What Social Norms Mean In Modern Society

In today’s society, social norms are the part people play as being a member of a social group and with each social role you adopt, your behavior changes to fit expectations both you and others have of that role. It seems that societal norms are impacting our values instead of our values impacting social norms because it is not something that has to be done but we tend to adapt to it. Society seems to base people’s values based on their gender, women are expected to be more responsible and compassionate than men.

Now we will talk about how based on your gender, it impacts your values. According to Pew Research, words like kind and responsible were used more consistently as valued traits for women. The words, compassionate and caring were considered positive traits for women but were seen more negatively for men. It seems that if men are compassionate or emotional, society sees it as a bad thing, which should not be the case.

No matter your gender, everyone has emotions and are compassionate even when they might not show it. With being responsible, women are supposed to be multi-taskers and independent which people in the research used as a trait women should have. From these test results, it seems that people expect traits related to strength and ambition are valued for men in society and that compassion, kindness, and responsibility are valued for women. However, if you are a men or woman, you can have all of these traits or a mix of them based on the person you are but not based on your gender.

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Is their science support that can prove that women are more compassionate than men? The Dalai Lama is famous for engaging in dialogue with scientists and provoking them to study the impact of mediation on the brain. If you were to ask a neuroscientist to distinguish a male from a female brain, the differences are subtle and there is no single area of the brain that can distinguish a male from a female brain. Moreover, they research humans or animals from both genders to find that compassion is innate and instinctual across the board. We all have a natural impulse to help others who are suffering, which is called the “compassionate instinct” according to the founding director, Dacher Keltner. Compassion is natural and no gender differences have emerged across the studies that have been made to see if gender impacts compassion. However, it doesn’t mean that men and women experience or express compassion in the same way. It seems that socialization may have impacted how to communicate emotions such as kindness and compassion based on gender. Since sympathy is seen as more “feminine” it is more acceptable for women to express it, women have learned to both communicate and recognize it more easily.

There are many forms of compassion, the one that comes to mind first is nurturance, kindness, softness, gentleness, and emotional warmth. However, there are expressions of deep compassion which are not always nurturing or maternal. For example, heroic acts happen on a day-to-day basis where people throw themselves into dangerous situations to help others. These are fierce, courageous, and even aggressive forms of compassion. Generalizations are usually never accurate. Both genders engage in both nurturing and fierce expressions of compassion. Rather than suggesting that women are more compassionate than men, we should argue that they can differ in their expression of compassion.

Women are said to be more responsible which has an outcome of more productivity at work than men. According to Hive, women work 10 percent harder than men in today’s offices. This result is the product of two other statistics, which are that both genders complete about 66 percent of their assigned work. However, women are assigned 10 percent more work than men because they are expected to be more responsible and get the job completed since most likely men won’t do. Research from the University of California, suggests that chatting in the workplace can reduce productivity by about 20 percent but overall, women chat 20 percent more than men and it doesn’t seem to be an issue on their productivity even when they are giving that extra work to be done. Hive also did a test to see if more work gets done on weekends, and it seems that men slightly work more on weekends than women but get less done.

Due to women being viewed as being more responsible, it is not just in the workplace but at home as well. Women carry out an overall average of 60 percent more unpaid work than men, according to ONS analysis. The study shows that women put in more than double the proportion of unpaid work such as cooking, housework and childcare. The only area where men are doing more unpaid hours than women is in transport, which is where they drive themselves and others around. No matter the age group, women are more unpaid than men which range from 25 and under to the 56 and over category. This shows that our society doesn’t expect men to do much unpaid work because it is seen as something that women do especially when it comes to housework. This household chore inequality has been evident over time, across professions and even when women work longer hours and make more money. According to Forbes, “forty-nine percent of employed women in the United States, including 42 percent of working mothers, say they are their family’s main breadwinner.”

This can affect women who are bringing children into the world and may not have a national paid leave policy which means they are taking less or no money home that can lead to long-term consequences financially. This means that they can miss out on opportunities such as raises, promotions, and the inability to fund their retirement accounts and Social Security. Women are eight times more likely than men to look after sick children or manage their children’s schedules which will take time out of their workday or other daily responsibilities. Even though society sees as women being more responsible, there are things that you and others can do to combat the imbalance between genders on household labor at home, work, and even the political realm. The first thing, is to get your partner on board on creating a more egalitarian distribution of duties at home even if you are used to the traditional gender roles of women having to handle the familial duties.

This can take some time to adjust but with time it will help both with sharing responsibilities. Second, the United States is the only country without a national paid leave policy for mothers and fathers, therefore we should advocate for paid family leave and affordable childcare. The third and most important, is to push for change at work for gender equality. Many companies have good intentions but don’t make changes to protect women at work. Companies have to start treating equality as a business priority for both men and women so they can both have a fair amount of work and be responsible for their actions if it doesn’t get done.