Men and Women in Society

Well obviously, men and women are different. In society however men and women play very different roles. Used to be, men were looked at as the dominant one in a relationship and society. Now a day women are becoming dominant in more ways than one. For example, in the job world, government, relationships, freedom, and sex are just some of the categories that women have risen in, in society. More women are in positions of power and authority.Even though, because of the past, men and women will never be treated the same, in society mostly men and women are treated fairly equal. There is little to no discrimination in the job field or the government against women in society. Men are still usually looked at as a higher class than women but that is just because of the past events that have happened in society. The world is becoming an all-around equal place. The history of women in the American labor force has been shaped by diverse cultural, legal, demographic, and ethno-racial influences .Like men, women in preindustrial America contributed to their household and community economies through paid and unpaid labor, but the material rewards of their labor were limited by cultural beliefs, social practices, and laws that subordinated women to men. Except by special legal arrangement, married women could not sign labor contracts, own property, or claim their own wages. Some women did work for wages, but those who did, even unmarried women and widows, clustered in lower-paying occupations and earned lower wages than men.Initially, these conditions were reproduced, and even accentuated, as the industrial economy developed. As families became more dependent on cash for survival, free women (as well as free men) increased their participation in the paid labor force. Especially numerous as seamstresses in the needle trades and in domestic work, women were also essential to the emerging factories. Other women worked as members of â€Å"family† production units (in shoem aking or retail shops, for example) and as homeworkers in textiles, shoes, or other products–patterns of work that still persist.Laws granting married women legal rights to their wages and to property became common only in the late nineteenth century. The growing identification of men as â€Å"breadwinners† and the rise of an urban middle class (with its status-conscious emphasis on the â€Å"lady of leisure†) further reinforced the tendency to view women as secondary wage-earners, regardless of their actual contributions to family survival. From the late nineteenth century onward, U. S. -born white women enjoyed steadily expanding access to nonagricultural and nonindustrial occupations. They increasingly found jobs as office clerks and secretaries and in retailing.Benefiting from expanded educational opportunities, white, middle-class women in the late nineteenth century entered the professions in growing numbers, initially as teachers, librarians, social worke rs, and nurses, and later in a variety of career paths, from firefighting and police work to the law, medicine, the ministry, higher education, and in the corporate world. Historically, patterns of participation in the paid labor force have varied dramatically by marital status as well as by ethnicity and nativity. â€Å"Until the 1930s, most wage-earning women were unmarried.As late as 1960, only one-third of married women were gainfully employed–a figure that obscures a common pattern of irregular yet continuing labor-force participation. Only in the late twentieth century did that pattern decisively shift. In 1997, 61. 3 percent of married women were in the labor force† (Boydston). Although only in the late twentieth century did most labor unions show an interest in organizing female workers, women in the paid labor force long constituted an aggressive force for reform. In the government of the U. S. women, such as Hilary Clinton, are just as strong and knowledgeabl e as men.Women have run for president, there has been a woman as secretary of state, as have many other women who have been incorporated into the government staff. Men have always been involved in the government. The obvious facts of this are all of the male presidents that have been in office, there has never been a female president, not to say that there never will be. There will be, one day, a women in office running the United States. â€Å"In the 1995 World Conference on Women, 189 governments committed to â€Å"ensure women’s equal access to and full participation in power structures and decision-making. To fulfill this strategic objective, governments also pledged to establish the goal of â€Å"gender balance in governmental bodies and committees as well as in public administrative entities and in the judiciary. † Six years later, not much has changed – women’s representation in politics remains dismally low. †(UNDP 2). â€Å"Today women a re only 13. 7 percent of parliaments worldwide according to data collected by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, a mere 0. 6 percent increase annually. In the Asia Pacific, women are 14. 2 percent of national parliaments† (UNDP 1).At this rate, it will take 75 years before women attain equal representation in national governments. At the local level, the situation is no different – women make up a small percentage of legislative councils and other local bodies in most countries in the world. Only Sweden, Denmark and Finland in Europe have reached a critical mass of 30 percent women in local governments, while South Africa and Trinidad and Tobago come close at 28 and 23 percent respectively. In the Asia Pacific, women’s representation in local governments has ranged from a low two percent to a high 30 percent (e. . India, Bangladesh and New Zealand)(UNDP 2-3). Even though women are told that they are equal in the government, according to the facts, they really are not . There are the obvious difference about men and women and sex, but men and women have different characteristics when it comes to sex. It probably won't surprise you to learn that researchers have found that men tend to initiate sex more frequently than do women. Researchers have also found that men tend to be more â€Å"goal oriented,† to consider the act of sex, especially orgasm, to be what love making is all about.Women, in contrast, tend to focus more on tenderness and the quality of their emotional relationship. Keep in mind that generalizations about human behavior, although true in the abstract, do not apply to individuals. Most men and women apparently have different emphases on sexual intercourse and emotional relationships, but any particular individual may vary from this tendency. A particular man, for example, may be more oriented toward intimacy, a particular woman toward having sex. Generalizations, then, can lead to stereotypes that paint everyone with the sam e broad brushstroke, causing us to overlook individual differences.One of the ways our culture inhibits women's sexuality is through stereotypes. A sexually promiscuous man is often looked up to by his friends. He is seen as a success in sexual matters, a conqueror, a sexual victor. In contrast, a woman who has many sexual partners is not as likely to be viewed in the same way. Questions are likely to be raised about why she is â€Å"like that. † People may refer to her by negative terms, such as whore. Although this double standard of stereotypes is easing, it persists. When it comes to virginity men and women typically re viewed different. Women expressed more positive feelings about their decision, and they were more apt to say they were proud or satisfied with their virginity. Men, in contrast, were more apt to say they felt embarrassed or even guilty about their virginity. The reason for this difference in attitude about virginity is likely due to gender roles, to differ ences about what is expected of men and women. There appears to be a general idea that if a woman is a virgin, she is one by choice, but if a man is a virgin, he has problems of some sort.It seems that a woman can wait for the right person, or for marriage, but a man ought to be seeking sex–and the more sex he has, the manlier he is. In short, being a virgin may challenge a man's masculinity, but not a woman's femininity. In relationships between men and women some say that men and women can just be friends. They way men chose their friends is not just my the female’s personality. A man choses his female friends by how attracted he is to them. Even if it is just a small attraction, its still there. A man isn’t going to initiate friendship with someone he deems â€Å"ugly†, or â€Å"unattractive†.The same goes for women. So, in essence men and women cannot just be friends. There is always something more there to tempt either the man or the women, wh ether he/she is in another relationship or not, to have some kind of whether it be physical or emotional connection with that â€Å"friend†. When polled, 58% said yes , and 42% said no men and women cannot just be friends ( Friends). So really there are no definite answers to this question. Throughout history, women's rights have been the subject of much debate and controversy.The concept of a woman's ‘right' can take a variety of forms including voting, reproductive control, equality in the workplace and service in the military. In most societies the women's movement has faced opposition and equality has been hard won. Equal rights campaigners have championed the movement with the goal of establishing fair and comparable treatment for women under law. â€Å"Evidence dating from around 8500 B. C suggests that in Ancient Egyptian society's work was divided along gender lines with the women assuming agricultural duties and the men taking on the role of hunter/gathererâ⠂¬  (sampson).Progress has been made over the decades, but there is still debate over some aspects of women's rights and the extent to which they have effectively redressed the prior imbalance. In a 2009 report published by the Department of Labor, it is stated that on average women earn approximately 80 percent of the salary a man is paid for the same job. Whilst this is an improvement from 30 years before, when a woman earned 62 percent of a man's salary, it does still not represent full parity.Reproductive rights are also a contested issue with opinions divided on whether abortion should remain legal. †In a 2009 poll by CBS news, 23 percent of respondents believed abortion should be illegal versus 34 percent fully supportive of abortion without constraint, and 40 percent in favor of keeping the practice legal but with stricter controls† (Sampson). Even though women have rose in society there is always that barrier that was created long ago restricting some peopleâ₠¬â„¢s views of women’s’ freedom and power in society. Men and women also tend to handle different situations differently.Perhaps if something breaks, the woman is more apt to be calm about the situation when the man is more apt to have a complete melt down about the situation. When an argument happens and the man is wrong he backs down, when a woman is wrong she back tracks her point and somehow proves the man wrong, or so he thinks. When women are right they don’t boast or â€Å"rub it in† so to speak. When men are right they are the first ones to say â€Å"I told you so†. Are women naturally more risk-averse or less inclined to enter a competitive situation? Or are they trained to be that way?Why women and men might have different preferences or risk attitudes has been discussed but not tested by economists. Broadly speaking, those differences may be due to nurture, nature, or some combination of the two. For instance, boys are pushed to take ris ks and act competitively when participating in sports, and girls are often encouraged to remain cautious. Thus, the choices made by men could be due to the nurturing received from parents or peers. Similarly, the disinclination of women to take risks or act competitively could be the result of parental or peer pressure not to do so. Educational psychologists argue that the gendered aspect of individuals' behaviour is brought into play by the gender of others with whom they interact, and that there may be more pressure for girls to maintain their gender identity in schools where boys are present than for boys when girls are present. In a coeducational environment, girls are more explicitly confronted with adolescent subculture (such as personal attractiveness to members of the opposite sex) than they are in a single-sex environment. This may lead them to conform to society's expectations of how girls should behave to avoid social rejection. †( Booth).If competitive behaviour or risk avoidance is viewed as being a part of female gender identity, while risk-seeking is a part of male gender identity, then a coeducational school environment might lead girls to make less competitive and risky choices than boys. It is hypothesized that hypothesized that woman and men may differ in their propensity to choose a risky outcome for several reasons – innate references or because their innate preferences are modified by pressure to conform to gender-stereotypes. Single-sex environments are likely to modify students' risk-taking preferences in economically important ways.Our specific conjectures were that girls from single-sex schools are less risk averse than girls from coed schools, and that girls in same-gender groups are less risk averse than girls in coed groups. It has been conjectured that girls in same-gender environments (single-sex schooling or same-gender experimental groups) are no less risk-averse than boys. Naturally it is assumed that women are le ss risky than boys this is because the women always feels like she has to be the protector and if she is taking risks she is not able to protect the ones taking risks.