This research examines the phenomenon of gender bias in Western society, which can be identified as having both a long history in real-world experience and a long history as a subject for philosophical and moral discourse. The research will set forth attributes of gender bias that are most relevant to modern experience and then discuss analyses and critiques of philosophers on the subject of gender bias.
There is some evidence that over the last three decades of the 20th century, many conditions of traditional Western society were transformed wholesale, owing to the entry of millions of women into the workplace. Some of the transformations, indeed, have been embedded into the law. In a Congressional speech in 1969, Rep. Shirley Chisholm of New York asked why it was "acceptable for women to be secretaries, librarians, and teachers, but totally unacceptable for them to be managers, administrators, doctors, lawyers, and Members of Congress." Chisholm explained that as an African American she was "no stranger to race prejudice. But the truth is that in the political world I have been far oftener discriminated against because I am a woman than because I am black" (Chisholm).
Much about women's workplace ambitions has changed since 1969. Questions that today may not be asked of prospective employees who are women suggest nothing so much as the degree to which in former times employers felt entitled to probe female employees' private lives: "What is your marital status? Are you going to get pregnant? Who will care for the children while you work?" (Sack passim). By the 1980s, popular imagination had it that women could "have it all"--career, motherhood, marriage. Hertz refers to the emergence of a "new dream" among women "not only that sex discrimination in the workplace is dead but also that the new 1980s man is looking for a wife who has an exciting, rewarding career just like his. . . . In short, the traditional job of the wife beco...