Feminist Perspectives: Dealing with gendered decisions

Attention college-aged females: Are you prepared to make a choice that will influence the rest of your life? Are you able to effectively weigh all your options? Do you really know what you value?

As a student in college on the verge of graduation, I can’t help but catch the bug that most of us in this position are thinking right now. What am I going to do with myself when I finally make it to the real world? Guys and girls alike obsess about this big turning point, but the way our society constructs gendered identities makes the decision a little more loaded for females. Let me explain.

We simply can’t get around the fact that our society, for the most part, places women in a smaller social sphere. That’s just the way it’s always been. Despite all the progress made to establish equal genders today, our history of strict male and female roles still forms the foundation of our culture. Men work in the office, women work in the kitchen. Of course, we’re not as stubbornly narrow-minded as this anymore, but these gender roles still loosely regulate our culture. Most of us can say that our moms were the ones who did our laundry and made our dinners growing up, even if they also had jobs outside of home. That’s just the way it worked.

So here’s the dilemma. We—meaning women—can say all we want about going out and finding our own careers and successes. But if we choose to someday include a family in that line of success, society will expect us to be the ones to raise the kids and care for the household. That’s not to say that there aren’t alternative lifestyles out there where the father is the predominant caregiver or there’s more of an ensemble effort, but that’s just it—it’s alternative. It’s not the norm for the way our society works. If we choose to let it, this expectation can put considerable pressure on the big decision of choosing family or career later in life.

For me personally, there are a lot of things to consider. I know I want to continue my education and I know I want to have a killer career in the future. But I also know I want to have a marriage someday and maybe a family. So I get to thinking, even though it would be incredibly satisfying to raise a family, do I really want to let myself fall into such a socially constructed stereotype of my gender? Should I instead choose to be a strong, career-driven individual who actively seeks to defy what society expects of her? And what if I decide to have both a career and a family? How can I find a balance?

And am I alone in this internal struggle? Probably not. I know this because countless women have successfully balanced a family and a career, and I think that’s commendable. But still, I can’t seem to justify actually desiring to dedicate my life to raising a family because I feel it is so far from what the feminists before me have strove to achieve. I mean, this isn’t the 1950s anymore. Society now supports women in their right to choice, and the feminist in me wants to exercise this advantage.

So again, I think back to what feminism is really all about. Today’s view of feminism is a lot more fluid than it was in the past. The third wave, if you’ll remember from last time, is all about doing what is right for the individual when it comes to gendered identity and gendered decisions. This more liberal view of feminism makes me feel a little more confident about a decision that is so rooted in gender roles. I’ve learned to tell myself this: In the future, if you want to focus on your career, awesome. If you want to focus on your family life, cool. If you want to do both, more power to you. It’s up to me and whatever I feel is right for me at the time. And that makes the feminist in me breathe a little easier.