Gender imbalance as a cultural heritage
There was a Swiss ethnographer named Johann Jacob Bachofen, who wrote in his book, “Mother’s Rights,” that in the early stages of human history, blood ties were established only through women, so mothers became rulers and legislators in the family and community.
According to Bachophen, it was this circumstance that led to the formation of family, community, and religion approaches. However over time, the growing role of men has contributed to the development of masculine deities and, consequently, patriarchal-type cultures. And if we’ll move now from nineteenth-century thinkers work to modernity, I’m pleased to announce that I am going to talk to you about gender equality.
The fifth goal of the UN Sustainable Development is to ensure the full and effective participation of women and equal opportunities at all levels of decision-making in the field of leadership — political, economic and public life.
Georgia has made a number of commitments to the ‘’European Social Charter’’ in terms of women’s economic empowerment. The state is responsible for making significant legislative changes, including equal pay for equal work made by women and men.
Georgia has also signed the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. However, the fact is that we are losing ground from year to year on the Gender Inequality Scale drawn up by the World Economic Forum.
The majority of Georgia’s population is female. Higher education has also been given to more women than men, but unfortunately, despite their level of education, employed women are often appear as lower-ranking workers instead of decision-makers.
It should be noted that while a man’s salary increases by about 70 GEL a year, a woman’s salary increases by about 43 GEL. According to the National Statistics Office, the average salary of men in 2018 increased by 1125.5 GEL in the third quarter, while women’s labor at that time was about 500 GEL cheaper.
The average salary is calculated not only by the salaries paid directly, but also by bonuses, allowances and grants. In general, the National Statistics Office covers all sectors of the economy (except households) when calculating wages.
There are two probable factors that are the main reasons for the representation of average wages between women and men in different numbers:
1. Women work mainly in the field of education, where salaries are lower than in other fields;
2. Supplements and bonuses are more often taken by men.
However, salaries are not the only problem in the labor market. Discriminatory, personal questions during job-interviews (planned marriage, number of children, etc.), fire for discriminatory reasons, and so on.
The Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI), with the support of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the United Kingdom Government, conducted a research entitled “Career in Public Service and Gender Equality.”
According to the survey, most of the more than 1,000 public servants say:
• Men are able to increase success in their careers faster;
• Even under equal professional qualifications, men are more visible than women;
- Men are more honorable in the workplace, while women are more likely to be reprimanded.
So, according to the majority of respondents, there is an invisible gender hierarchy at work. Sex determines the privilege of standing on a high level for man. Women work a lot, but in the end man sit around negotiating table, they’re leading presentations and they’re receiving awards.
In Georgian reality, there is no great practice of equal distribution of family affairs with men. I will not leave without mentioning the fact that from time to time we witness pleasant examples of families who share the family business equally, but the big picture still looks like this: in most of the cases while men are the main breadwinners of the family, women’s daily lives are limited with doing housework and caring for family members, or in better case scenario, they have two jobs — family care is paramount again and again, and second, they need to contribute for the family’s financial security.
In the end, the political climate in Georgia is created by men — they make laws about health care, the economy and education, while the majority of women spend more time on unpaid household chores. This unequal distribution is a barrier to women’s advancement and, of course, reduces women’s ability to care for their economic security or achieve economic independence.
But the thing is, that I think it makes no sense to talk about this topic only from a political or economic point of view, because the reasons that gave rise to the existing reality are much deeper to be found. I will try to make a small contribution to the assembly of the puzzle.
While the biological difference between women and men is marked by the notion of sex and it determines the roles associated with reproduction, in parallel, there are also social or gender roles of women and men that are culturally defined.
In the process of socialization, which begins with birth, boys and girls learn their place in society. They learn the language of the culture in which they were born and the roles they have to play in life (for example, what kind of daughter, sister and wife they should be). Then most people choose to stay in the same comfort zone that society created around them, because they haven’t been taught to live in a different style.
Geert Hofstede, a Dutch social psychologist, developed a theory of cultural characteristics and identified several dimensions / characteristics. In this case, we only need one of them — the dimension of masculinity-femininity to be considered.
Under the conditions of equal distribution of gender roles, culture is considered feminist, while masculine cultures are characterized by a sharp separation of male and female social roles. For example, masculine and feminine professions/fields of activity are strictly defined here; For violating the rule, a woman faces a heavier punishment than a man, because her life is more strictly regulated.
As American writer and feminist Gloria Steinem says, “We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons, but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.” What did she mean?
In masculine culture, inequality between the roles of mother and father is the norm for society. Here the man need to be strong, while the woman needs to be sensitive. For a child exemplary is a father who is strong and has touch with facts and a mother who is less powerful and has touch with feelings.
Boys want to observe themselves in these societies — they’ll definitely respond to the attack with a fight and, most importantly, they don’t cry. For girls, everything is the other way around, crying is allowed for them, but fighting is not!
Most nations in the world are masculine, and gender inequality isn’t the problem of only Georgian society. By this I mean that when we’re looking for the causes of the problem, we shouldn’t clean up our hands on power-hungry men or women whose comfort zone is the housewifing. The reasons are much deeper to be explored. The problem will remain unresolved as long as societies don’t reconsider priorities and outdated ideas passed down from previous generations according to the challenges of our centurie.
It is time to agree unanimously that if men and women share responsibilities more fairly, all levels of life will improve.
This is what concerns us, ordinary citizens, while the responsibilities of government officials are more practical: they need to create more jobs, improve legislation (there is currently no legislation that provides equal pay for equal value of labor), promote programs to support women, raise awareness, and so on.
