"The glass ceiling"

Today during the presentation we had a discussion about whether or not things have advanced or changed in the area of women and work. I think like people said, things have changed but there is still a lot more change that needs to happen. Why on earth do men get paid more for the same job a woman is doing and when they equal education? That makes absolutely no sense to me. I'm sure the woman is just as good at her job as the man is. Perhaps in some cases the man is better and in some cases the woman is better. But if the job is the exact same why should they be getting different salaries? Also there are still many jobs that are considered men's jobs and many that are considered women's jobs. We talked about how in schools, I would so more so elementary schools, the teachers are predominantly women. Adminstration positions are predominantly men all across the board. Why is this? Is elementary teaching seen too much as a "mom" job, hence it is womens work? Do men continue to take the dominant roles everywhere including schools? As a student I have always had male principals, and in both PSI and PSII I worked with male principals. However for my PSIII I will be working with a female principal so I am very interested to see what the dynamics are of the school and how she acts as principal. I for one wouldn't want an administrative position so I can't saw I would want to change the way things are going. But I don't see any reason as to why not a woman can't have an administrative position and be in a more powerful role. I also think men make great elementary school teachers so I don't know why there aren't more of them. When I went to school, for k-2 I had female teachers and 3-5 I had male teachers therefore I had a spread. I thought all of my teachers for the most part were great. The sex did not matter.

I'm hoping that in other areas of work opposite roles than what the "norms" are are becoming more accepted. For example, male nurses, and females doing trades. Honestly what is wrong with that? A lot of male nurses I think get made fun of, and if a girl is doing a trade she is considered "manly" and tough and not feminine enough. I think these kind of things definitely need to get changed around especially nowadays when people are or should be more open minded. I loved taking wood class in high school and building a coffee table. I chose that over taking "girly" classes. So perhaps we need to push students more in high school to try new things or choose the option that people think is not for them because they just might like it. I talked about in my paper on hidden curriculum how boys are less likely to take cooking and sewing classes more so than girls are less likely to take shop classes. But shop classes are still dominated by male students. There were only a few girls in the wood classes I took for grades 9, 10 and 11. I don't think there were any boys in my foods 9 class. We need to take these ideas out of peoples heads as soon as possible so that they can explore their interests and not think their career opportunities are limited because of their sex.