Gender Equality Isn't Working

In the last 50 years, women have been seeking gender equality. We have been moving into the public sphere reserved for men since the Industrial Revolution of the late 1800s, continually pushing for equality. Yet progress has been tepid. A 2024 report from the World Economic Forum estimates that women won’t attain parity with men for another 131 years—not until 2154.¹ The overall gender gap across the realms of the economy, politics, health, and education closed by a mere 0.3 percent as compared to last year.

To seek “gender equality” is to advocate for equality within a system of gender that was constructed to separate men and women into different spheres of living, public vs. private, based on sexual differences. The gendered system is a hierarchal social system in which men are the privileged sex. In the mid-20thcentury, sociological scholars and researchers began using the constructs of “masculinity” and “femininity” to describe how people conformed to or transgressed the gendered role expectations of the male breadwinner in the public arena and the female homemaker in the private arena.² Gender equality has become defined as having the same privileges as men. To be equal was to be like men.

Women Have Changed. The Gender System Has Not

Most changes in the gender system over the last 50 years have occurred because women moved into positions and activities previously held by men, with fewer changes in the opposite direction.³

The Women in the Workplace 2024 report from McKinsey, in partnership with LeanIn.org, provides a closer look at the status of women in the workplace over the last 10 years.⁴

• There have been modest gains in women’s corporate representation.
• Women remain underrepresented at every stage of the corporate pipeline, regardless of race and ethnicity.
• The “broken rung” (barriers along the hiring and promoting ladder) remains a significant barrier to women’s advancement, especially to women of color.

Social indicators of the stalled effort to achieve “gender equality” include:⁵

• The percentage of Americans preferring the male breadwinner/female homemaker family model has risen to 40 from 34 percent.
• The number of full-time working mothers who prefer to work part-time has increased to 60 percent from 48 percent.
• By 2007, only 16 percent of stay-at-home mothers wanted to work full-time.

Regardless of the “choice” women make, they continue to be responsible for what is defined as “care work.” Care work can include caring for children, sick people, and the elderly.

Stephanie Coontz, historian and author, reports that feminism is no longer about furthering equal involvement of men and women at home and work.⁶ Rather, it is about giving women the right to choose between pursuing a career and devoting themselves to full-time motherhood.

Where Are the Men?

Women have been moving into historically male-dominated fields—the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—resulting in women making up 34 percent of such careers currently.⁷ There has not been a similar encouragement of men to go into predominantly female-dominated fields—the HEAL fields—health, education, administration, and literacy. Men avoid jobs in these fields as they are perceived as “for women,” involving stereotypically feminine traits. Fields dominated by women are seen as lower status and as lower paid jobs.

Daniel Cox of the American Survey Center reports in a 2023 survey that young men are reluctant to seek work in the growing HEAL industries.⁸ They also report feelings of social isolation and alienation as increasingly common experiences. Researchers Eva Bujalka and Ben Rich note that these young men are attracted to the “manosphere,” the loose collation of websites, podcasts, and online forums promoting anti-feminist views.⁹

Two prominent impediments to gender equality that keep us stalled are the so-called “crisis in masculinity” and “caregiving” as a gender issue rather than as a moral imperative. These both keep us entrenched in the patriarchal gender system.

The So-Called "Crisis in Masculinity”

Discussions about a "crisis in masculinity" are widespread. Since the women’s movement of the 1970s, there has been an increasing tendency to identify and describe an ever-growing number of different "masculinities," such as inclusive masculinity, caring masculinity, toxic masculinity, flexible masculinity, and hegemonic masculinity.¹⁰

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The idea of "masculinity" does not exist except in contrast with "femininity." Cultures that do not treat men and women as polarized opposites do not have a concept of masculinity in the way it is used in modern American and European cultures.

As noted, the constructs of "masculinity" and "femininity" were introduced by sociological scholars and researchers in the mid-20th century to categorize how people conformed to their gendered expectations. This heightened gender differentiation morphed into biologically determined truths about masculinity.

The concept of “caring masculinities” has become the latest effort to shape the way to gender equality for men. Karla Elliott, noted “caring masculinities” scholar, tells us that "caring masculinities is a critical form of men’s engagement in gender equality and the potential of men’s care practices to lead to change.”¹¹

Yet attaching a positive human quality, namely caring, to the construct of masculinity keeps us seeking equality within the gendered system. As one researcher in the area notes, “Why must caring…become 'masculine' and not simply just be caring?”.¹² Jeff Hearn, a British sociologist who studies men and masculinities, also asks why it is necessary to hang onto the concept of masculinity rather than study men’s practices, i.e., how they act with women and other men.¹³

Caring Is a Moral Issue, Not a Gender Issue

While women have been crossing the divide between women’s and men’s work, equality rarely means that men cross over to the women’s side. A few statistics:

• Up to 81 percent of all caregivers, formal and informal, are female.¹⁴
• Female caregivers spend as much as 50 percent more time giving care than males.
• In heterosexual relationships where both partners work full-time, women spend 40 percent more time caregiving than their male partner.

From caring for infants to elders to the sick and disabled, every household will need care support or caregiving at some point.¹⁵ Care is a universal need that is critical for our health and well-being—for our survival as human beings. Yet it is considered "women’s work” and is, therefore, undervalued and contributes to gender inequality.

Arthur Kleinman, professor of psychiatry at Harvard University, has written about caregiving as a moral experience rather than as the work of women.¹⁶ Kleinman tells us that caregiving is one of the foundational moral meanings and practices in human experience and is a deeply interpersonal, relational practice.

We must challenge the idea of caregiving as women’s work as this undervalues caregiving and enhances gender inequality.

Challenging the Gender System: Dismantling Patriarchy

“Gender equality” sounds good but has not worked over the last 50 years because it is not an effective strategy to upend the patriarchal system of relationships, beliefs, and values embedded in our political, social, and economic system that structures gender inequality between men and women.¹⁷

In this post, I have identified two impediments recognized as significant barriers to challenging the patriarchy. They are:

• The entrenchment of the construct of “masculinity” as defining who and what men are.
• Defining caregiving within the patriarchal gender system as women’s work rather than recognizing it as a moral imperative.

Efforts are beginning to challenge the construct of masculinity as “caring masculinity,” which introduces the idea that men can be “caring” people. As well, developing caring attitudes can both challenge the gender structure and reinforce the idea that caretaking is a human moral action.

In addition, scholars, researchers, and practitioners are promoting caregiving as a moral action, which should not be assigned based on the gender of a person. Morality is the province of everyone.