How to unravel insulting gender stereotypes—talk to a few guys
You know how dating guides and … everything else portray woman as being obsessed with getting married and having kids, while men care mainly about their careers and their cars? You know, how the “having it all” debate has been nearly exclusively focused around women?
Well, someone finally got the brilliant idea to ask men how they feel about marriage and family, and this yielded some interesting results. This is the third year that Citi and LinkedIn have published the Today’s Professional Woman’s Report, but the first year they surveyed men, too. Here’s what they found:
When it comes to defining success, men place more emphasis on marriage and children: 79% of men equate “having it all” with being in a “strong, loving marriage” vs. only 66% of women who feel the same. And when it comes to kids, 86% of men factor children into their definition of success vs. 73% of women.
Women are more likely to say that marriage is not a necessary part of the equation: 25% of women think that being in a “strong, loving relationship” is all they need to have it all; marriage is not necessary. Only 14% of men agree.
Women are more concerned about work-life balance—flex time, family leave—which of course suggests that “having it all” is merely something men take for granted. “Maybe it’s not that men actually ‘want’ more, but that they expect more,” wrote Amanda Hess at Slate.
I agree. But I also hope that by bringing men into this conversation, we can start to unravel the stereotypes that insult both women and men—the ring-obsessed girlfriend, the commitment-adverse cad. Maybe we can start to see that, all things being equal, men and women want pretty much the same things—a good job, someone nice to come home to.
Of course, it could be true that women care less about marriage and family than men do. “All things being equal” is a pretty big caveat, so that’s something to work on, too.
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