The Oppression Of Women In Leadership Roles

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When people think of a leader, they tend to think of some famous male figure they learned about in history class. Come to think of it, very few female leaders are ever mentioned. Regardless of the milestones that have been achieved by the women’s rights movement, it seems that our society is still very much patriarchal. This majorly affects how we perceive gender roles in different aspects of life, one such aspect is women and leadership. When it comes to the topic of women and leadership, it’s widely known that the number of male leaders greatly outnumbers the number of female leaders. The lack of women in leadership positions can be attributed to underrepresentation, preconceived ideas about leader figures, gender stereotypes, and having …show more content…
Women are often put in a position where they are forced to choose between their career and the needs of their family. On the flip side, a man is never forced to choose between his career and the needs of his family, because the man isn’t expected to the foster the household as much as the women. In Women and Leadership: A Developmental Paradox, Levitt emphasizes that the expectations of motherhood don’t include the “additional responsibility of leadership or career attention” (Levitt, 2010). Naturally, choosing to have children and starting a family could potentially put a stop to a woman’s career, since the women are expected to be the main caregivers of the …show more content…
This reinforces the idea that women face several challenges when attempting to balance motherhood and a career. Women’s careers are inevitably interrupted, even if only for a few months, when having a baby in order to fully devote their time to caring for the newborn. Men don’t face any of the same interruptions, as a matter of fact, most men aren’t even allowed to take time off to care for the baby, even if they wanted to. This is a result of society’s predisposition to see a male worker as someone who “is wholly devoted to his work, prioritizing work over family, personal needs, and health. (Ried, 2015)” (Bierema, 2016). This makes it seem as though women carry all the responsibility when it comes to carry for the baby, when really the responsibility should be shared equally among the mother and