by Carrie Mylott

Created on: March 05, 2007   Last Updated: September 24, 2011

In response to Seth Hayes article, I'd like to state that male "chivalry", as defined in his article, never existed in the first place. Exaggerated courtesy to women may have been employed by medieval knights, but that behavior was "gone with the wind" long before the first Europeans reached the New World.

Yes, men worked to generate income to support their families. But the time period Seth referenced at the beginning of his article was a time when women were trained from a very young age to run a large household flawlessly. It was a time when women could not vote, could not wear pants, could not own property.

It was a time when women married because it was expected of them. They bore and raised children because it was expected of them. Women worked far harder than men imagined. And they did it without complaint, and without hinting that they were tired or discouraged or upset. Because that is what was expected of them. To me, it was chivalrous of women to put up with a lifestyle that may have been insufferable, simply because society, and their men, expected them to.

In today's society, gender roles are much broader than they used to be, but we still have a long way to go. Statistics show that women still make .73 to .76 cents for every dollar made by men. There are many reasons for this. While currently a little more than half (approx. 51%) of all college students are female, fewer women than men graduate at a professional level. The few women that do receive graduate level training compete for jobs with a much larger number of male counterparts.

Also, sadly enough, women's income is quite often still viewed as "supplementary" income, meaning that a woman does not need to be paid the same amount as a man working in the same position - because she must have a man at home that she's going to combine her income with. In addition, traditionally "female" positions pay less.

For example: teachers, nurses, housekeepers, childcare providers, etc., do not make the same amount of money that professors and doctors make. This is understandable; I am not advocating that a childcare worker should make the same amount of money as a heart surgeon. What I am saying is that society, to this very day, expects to see a woman in the role of a childcare provider and a man in the role of a heart surgeon. Until this expectation changes, there will not be equality between sexes.

I worked in Iraq for fourteen months as a DOD contractor. I interacted on a daily basis with

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>