I’d like to believe humanity is synonymous with progress; despite occasional periods of social regression, each passing decade brings us closer to a fairer and more equitable society. Time and time again, we’ve learned that we mustn’t let aging arouse a blinding fear of change that distracts us from our commitment to upholding justice. And yet, we maintain an unfounded belief that the biological differences between men and women are significant enough to assume the existence of an inherent feminine ineptitude, permitting the more inconspicuous facets of the patriarchy to persist.
Proponents of the patriarchy weaponize female social disillusionment to reinforce the very norms that prompt it. Given that the Pew Research report: “In a Growing Share of U.S. Marriages, Husbands and Wives Earn About the Same”, published by Richard Fry on April 13, 2023, found that “husbands in egalitarian marriages spend about 3.5 hours more per week on leisure activities than wives do,” it’s no surprise that women feel exhausted by the domestic service they’re expected to provide in addition to their careers.
But rather than recognizing the culprit of this issue as the undervaluing of women’s invisible labor, many point fingers at progressivism as a whole; they encourage a return to traditionalism by enforcing male gender roles. While men fulfilling their role as “providers” may appear to unburden women, the domestic bubble that women must return to as a consequence of surrendering their self-sufficiency only strips them of autonomy and identity.
The basis for gender roles lies in the assumption that men and women are neurologically different, and substantially so. While some biological factors separating males and females are undeniable, such as average muscle mass, it’s truly surprising how scientifically unsure we are of whether the physical differences between men and women contribute to their socially perceived differences.
The first wave of feminism in the 1870’s was radical in its assertion that women were not only deserving of male privileges, but equally productive when granted them. Challenging female inferiority inspired its own pushback through the guise of sociobiological science; scientists like Edward Clarke and Herbet Spencer justified the rationality of female inferiority with empirically inaccurate statements that faltered in consistency. According to Sandra Bem’s 1993 book, “The Lenses of Gender”, Clarke had argued that “education diverts a woman’s energy from the development of her reproductive organs to the development of her brain,” and was therefore “harmful to women’s health.” Despite the ease with which modern science could easily disprove the factuality of this claim, the popularity of this notion unfortunately persists, resulting in “fewer than 1 percent of rural young women belonging to the poorest 20 percent of households complet[ing] secondary school”, according to UNESCO’s 2020 Global Education Monitoring Report.
Another historical justification for gender roles is the belief that the education of women directly harms the natural progress of humanity. Popular theories, like the Talcott Parsons Model, according to the 1987 article, “Introduction: The Concept of Gender” by Conway’s et al., “rested on the then-current view of modernization, which assumed that gender roles were biologically based and that the process of modernization had brought about a rationalization in role allocation.” They argued that gender roles were not only natural but beneficial to society and progress would come along faster if women and men fulfilled their roles obediently. If this statement stood true, our “more progressive society” would be one without Wi-Fi or computers with more functions than just mathematical calculation, courtesy of Hedy Lamarr and Ada Lovelace respectively.
Besides the logical inconsistencies of gendered biological essentialism, the scientific evidence to support these perceived differences are rather insignificant. While evidence does exist that the prenatal hormones released in utero have been shown to “have a permanent organizing effect on sexually dimorphic behaviors not directly related to copulation, such as aggression and activity level” in some mammalian species, these hormones “do not have any permanent effect on the cyclicality of hormone production in either humans or other primates,” Bem’s book finds. Since prenatal hormone theory relies on the assumption that the observed effect of prenatal hormones on the development of sexually dimorphic behaviors in other species is indicative of such a relationship existing in human development, the aforementioned anomaly calls into question how reasonable it may be to apply prenatal hormone theory to humans. Even some behaviors in rats, thought previously to be solely tied to the effects of prenatal hormones, now appear to be linked with social interactions: Rosenblatt’s 1967 study, “Nonhormonal Basis of Maternal Behavior in the Rat”, exposed male and female childless rats to baby mice for 10 to 15 days and noted that all of them demonstrated the “four main items of maternal behavior,” concluding “that all rats have a basic level of maternal responsiveness which is independent of hormonal stimulation.” If sex-based differences were primarily biologically-induced, these variations caused by social interaction shouldn’t exist in a species that experiences a fraction of the social complexity that humans do. With this in mind, we can ascertain that determining a suitable niche for all women or men solely based on gender bioessentialist assumptions is unreasonable, and simply unproductive.
From personal observation, Indian familial culture relies heavily on the “natural inclinations” of women and men; the perfect nuclear family consists of a career-oriented father and a home-maker mother whose sole duty is ensuring the success of her children. And despite being limited in her own pursuits, the home-maker wife learns to be happy by investing her hopes and dreams into her children, inevitably leading to disappointment as the children’s behaviors deviate from her expectations. A tense relationship forms between her and her kids, who remain frustrated with their mother’s disregard for their autonomy. In the end, nobody is happy. Yet, the notion of a woman’s natural inclination to abandon her career for her children persists strongly in our culture.
Leticia Padua, known by her online persona, Shera Seven, is a social media influencer and dating coach who’s obsession with promoting the “divine feminine” and “trad-wife lifestyle” has, in my opinion, had detrimental effects on female autonomy and independence.
Just take a look at this TikTok video posted by user @your.glow.up.diary in July 2024 in which Shera’s shares her career advice for women:
“Get a feminine job”, Shera says, “if you have an ultra feminine career, men are more likely to accept that, versus a masculine or competing career. If you’re a doctor, lawyer, whatever, that’s competition.” But Shera doesn’t believe this is a true reflection of women’s capabilities. “We know women can do a lot of stuff…but that doesn’t make it appealing to men” she says.
Since when have the struggles of the women before — forced to hide their aspirations, intelligence, and humanity to survive a repressive society — become an advantageous path in returning to the “divine feminine”? Countless studies support the notion that the opposition of gender roles is beneficial to the health of women; Eric Mayor’s report, “Gender roles and traits in stress and health”, published in the National Library of Medicine on June 9, 2015, determined that “changing gender roles, such as the increased participation of women in the professional arena, have already decreased the higher morbidity of women and their higher rate of stress manifestations compared to men”. When men oppose their gender roles, the health of women also improves: “employment is associated with improved mental health among women whose husbands share childcare,” as found in an April 1982 study by Kessler et al., “The Effect of Wives’ Employment on the Mental Health of Married Men and Women“. In fact, the same study found that “among women whose husbands do not share childcare, the advantages of employment are negligible.” Clearly, the opposition of both men’s and women’s gender roles are advantageous. Despite feeling shame for “neglecting her role as a mother,” I couldn’t begin to explain how much it meant to my mom when she got her first job after sixteen years of being a housewife. She had tangible achievements to be proud of, goals to work hard for, and passions to pursue. I remembered all of the times she had passively mentioned her lack of interest in anything besides raising her kids; I’d watched those self-soothing lies unravel so easily by the pure excitement she held for exploring her vocational dreams that’d remained locked away for so long.
While Shera’s content is a fantastic example of the reemergence of “trad-wife lifestyle”, she’s definitely not the only one pioneering this movement. Everyday, I scroll across countless TikTok videos complaining that modern men don’t care to be dominant financial providers anymore, or jokes about dropping out of college to find a rich man to marry.
Since when did women benefit from the allocation of vocational aspirations to men? Despite all of the concerns that grew in the late ‘90s about young teenage girls obsessing over their appearance, we’ve somehow circled back to the notion that women are defined by their looks.
While the mental inconveniences that come from pursuing one’s education and career are
demanding, a woman must value her independence enough to persevere despite these costs. Inconvenience is simply a byproduct of independence.
The desire to avoid laborious tasks and excess energy expenditure is a genderless one, but proponents of the patriarchy find great success in exploiting this fantasy within modern women. They preach that life is a game made by men that women can beat only by playing along. That developing a superficial ego reliant on the womanly servitude they can provide will grant them a true luxury with no additional cost. They hope to convince us that the safety within objectification is one we must seek — that pain hurts less when it’s familiar.
My father once said “women are like gold, and men are like iron, so women must be protected.” Being worthy of protection however, doesn’t grant you respect or personhood. Gold must be protected and kept away, held and traded like a possession. But iron stands useful on its own: empowered, resilient and autonomous. Women are taught to find solace in their powerlessness, convinced that independence is a burden that they are not capable of or truly willing to carry.
As counterintuitive as it may seem to demand that women embrace the burdens of independence in opposition to the patriarchy, succumbing to traditional gender roles isn’t the solution to decreasing the feminine burden. Rather, allocating an equivalent expectation of domestic labor to men can inch us closer toward a society relieved of patriarchal constraints.
Visual Credit: Chloe Simpson
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