Men and Women in the Workforce: Similarities and Differences

[Date of Submission]

Abstract

This paper shall endeavor to highlight the differences and similarities between men and women, when both the genders are working together in a professional environment. It also strives to shed some light on the gender differences in relation to the conditions of paid work and domestic problems that influence health.

Introduction

This study refers to gender differences in relation to the conditions of paid work and domestic problems that influence health. Not forgetting that the work process seeks uniformity among people who do it, it is shown that within that forced homogeneity, diversity persists between men and women and their disease patterns are the result of multiple determinations, including differences imposed on them because of gender.

This paper addresses two areas that complement and contradict, the paid work and domestic work, to show their influence on the health-disease process. The complementary relationship between these two jobs imposes contents and forms: the domestic wage affects wages through by the quantity and quality of goods and services that can consume one's organization and reflected in schedules, responsibilities and spaces. Meanwhile domestic work influences paid by function and reproduction of domestic groups.

While complementary, these two works hold a contradictory relationship, which lies in the social relevance of the first (Gardiner, 1980), compared to the second invisibility. That relationship of contradiction is expressed at the individual level, as each person must assume as binding any of the two based on their gender, thus becoming one of the axes of gender identity.

The assignment of the coordination of housework for women, men and the role of major suppliers, as prejudice prevails in Mexico, imposing a segregated labor market gender. Despite that reality contradicts this trend, as more than 20% of households are headed by women and a third of the workforce is female (INEGI, 2001).

Occupational segregation is evident in the ways of joining the labor market for men and women, both by increased occupancy of the male population, and the type of occupation, branch of economic activity and job type. Thus we find that in the economically active for every two men, a woman, and that the range of employment options for them is wider. And that 50% of workers are concentrated in five categories in the services sector.

One of the most important aspects of this phenomenon is the use of segregation by the capital of acquired skills in parenting: thoroughness, attention and skills of women, and the strength and capacity of the coarse movement's males.

In domestic work, gender differences occur in the reverse direction, because women do most of the housework. In Mexico, on average, men spend 10.5 hours a week on housework and women 27.6 (INEGI, 2001). The results of this research illustrate the inequity in housework time and content (Duran, 1986). While a high percentage of respondents reported performing all domestic, male involvement focused on supporting food preparation, cleaning and childcare. The phenomenon of differences by gender and domestic labor amending, ...