Women and Gender Roles" A Traumatic Relationship
The argument to be addressed in this essay is that between adolescence and menopause, women experience trauma in adjusting to their gender roles. This argument is based on several factors. First, women today continued to experience conflicting pulls and pushes - desires for independence and autonomy balanced by demands made on their lives by family responisbi9lities. Secondly, women are still likely to encounter many barriers to their advancement if they choose to pursue careers while also raising a family. Third, women receive many conflicting messages from society via the mass media about their roles and "place" in society. All of thee variables can be traumatizing in their effects.
More and more American women are seeking careers and combining marriage and work. The proportion of women participating in the labor force in the United States and across the globe has increased dramatically in recent years, resulting invariably in an increase in the number of women in managerial and executive positions. Nevertheless, women remain underrepresented in management positions all over the world, a phenomenon especially prevalent with respect to senior management or executive level positions (Birema, 52; Buttner and Moore, 35). Recent research and theorizing described by Van Vianen and Fischer (315) has drawn attention to the masculine organizational culture as a likely explanation for the persistence of the glass ceiling phenomenon. Women in the career track in the workplace are often subtly prevented from advancing at the same rate or to the same extent as their male counterparts. This is clearly traumatic and deeply disturbing to many women.
Many barriers prevent women from advancing in the workplace. Part of the problem, according to Kephart and Schumacher (2-4) is that economic downturns almost invariably have a more negative and significant impact upon women than o...