In classical theory, Chaftez introduces us to this idea of a feminist theory. There are four types of feminist theory: a study of how societies and relationship should be, critiquing androcentric theories, how to appropriately theorize from a feminist perspective, and explanatory theories about the relationship between gender and other structure/processes. A study of how societies and relationship could be focuses on what is wrong with them at the tie and how to direct societies the way they should be. In other words, there are specific guidelines that had to be followed in order for the society to be functioning the way it’s supposed to be. While this critiquing of androcentric means that the focused/centered on men. We have come to live in society that was build into men dominated society. If we take a look at the past presidents of the United States, they were all males. To understand this theory, we have to look it through a feminist lens. Sociology has usually been seen through a male’s perspective and this idea of a feminist theory was a gateway to see that there is female’s perspective into sociology. Women are forced to see through the lens of a man because there wasn’t a woman’s perspective.
When this theory was brought up to my attention, I thought about the occupations that women and men have. Although in today’s society things are slowly changing and steering away from this case, we can see that it still exist. If we think about it, some occupations are gendered specific. Some jobs are hold mostly by men while other jobs are mostly hold by women. More female occupations consist of labor task, like things females are expected to do at home such as clean, cook, or take care of the children. These tasks can be similar to occupations like nurses, cooks, or maids. Male occupations are more office work or manual labor like construction workers. If we analyze occupations, we can see it is really specific to gender in who hold what jobs. Sometimes there are exceptions and male/female would hold what is expected to be a gender-specific occupation. If we look into working at an office for instance, we can think about working at a firm. We would usually see that the male has his own office and holds a high position in the firm, maybe one of the board members. Attached to the board member, he would have a secretary and it so happens to be a female. But if we think about this case, it is not anything out of the ordinary that the female has a lower position than a male, it’s just how society function. Even thinking about today’s society, females can earn the same degree/education as a male but yet our pay is not equivalent. Relating this case to the theory, we can see that the male is more centered compared to female and the society is built to cater for the male’s perspective.
Attached, I was able to find a graph that shows some of the occupations that society labels more so as gender-based. We can see that occupations such as nursery teachers, nurses, hairdressers, and cooks are more dominated by females. On the other hand, occupations like armed force officers, plumbers/electricians, pilots, and construction contractors are more male-dominated. These male-dominated occupations require more forceful labor and it is assumed that females would not be able to handle hard labor. They are pushed into occupations that require not less work but working in an environment that is less harmful.
http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/ewco/2010/03/GR1003019I.htm