Gender Roles In To Kill A Mockingbird Essay Example

Imagine cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children for 18 years straight until they leave for college, even longer if you have more than one child. Women have had this as their “job” for thousands of years, they have never been seen as equals, and they still aren’t. Gender plays a big role in society, and over the past 100 years gender roles have changed drastically. In the 1930’s, when To Kill A Mockingbird was set they were plain and simple. A woman’s job was to care for the household and children, very few white women had jobs, and if one was black,, your job was typically in the house cooking and cleaning. A man’s job was to earn the money and do the dirty work such as repairs in their house. Today women and men are generally seen as equals, and although society still needs to advance in its below the surface equality and gender stereotype issues, progress is still being made and society is advancing every day. 

To start, women are now a huge part of the working labor force, and it isn’t for necessity anymore like it was during the recent modern wars, it's by choice, many women have the opportunity to stay home with their children but they choose to work. "Women’s participation in the U.S. labor force has climbed since WWII: from 32.7 percent in 1948 to 56.8 percent in 2016." (DeWolfe) Their presence in the workforce has helped drive the economy to an all time high before the pandemic struck last March. Gender roles have changed to having both husband and wife, or wife and wife, or husband and husband, working instead of most likely the women staying home to take care of the house/children. But ever since covid-19 hit in March 2020 women in the workforce have been on the decline due to children being at home. "The setback comes at a striking moment. In February, right before the outbreak began to spread in the United States, working women passed a rare milestone — making up more than half of the nation’s civilian nonfarm labor force." (Cohen and Hsu)  Women were the majority of workers in the labor force, and ever since covid it has been on the decline because women are still seen as the childcare providers of a relationship. The New York Times reported that, “Among married couples who work full time, women provide close to 70 percent of child care during standard working hours…” (Cohen and Hsu) This means that mothers have to work while their children aren’t awake or around, causing them to lose sleep and precious time earning money to help support their families. Rather than a 50-50 split, women take on the extra responsibility of child care, this unintentionally is passed down from generation to generation. Society needs to do a better job of supporting working mothers, and working women in general. And although advances have been made, it still is not enough for women to be seen and treated as equals. 

In addition, in a marriage nowadays responsibilities are supposedly shared. On the surface it may seem this way but if someone were to dig deeper they would soon find this inaccurate. "The current, commonly agreed, "politically correct" plan for marriage is an equal sharing of chores and other duties; but this plan is not followed now any more than it has been throughout history. " (Neuman) Womens household and marriage tasks seem to generally consist of cooking and  cleaning, and if they have children the mother is more likely to get their kids ready in the mornings and drop them off at school and other activities. While the man/father’s duties include the repairs and maintenance around the house and vehicles. Another shocking fact that many people don’t realize is that, “Where a couple lives is still more likely to depend on where the husband works, rather than where the woman works. The man is likely to be better paid.” (Neuman) Think about it, where does someone and their spouse live? Is it closer to his or her work? Most often without even realizing, it will be closer to the man’s place of work, but with the pandemic and more and more people working from home, maybe society will leave this tired, sexist practice in 2020. 

To conclude, gender roles have evolved as society advances and although women quite often are not seen as equals, they are slowly moving towards overall equality with their male counterparts. And even though the current state of the world might slow down some advancements in gender equality and gender roles, experts believe that in the long run this will help women. They think that the pandemic will bring attention to issues that women have to deal with everyday such as finding child care and paying for child care while they are at work, equal pay, and men becoming more involved as equal partners in a marriage and as fathers to their children. History is being made daily as women break through the glass ceiling, and the government is helping to make this possible by creating new laws that help women. Humanity will continue to make headway if women are ongoingly supported.