Roles Before Birth

For many years, there has been an undeclared agreement between men and women about how they want to sustain their lives as a part of society. Women didn’t wake up one day and decided to take care of kids and maintain the house. Likewise, men weren’t born with a special gene that allowed them to vote, work and pick up the check after a date. This “undeclared agreement” is called gender stereotypes, which means men and women are appointed certain roles limited by their sex. Some people argue these stereotypes make us feel comfortable and some people argue that this comfort is only felt by one gender.
The main question is, how did these stereotypes originate? There isn’t a concrete answer to this question or a specific historical event, however, it is presumed that the reason is the normative nature of humans. Humans like to classify things: we classify animals by mammals, birds, etc. and we classify humans by white-collar workers and blue-collar workers. The instant we see a difference in a species we assign certain characteristics to them. This is the case with gender stereotyping. Humans saw a difference between each other: men and women. They immediately assigned them characteristics and tasks, to establish the order. It is obvious that men, both in the past and the present, have been allowed more things than women. In England, before 1918, women couldn’t vote. While fighting for the right to vote or the Suffrage Movement they were stopped by the police and political powers. Be that as it may, meanwhile if a man wanted to stop working and start taking care of the house, society would judge them. But, no police would be involved and no legal measures. In short, the limitations for women have been a lot more strict and still is in some parts of the world.
If these differences and limitations were a good way to establish order, why did they cause disorder? Women weren’t allowed to vote, so they protested the order and got their rights. Thankfully, nowadays we generally don’t have very strict limitations about what women and men can’t do. But we still judge a woman more when she doesn’t get married. We judge her when she doesn’t have kids and also when she doesn’t want a second child. We judge her when she has a kid but also focus on her career. Even though there aren’t restraints powered by the law, society is still full of prejudice and has a preconceived image of what a man and a woman should be like. These preconceived image doesn’t establish order, it only puts pressure on women and men of all ages to fit into a certain standard. A man still feels judged and ashamed when he wants to cook or take care of his kids. This judgement is followed by a goal to be more “manly” and eventually they become supporters of the gender stereotypes.
Overall, this so-called “order” established by gender roles is inherently wrong, as we don’t need the same order we needed back when we were hunter-gatherers. We can just let people do whatever they like, as long as they didn’t hurt anyone. Freedom might be scary for some because they can’t take advantage of the inequality. Nevertheless, most people would benefit from participating in the things they enjoy and living life the way they want to. So, from now on, let’s do less classifying and be more accepting.