As a student at Case Western Reserve University, I’ve heard neurotic students too many times comparing their majors. They ask themselves and each other: What’s the hardest major? And, too many times, I hear the nursing major get called “easy” whilst other majors such as engineering are deemed hard. Granted, I’m a chemistry major, so I can’t speak for either major from personal experience. However, it would be remiss to ignore the correlation between the talk down of majors and their affiliation with women. Furthermore, this correlation doesn’t just exist for nursing—it exists for the liberal arts and the fine arts. As of 2022, around 12% of the nursing field was composed of men, with women making up the bulk majority. As of 2022, 67% of the bachelors degrees obtained in liberal arts were by women.
A historic example of prestigious jobs and their reliance on gender would be computer science. Nowadays, computer science is seen as an extremely advanced, cutting-edge field. Computer science is also presently male-dominated, almost notoriously so, the major is only made up of about 21% women and high-ranking positions in tech are occupied by only 15% women. However, this wasn’t always the case. In fact, before the Cold War computing was seen as a tedious and lower-end job dominated by women. During the Cold War, when men were drafted, women had to further fill in empty computing seats and hold down the profession. However, computer science quickly became masculinized, and when men returned home, women were quickly kicked out and computer science became the male-dominated field we see today.
Medicine is also a good example. I think most would agree that medicine has been and, still is, a prestigious profession. However, I think most would also agree that there are tiers within medicine. Surgery, for instance, is incredibly male-dominated, and it’s not by chance. It’s also considered one of the most prestigious medical specialities.
It’s interesting to note that the prestige of the job fluctuates depending on who occupies the field rather than based on inherent value. Of course, the prestige of a job is connected to its salary and the connections it offers, but how we delegate prestige to certain things is completely arbitrary. College students who may have never set foot on a hospital floor a day in their lives deem nursing not as hard, perhaps only because it’s a job mainly worked by women. The things we societally accept as difficult, such as science and math, might only be that way because they are subconsciously masculine.
This phenomena of feminization produces an interesting and detrimental cycle. If a person grows up only seeing themselves represented in certain roles, then it’s more likely that they will also take up that role in the future. Of course, this isn’t to say that women shouldn’t go into the fields that they want to go in. It’s more so a plea for you to think about what shapes those goals in the first place and how being a woman in a patriarchal society inherently shapes interests and goals. Furthermore, like most patriarchal values, this phenomenon doesn’t just negatively affect women. Manual labor and blue collar jobs, such as construction work, are male-dominated, yet also underappreciated and not considered prestigious.
Like most issues deeply rooted in centuries of sexist ideals and behaviors, there’s no easy solution to this issue of underappreciation. However, small changes in mindset and in the way we talk may be a good start.