The Impact of Gender and the American Dream

For my final paper, I decided to focus on the impact of gender in the American Dream. Before deciding on this topic, I skimmed through a few chapters in The American Dream in the 21st Century by Sandra L. Hanson and John Kenneth White. This topic stood out to me because Hanson wrote an interesting chapter on it within the book.

While reading the chapter “Whose Dream? Gender and the American Dream,” I learned that the American dream is kept out of reach primarily for women based off of three factors. The first is that there are different standards for women and men within education. Women are discouraged from entering science-related majors, and even those who demonstrate significant potential in the field do not stick with it. According to Hanson, “[a]lmost half of women who enter college with science-related interests switch to other majors” (79). Women are setup to fall behind men in the real world before they get out of the school-system; therefore, women have a harder time achieving the American Dream.

While further looking into the educational factor in with the American Dream is limited to women, I discovered more about women who do stick to science-related majors and careers. In a scholarly peer-reviewed journal titled “Perceiving Glass Ceilings? Meritocratic versus Structural Explanations of Gender Inequality among Women in Science and Technology,” published in Social Problems (2010), professor at University of Michigan Erin A. Cech and professor at University of San Diego Mary Blair-Loy discuss the concept that women who do succeed in this path may not be so willing to help other women. Some of these successful women justify their successes by using the career hierarchy to their advantage, rather than using their status to help their gender as a whole.

A second way women are impacted is in the workforce. Women and men do not work in the same labor environment; the “labor force is gender stratified” (Hanson, 79). The labor system is setup to ensure that women cannot break the glass ceiling and make it to the top. With men and women working in different areas, it is easier to explain why the genders are not paid fairly, which is the third factor.

Through extensive research, I came to conclude that there are in fact “male” and “female” jobs in the workforce. In a scholarly peer-reviewed journal titled “The Gender Revolution: Uneven and Stalled,” published in Gender & Society (2010), Sociology professor at New York University Paula England argues that a transition of females to more “male” professions is prevalent due to the value associated with their jobs. England claims there is a push towards “male” careers; however, this does not flow both ways because the American Dream is associated with money, and money is typically linked “male” professions.

Wages are unequal amongst men and women. The education system is flawed, the labor force is categorized, therefore, the income levels are skewed in terms of gender. Although Hanson recognizes that there is progress concerning closing the gender gap, she also claims “it will be 2057 before we close the gender gap in wages” (79). I learned that this is not a simple fix, first we must correct the education system, then the labor force will begin to change, and finally the wage gap will begin to close at an increasing rate.

While looking at a final argument regarding wages, I was informed that the belief in the American Dream for women is connected to income.  In a scholarly peer-reviewed article titled “Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Local Gender-Based Earnings Inequality and Women’s Belief in the American Dream,” published in the American Journal of Political Science (2015), assistant professor Benjamin J. Newman at the University of Connecticut argues that women’s belief in the American Dream is biased in regard to their earnings and if they indicate potential shattering of the “glass ceiling.” I came to realize that according to Newman, women who make close to the income that men make are less likely to believe in the American Dream because just falling short “heightens the salience of the glass ceiling for women, and results in a general activation of female gender consciousness.” Women who almost shatter the glass ceiling are more likely to believe that reaching the American Dream than women with substantially lower income levels than men.

In the end, I have concluded that all three of these factors must be corrected before women have a significantly greater chance at reaching the American Dream. As of now, women are at a disadvantage; however, the odds would be more in their favor if we did not have these flaws in our society that begin to prevent women from breaking the glass ceiling before they become adults.