Young girls are seeing more Barbie dolls on shelves with careers ranging from scientists, future leaders, and astronauts, and imagining a world where they can be limitless in possibilities. However, as we age, are we truly seeing this play out as adults?
Now more than ever, women are being told that there is only one job that will ever fulfill them – homemaker. In a college commencement speech, Harrison Butker, the kicker for the Chiefs and fellow alumni from my alma mater, Georgia Tech, announced to a crowd of students, a large proportion female, that homemaker is the most important title a woman can have.
While he congratulated the graduating women in the crowd, he affirmed that they were all most excited about marriage and children.
When I walked across the stage, degree in hand, gown flowing to my feet, tassel ready to be moved to the left, I can assure you motherhood was the last thing on my mind. In my thoughts were the next steps to pursue a career in research, devoted to brightening the black box of women’s health.
Memories of countless hours in the lab reviving my cell cultures, practicing every possible chair conformation in organic chemistry, writing my own thesis on new drug delivery applications, spending each of my undergraduate summers at universities to learn brand new methods in science.
Does all of that hard work not matter in respect to the shining glory of motherhood? In an era where the government prefers women receive a Medal of Motherhood rather than a Nobel prize, how can we push our identities to being a person with aspirations beyond a body to conceive?
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, as of 2022, more women are receiving bachelor, masters, and doctoral degrees than men. This greatly contrasts the growing “trad wife movement” in which women are glorifying domesticity and traditional gender roles with the rejection of “girl bosses” which prioritize feminism for societal liberation.
However, when we look closer at this movement, a blanket over severe female burnout due to a lack of decent childcare, a gender wage gap, and unpaid domestic work after a 9-5 is uncovered.
While I do have enormous career aspirations to make a change, it is true that motherhood is a path I see myself walking. However, our society is currently showing a fork in the road for women. Either burn out in your career while also juggling a house, husband, and kids or submit and toss any dreams you have outside of being a homemaker.
Changes need to be made not only for the Barbies, but for Kens as well. Toxic masculinity is dominating the social media of boys and planting labels of “beta” or “sigma” males, that social organization is based on wolf packs and a man’s dominance.
A father can post himself cooking a simple dinner for his wife and children and comments would be swarmed with men stating his wife isn’t attractive enough, he is a beta male and questioning what she has done for him.
In order to promote equality of gender roles and opportunities for women, we need to tackle toxic masculinity and a rise of authoritarianism. As of now, we can choose to be homemakers or astronauts, but with the way legislature can go, how would you feel losing the ability to choose?
A cultural shift on gender roles is needed to promote empowering women as both mothers and people and for men to overcome the patriarchal norms social media has profited on. All in all, Mattel has a lot of work to do.
