gender?

Modern time has seen rapid advancement in people’s lifestyles; a situation which is suspected to happen due to progress in technology and globalisation. This has also affected people’s preferences for their career. Instead of being fixated on the traditional career path, modern people tend to explore many new fields and areas where they can follow their dream even to the point which was unimaginable three decades ago. This essay would further analyse the correlation between gender and occupational preference and its future prediction.

Women have been considered as inferior to men in terms of physicality and this view may very well have some truth in it. It seems that even the slightest depiction of alternative prehistoric situation where the females hunted for food and slaughtered wild beast will be a cause for a nightmare. Common people would like to believe that a woman is a mother figure, and therefore, it is simply deplorable to visualize the hands that hold the baby would also have the capability to kill animals mercilessly. That is why the posts for servant, maid, nurse, and kindergarten teacher become commonly associated with women and the fact is obviously based on the belief that women are more suitable as a carer.

On the other hand, as the superior gender, at least when it comes to strength, men are burdened with jobs that require physical strength. This can be seen in common practice in most of the army training ground, mining site, and logging in the sawmill or lumber yard. However, as time goes by, this reality has not changed significantly as some people might expect. It is, therefore, safe to assume that physically demanding jobs will continue to utilize manpower in the future and it is highly doubted that any progress in gender equality and rights would impact this tendency seriously.

How would the gender development influence career choice in the future? Is it possible that women will finally do the job that used to be done only by men? Will men have the willingness to do the task that is traditionally associated with women? The answer to these questions is open to debate. Maybe if it is applied in a tiny percentage then the possibility can be a reality. However, to completely change the traditional mindset would be nearly impossible as people do not change their instinct and intuition drastically and this statement is also true in this context.

To sum up, I don’t think anyone has the power to exclude people from particular jobs due to gender reasons. It is more of a perception problem than a permission problem. Most men would not want to do women’s jobs (that involve caring) whereas women would hate to do men’s jobs (that require lots of physical strength). From the discussion above, it is only logical to admit that gender change in profession is a probability and it is possible to see a change in the near future. Still, there are jobs that are perceived more suitable for specific gender and it seems that there is a logical reason behind all of these phenomena.