Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus

Take a look around: It seems patently obvious that men and women are different. Men prefer to drink beer and watch football, while women prefer to drink vodka cranberries and paint their nails. Men enjoy earning promotions at work, while women enjoy staying at home and taking care of the children. Given the vast disparity in the choices that men and women make in their hobbies, occupations, and even alcoholic drinks, it sometimes seems like we come from two entirely different planets.

But what if I told you that many of our choices weren’t actually ours to make? Instead, they were made for us from the moment we are born and the doctor examined our genitals and announced either “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!”

Children who are proclaimed boys will be dressed in blue onesies, grow up in rooms adorned with football wallpaper, shop in the boy’s section of the toy store, build battleships with Legos and play baseball with their father, and watch television shows and see men as scientists, as businessmen, as leaders, as United States presidents.

On the other hand, children who are proclaimed girls will be dressed in pink onesies, grow up in rooms adorned with princess wallpaper, shop in the girl’s section of the toy store, bake cookies with toy ovens, push little baby dolls in strollers, experiment with makeup with their mother, and watch television shows and see women as nurses, as models, as mothers, as housewives.

In this way, our preferences are constructed for us the moment we are born. And even as we grow up, gender roles continue to dictate the choices we make. For example, 10 percent of women in the United Kingdom stay at home to raise a family, whereas just over one percent of men are stay-at-home fathers. Men represent less than 10 percent of the nursing workforce; women make up only 21 percent of computer programmers. These statistics are often referenced as evidence of individual preferences, of the idea that this disparity in numbers can be attributed simply to men’s preference for STEM and pursuing high-powered careers and women’s preference for nurturing babies and staying at home.

But that’s simply not true. Despite what people like the author of “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus” would like us to believe, research has actually shown that men’s and women’s brain aren’t that different. There is, in fact, no such thing as a “male” or “female” brain. Men do not have brains that predispose them toward aggression and logic, and women do not have brains that predispose them toward nurturing and creativity.

The differences that we observe between men and women are a result of nothing more than gender roles—the societal norms that dictate what types of behaviors are acceptable for a person based on their perceived sex. There is nothing about playing football that is inherently masculine, and there is nothing about wearing makeup that is inherently feminine. Gender is nothing more than a social construct.

We learn gender roles from society even at an early age. As we grow up, we adopt behaviors that are rewarded with praise and hide those that are punished with ridicule. Boys who play with Barbies are derided as effeminate; girls who play with Nerf guns are mocked as unladylike. According to Planned Parenthood, by the age of three, "children have usually learned to prefer toys and clothes that are “appropriate” to their gender"—boys stop playing with dolls and girls stop shooting Nerf guns.

The problem isn’t simply that gender roles are often inaccurate; rather, they are also actively harmful and oppressive. Consider the stereotype that women are less competent in STEM. Research has actually shown that code written by female computer programmers is more likely to be approved by their peers—but only if their gender is concealed.

Yet, the prevailing belief that women are incompetent coders discourages women from pursuing a career in STEM, simply because they get the message early in life that they don’t belong in that field. As a result, women are still vastly underrepresented in STEM fields. This has disastrous consequences: not only are women shuttered away from high-paying jobs, we as a society are not reaching our full potential for innovation by systematically excluding half the population from STEM.

Furthermore, gender roles systematically devalue women’s work. There is a reason why activities such as teaching, childcare, and even housework are paid very little or not at all—they are predominantly performed by women. And the argument that those occupations are paid less only because they are easier and require less skill completely collapses upon closer scrutiny. For example, doctors in the United States are paid very well and held in high esteem. But in Russia, where the majority of doctors are women, and medical practice is stereotyped as a caring vocation “naturally suited” to women, being a doctor is one of the lowest paying and poorly-respected professions. In short, it’s not the skill level or effort required of a job that matters; work that is done by women is systematically devalued, underpaid, and disrespected.

Feminism, therefore, is about empowering people to make their own choices, rather than the choices that society has already made for them. It’s about liberating people from stifling gender roles. It’s about destroying the notion that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. At the end of the day, we are all from the planet Earth. We are more alike than we are different.

What would a world without gender roles look like? It would be a world where people can make their own choices, independent of societal expectations. It would be a world where activities, careers, and hobbies are not designated “feminine” or “masculine.” It would be a world where people could do whatever they want, regardless of their gender identity. I don’t know about the rest of you, but that sounds like the kind of world I’m ready to live in.

Nian Hu ’18, a Crimson editorial executive, is a government concentrator in Mather House. Her column appears on alternate Mondays.