Men Vs. Women in the American Dream

Blog #6
    The American Dream is defined as "the ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative". Although it says every US citizen does it really mean everyone? In Sandra L. Hanson's "Whose Dream? Gender and the American Dream, she investigates the difficulties women face and why we have this division when it comes to achieving the American Dream. Throughout this chapter she also examines other aspects concerning the American Dream such as education, job opportunities, and most importantly...wealth. 

    Hanson begins by explaining how gender is divided in different aspects of life such as education, earnings, occupations, politics, and opportunity. One of the aspects that stood out to me was education because Hanson says that women attend college at a higher rate than men, however a majority of them do not go into science related majors, "Today women attend college and graduate from college at a higher rate than men, but they enter majors that assure them of positions in lower-status, lower-paid female-dominated occupations" (79).  This shows how much potential women have and how smart they truly are but women doubt themselves because they are afraid of being treated unfairly in their future careers so they steer towards jobs where they know they will be treated fairly, even if that means lowering their standards and essentially not achieving their American dream.  Hanson then goes on to explain how women and men differ in getting paid and how women have always suffered from a pay gap. "In 1961, working women earned fifty-nine cents to a man's dollar. Today, working women average seventy-seven cents to a man's dollar" (79). This demonstrates that women could be in the same field as men and will automatically be paid less because they're women and men will be paid more because...they're men. "When firms have employees that are 76 to 90 percent male, wages are 40 percent higher than similar firms employing women" (79). No matter what job women have it will be harder for them to achieve their own American dreams, which could be enough to prevent women from wanting to work for it just because of her gender.

    Hanson explains that a reason why we still have this gender inequality is because men don't seem to notice that we suffer from this unfairness. Scientists shown that women understand our unequal opportunities, "They are more likely to acknowledge racism, sexism and other factors that limit the ability to achieve the Dream." (81).  This shows how men are unlikely to understand the inequality women suffer in every day life while women are constantly aware of it. To expand on this Hanson, gives statistics from a Zogby 2001 survey men and women were asked "Has your idea of the American Dream changed in recent years?" 38% of men answered yes and 60% no. While women answered 44% yes and 54% no. 
  Altogether Hanson writes to show how much women suffer from gender inequality without even realizing it and explains the different factors that affect a women's career, education, and pay. Although we still have a long way to go, there are some improvements that have been made already to create equality for women. However, I feel that we can work together and fix this gap between men and women, that way we all have a fair shot at achieving the American Dream.