Quote:
Originally posted by XOMichelle
I think the statistic itself is disheartening. Although it is completely possible for women to run for offices, somehow in our culture women don't want to, or feel they are not suitable. It begs 2 questions: Why do women feel they are not suitable? and Why do women chose other, sometimes very typically female, careers?
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Interestingly enough, you are begging the question here (in the sense of the logical fallacy) by assuming that women simply don't want to run.
I'd actually imagine, especially with regard to the corporate scenarios that you mentioned, that there is a much stronger bias than 'cultural' at work.
To address the cultural side, though -
1.) It is most likely a 'cultural imaging' thing, to drop some jargon. Since every president has been male, when you close your eyes and imagine a president, he's male. There may be group-psychological holdover from the fact that for the majority of our nation's history, women couldn't run or even vote. There's another interesting corollary that I'll end with, that I think applies, but I feel like this sort of cultural imagery is something that education and science are ending quickly (via equal opportunities, and proving sex differences are minimal at best in relation to most activities).
2.) As far as there being traditionally "female" careers, I think we'll all agree that this occurs - shit, if you and I sat down over a boulevard pale ale and made a list, we'd probably come up with almost identical groupings, even with our different upbringings and geographic (and presumably cultural) backgrounds. It's similar to why 'girls are always pink, boys are always blue' - and again, it's cultural imaging, on a different level. At some point, it goes from expressly spelled out gender roles a la the 18th century, to just being social convention. It's hard to break these conventions, even actively trying - most people don't even realize when they do it.
Here's the final thought, though, and the hopeful side of this sort of thing: while it's disheartening to look at the figures now, the hope for advancement comes in the fact that the majority of CEOs, political figures, etc are all old, primarily 50+ yrs old. I don't know how old you are, XOMichelle, but that's a full generation older than my little ass - so hopefully the signs we see today are harbingers of advancement.
-RC
--i write posts about poop right before ones that use 'harbinger' - weird