Psychology

The role of gender stereotypes continues to be observed in communities and in the workplaces. It is evident that individuals tend to choose their professions depending on the influences they have during the early stages of their development (Ogut, 2003). This paper will discuss some of these factors that have particularly affected women individuals from taking up male-dominated professions. The effects of self esteem and sex differences will also be discussed in the paper.

Gender stereotypes develop due to certain influences in the manner which individuals are brought up as well as their physique. When children are brought up, they learn from their parents, their siblings and the society at large, they tend to take roles assigned to them and assign themselves roles they view prevalent to them. For instance, girls will always want to be like their mothers while boys like their fathers.

In this view, a girl will take up all the roles assigned to her and the roles she believes will make her be like her mother. The same applies to boys. The society therefore tends to have mothers crafting their daughters to be like them and take up their positions in the future while men do the same to their sons (Ogut, 2003). The children will therefore take the roles they are taught to be fit for their sex and hence the stereo types.

It has been observed that some manual jobs require certain level of energy and fitness that tend to favor men who are physically stronger than women in most cases. This makes the society to assign more mechanical jobs like building and construction and mining to be a preserve for men. Women in the society shy away from jobs requiring more energy expense such as carrying heavy loads.

Due to this perceived job suitability, women will have varied esteems while performing some jobs or applying for the same. They will also have positive attitudes and self trust while applying to be trained for some of their preferred tasks and professions (Lippa, 2002).  For instance, women have positive attitudes towards being nurses as and therefore one will expect to find more nurses in a society than mechanical engineers.

In another observation, women have been found to perform exceptionally well in these fields or professions that do not require a lot of energy to effect. This is opposed to men who can choose to do any job such as being track drivers which needs more perseverance. Traditionally, track driving is a male dominated field which requires a greater energy input.

From these paradigms, it can be identified that women become slow to progress into entering male dominated professions because of gender stereotypes. There is a very low esteem of women towards some jobs as there is a great passion of women towards other professions. This might be explained as a satisfaction of their individual ego, aspirations and the need to measure up to their mentors and influencers.