Jessie Loy

10:30 am

Feb,1,2013

This article goes over a few of the basic issues in gender inequality, so I found it to be a good place to start with this blog. Prone starts the article by placing you in a situation as a female in a new job interview and the HR person asks you how many kids you plan on having. I, myself was horrified the second I read that. I for one would never want to be asked that question and would be the first to claim invasion of privacy. Prone brings up two very good points to this issue, however. The first being, does the job not have the right to know if you are planning taking a leave of absences to bring a child into the world. While that is an amazing adventure for the mother, the job will be faced with finding someone to fill in for the new mother and as Prone puts it, "inconsistency". Even as a woman I had to admit, looking at from that point of view, it didn't seem to far fetched. The second point that Prone brought up with this simple question, was why does the man not get asked the same question. He is in fact effected by having a new baby as well. The male often suffers from lack of sleep when a new baby is born. This lack of sleep can drastically reduce concentration and job performance. Is the company not worried about the risks involved with that? While it may seem like HR would be gender targeting woman at first, it can also be seen as just covering their bases with what to expect. It is also curious that men are not asked the same question, even thought they are just as effected. 

Prone spends a lot of the article talking about how women are pointed out and unjustly so. The point that I would like to focus on is also at the very beginning of the article. She talks about seeing baby shirts that say things like "smart like daddy" and "pretty like mom". Societies start on children as soon as they are born if not before on placing them into gender roles. At baby showers we somehow know that pink means little girl and blue means little boy. We start handing our children seemingly harmless items without thinking about what we are doing. Every little boy gets trucks, balls, video games, and anything plastered with a darker color. Girls get barbies, baby dolls make-up and bright pretty colors. Yet we wonder why on earth we are so gendered. It works much like subliminal messages. By giving boys trucks and balls we are telling them this is what your role is in life and society. This is what you must become. When we give girls dolls, we are telling them you must become a mother and that is just how it is. Its the simple things like giving a baby boy a shirt that says "smart like daddy" or a girl a shirt that says "pretty like mom". Those two shirt imply much more than at fist glance. We are telling boys, you must be smart but not always pretty and we are telling girls, you must be pretty but not always smart. One simple thing that leads to a whole mess of socially constructed gender inequality.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/terry-prone/too-sexist-for-my-t-shirt-this-gender-inequality-question-is-a-non-runner-220867.html