Men and women struggle with gender expectations when balancing family and work - Essay Example

The women participation rate increased but still lower than for men. The growth in women participation as put forward by Worell (1182) includes; improved education attainment, declining wages for men, declining family size, liberalization of perception of roles performed by men and women within the family as well as increased cost of living. Men and women take up different jobs at the work place. Most women are employed in the service sector with lowly paid wages and are rarely offered management positions.

Men on the other hand, work in sectors that require a lot of skills such as engineering and construction where they are highly paid and also take up senior positions in the organizations. Gender pay gap also exists in the workplace where women are paid less than men in performing the same tasks. This can be attributed to gender stereotyping of roles which also leads to women taking up much workload at home and at the workplace. Women thus encounter more challenges than men while trying to balance family and work.

Gender Gender differences play an important role in determining the challenges faced by men and women in balancing family and work and how the challenges are negotiated. Traditionally, men performed heavy tasks such as hunting and gathering while women performed simple tasks and this continues to impact on their daily lives and modern occupational activities where jobs are offered in line with gender stereotype and role (Powell & Graves, 69). Women also were supposed to take care of their families while the men worked to provide for the family; the men were regarded as breadwinners and the women as care givers.

This was attributed to biological factors where men are considered masculine and have good leadership skills. Women on the other hand are feminine in nature hence are caring and nurturing and always want to help others. As a result, women are employed in service sector where they interact with people and help them such as education, health and as care givers. Men get jobs in sectors such as defense, construction, electrical work and engineering and take up leadership roles just as expected by the society (Powell & Graves, 76).

Gender thus plays a role in determining occupational preferences of couples. Gender stereotyping also affects employer’s attitudes towards employees. It affects the HR procedures such as hiring, training and development, and promotion. There are those roles expected to be played by men and others for women and this affects recruitment decisions although discrimination based on gender is prohibited. Some employers view women as having more activities at home and therefore work for shorter time than men hence hindering their training and career advancement and consequently promotion decisions.

The much emphasis put on women as homemakers affects their job preference whereby they prefer flexible working schedules and shorter working days as compared to men. Men as breadwinners are supposed to work and hence are accorded much search time for jobs and eventually get well paying jobs. Women on the other hand, have limited time to search for jobs and thus end up in lowly paid jobs and this affects work life balance as they don’t have enough to provide for their families (Powell & Graves, 79).

Challenges Men and women are faced with various challenges as they struggle with