To learn more about women's role in today's society, we contacted Dr. Stephen Burrell, who is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Durham University, and a Deputy Director of Durham's Centre for Research into Violence and Abuse (CRiVA).
Dr. Burrell also undertook an Economic and Social Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship on the role of the business sector and workplaces in preventing violence against women and promoting gender equality, and how to engage more men in such efforts.
"Women face many of the same problems that men do, such as economic inequalities which mean that so many people in our society are struggling to get by, whilst others have huge amounts of wealth," he told Bored Panda. "But on top of that, they face numerous additional obstacles because gender inequality remains so deeply rooted."
Dr. Burrell believes our narrow expectations about who we allow and expect women to be holds them back from contributing freely and fully to society. "It can have detrimental impacts on their health and wellbeing, with violence against women and girls continuing to be a commonplace experience for so many throughout their lives – and also because healthcare services often fail to take account of women’s needs and experiences."
"It can hold them back in education and the workplace, where everyday experiences of sexism and gender stereotypes mean women and girls may not be encouraged and enabled to succeed and flourish in whatever path they want to pursue," he explained.
"They are often expected to juggle this whilst still doing the bulk of care work at home, with little support from wider society in terms of things like affordable childcare services, which holds back women’s positions in the labor market, and means those economic inequalities hit them harder too. Meanwhile, women are still significantly under-represented in decision-making positions across society, which means a lot of these issues aren’t understood or addressed by people in power."
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Dr. Burrell also believes that men directly contribute to a lot of the problems women face. "For example, if we’re talking about violence against women and girls, and the widespread sexism and misogyny which feeds into it, it’s important to recognize that this doesn’t come from nowhere – it is predominantly being perpetrated by men," he said. "So we need to start talking more about men’s role in these problems, even if that is at times uncomfortable."
"But that also helps us to think about the positive part men can play in the solution. We can be agents of change, working together with women as allies in building a society that is more equal and fair for everyone – in our relationships, at home, at work, in politics, everywhere."
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In Dr. Burrell's opinion, this is particularly important when we remember that men continue to hold most positions of power. And this doesn't concern just individuals, it touches the way we organize society, too.
"We all learn rigid and restrictive stereotypes about gender from an early age, and have all probably played a part in reinforcing them at some point," Dr. Burrell, one of the co-hosts of the podcast 'Now and Men: Current conversations about men's lives', said.
"These hold everyone back – so we all benefit from breaking down gender norms, being free to be whoever we want to be, and creating a society in which everyone is equally valued and free from violence."
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No wonder so many men can hardly relate to women and their issues. Despite the genders' psychological overlap, studies on men have suggested they have trouble "mind-reading" and guessing what women are thinking and feeling.
For example, one study found that men do, in fact, interpret friendliness from women as sexual come-ons. Research also discovered that women prize men who try to understand them.
To see whether guys really do have trouble understanding ladies, Boris Schiffer, a researcher at the LWL-University Hospital in Bochum, Germany and his colleagues put 22 men between the ages of 21 and 52 (with an average age of 36) in a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner, which uses blood flow as a measure to measure their brain activity.
The scientists then asked the men to look at images of 36 pairs of eyes, half from men and half from women, and guess the emotion those people felt.
The men then had to choose which of two words, such as distrustful or terrified, best described the eyes' emotion. The eye photographs depicted positive, neutral, and negative emotions.
Men took longer and had more trouble correctly identifying emotion in women's eyes.
Additionally, their brains showed different activation when looking at men's versus women's eyes. Men's amygdala — a region in the brain linked to emotions, empathy, and fear — activated more strongly in response to men's eyes.
Also, other brain areas tied to emotion and behavior didn't activate as much when the men looked at women's eyes.
The results indicate that men are worse at reading women's emotions. This "theory of mind" is one of the foundations for empathy, so the researchers suggest this could mean that men can have less empathy for women relative to men.