Balancing work and family commitments
WOMEN IN OUR SOCIETY
Each member of a cultural society has to fulfil certain tasks and responsibilities in order to secure the welfare of the community. Some people are born leaders. Others follow the orders of their leading figures. And there are always some people who are standing on the edge of society, the so called outsiders. For this reason my essay will deal with the problems minority groups have to face in our society.
(Balancing work and family commitments)
It is a matter of fact that our society is mainly a patriarchal one: Even nowadays women have to fight very hard to overcome the traditional gender stereotypes.
Despite of women's liberation men are still in charge of all the activities that are considered important. They dominate fields like industry, politics, and scientific research.
One field of society which shows clearly, how extreme these divisions between the different genders is, is certainly the world of work.
It is definitely harder for a woman to get a good job than it is for a man. In theory, men and women have equal job opportunities, at least in the industrial countries, but women in Austria still earn less than men even if they have the same qualifications. There can absolutely be no doubt that nowadays females are better educated than they used to be and thus they should also have the abilities and skills to succeed in the professional world.
The only trouble is that they don't get the opportunity to show that they are as competent as men are. In addition, it is always very difficult for a woman to reach a top position in an enterprise.
The reasons why women try to conquer the labour market are manifold. Many women have to work, because their families depend on a second income. Others work because their job gives them satisfaction. Those are the real career women.
I also want to point out that today's woman is under greater pressure than ever before because she is expected to perform many different roles in our society. In former times, women were only limited to household chores. Nowadays women are expected to be perfect mothers, loving wives and successful career women. Balancing work and family commitments is not always easy.
For that reason the economy has tried to find sophisticated solutions for the requirements of modern society by creating new forms of work. In the last few years, for example, teleworking, part time jobs and job sharing have become interesting and popular sources of income for women.
Now let me give you a short overview on some of these newly created jobs.
Teleworking is an interesting job opportunity for women who have small children and who want to combine work and family commitments without neglecting either the one or the other. Teleworking is a flexible, safe work and sometimes it is also well paid. In addition, it also has advantages for women, who don't want to depend on their husbands because they are insured against unemployment, illness and they also receive retirement benefits.
Moreover, part-time jobs and job sharing are only attractive for women who can afford to have only a small income. Working part time or half time always means lower wages.
Part time workers and job sharers always receive less pay, their holidays are shorter and they don't get the same social benefits like full time workers.
However, there are also many women who try to succeed in the professional life.
There can be no doubt that it is extremely difficult for a woman to reach a top position in an enterprise.
Of course, there are laws which grant women equal rights, but these very often aren't even worth the sheet of paper they are written on.
What's more, women are often denied access to leading positions in management, although they have the same qualifications like men.
advantages
In my opinion women possess certain emotional and psychological capacities, men completely lack.
They are less aggressive than men and try to solve problems in a peaceful way. Moreover, they are good listeners and they can talk everything out.
Especially, these abilities are useful when a woman wants to climb up the ladder of success. In other words, these women possess all abilities which are useful in a leading position.
What's more, if a qualified and clever woman decides for herself to start a career, she will have to face a lot of prejudices.
In fact, the public opinion is that a woman should stay at home and take care of her family.
(Family) (297)
The family is the smallest unit of our society. In other words it forms the basic unit of our social organisation and it is difficult to imagine how human society could function without it. On balance, it has been regarded as a good thing, both for the individual and the society as a whole.
The family is a social group characterised by common residence, economic co-operation and reproduction. It includes adults of both sexes and one or more children, own or adopted, of the sexually co-habiting adults. Thus the family lives together.
In former times, men had the dominant part in the conventional family, because they earned the money. In contrast to that women had to stay at home, they had the responsibility to educate their children and to do all the household chores.
The traditional roles of men an women have undergone dramatic changes in the course of history. The reasons for this phenomenon are plain clear: Women have tried to conquer the labour market, because their families depend on a second income.
Other women have to work, because they live in a nuclear family. In our society there are a lot of single mothers.
What's more, today's woman is under greater pressure than ever before because she is expected to perform too many different roles in our society. In former times, women were only limited to household chores. Nowadays women are expected to be perfect mothers, loving wives and successful career women. Balancing work and family commitments is not always easy.
The negative effects are clear, women continuously suffer from stress.
Work stress
343 words
Everyone has stress, and we all have different stressors.
Each person has their own way of coping with stress. Some ignore their problems while others face them head on. There are four types of stressors and we all experience them at some point in our lives. One of these stressors is hassles. Hassles are a part of everyday life, but if they aren't coped with, they an cause major problems. Another stressor are catastrophes which are unpredictable events that can change your life permanently.
Changing life-situations like for example a marriage or founding a family may also cause a lot of stress. And the final type of stress is a societal stressor. This is a stress that society puts on you.
Stress is a part of everybody's life. Depending on the level of stress, it can control our lives, especially in the workplace. We begin to spend several long hours at work, and thus have less time for other things.
Stressed employees may be unhappy and thus produce nominally. Stress can deteriorate social and family relationships and eventually burn you out; ultimately it can take toll on your health. Organisations need to recognise stress as a problem and decide whether or not to act upon it.
Women are often affected by workstress, because they find it hard combine family tasks and work duties. Balancing work pressures and family responsibilities leaves many female workers feeling burned out. Women who have more education feel more stress, possibly because their jobs involve greater managerial and financial responsibility.
Of course, stress can increase performance and efficiency. However, if stress continues to increase, the level of performance and efficiency decreases. A solution to this problem could be flexible scheduling, job-sharing, and on-site child care.
From my personal point of few It is also plain clear that husbands should help their wives with the household chores, but in general women have all the responsibilities. Stress is cumulative and women often cannot cope with it. It is a matter of fact that many women are suffering from too much stress.
Harmony in the family can only exist when men and women are equal partners.
FAMILY STRESS
Dieser Aufsatz ist informativ, zum Durchlesen und eventuell ergänzen.
Working Mothers Many women today are facing choices that their mothers never had to face. One of these choices is whether or not to go back to work after having a child. This was practically unheard of in the 1950's. In the 1990's it is not whether the mother will or will not go back to work, rather a question of when.
When did the choice become set in stone? Why do the mothers of today have to work outside the home versus working in the home, much like their mothers did. When one thinks of the subject of working mothers, many differing opinions come to mind. What will happen to the child, will the mother have sufficient time to bond with the baby, how will household chores be divided, and so on. When thinking of working women, two models come to mind. One of which is paid employment that has a protective and beneficial mediating effect. Employment protects women against certain negative aspects of being full-time homemakers and mothers, such as monotonous housework, dependence on the male partner for financial and emotional support, increases self-esteem because they are contributing to the world they live in.
These women receive a renewed interest in life because they are in the thick of it. They are living life to the fullest. This model is the one that is constantly referred to as “bad” because it paints the woman as someone who does not really care about the effect of working will have on the baby. In fact, most of these mothers have made this choice with painstaking care. They are constantly feeling what everyone is thinking, and this in turn causes undue stress on these mothers. The other model of the working mom is the one most people think of when discussing working mothers.
This model is one of a woman having too many demands of her -- housewife, mother and paid employee - which may lead to role strain due to fatigue and role overload. The competing demands of such roles may also lead to conflict and psychological stress. Both of these models can be seen in the working mother at any given time. They are simply a fact of life, a by product of the world in which we live. Mothers are constantly jumping back and forth in these roles, striving to find a sense of balance. But is there such a thing? Most of the time the scales are tipped one way or another, there is never a true sense of balance.
I believe this is how the mothers survive. If the scales were balanced, it would seem that they would either be cruel heartless women, simply concerned with their jobs, and caring less about their children. This is simply not the case. It seems that the ideal situation is when the father helps around the house, as to alleviate some of the stress the mother feels from working and the ability for the mother to have a flexible schedule. Role decisions within the family unit need to increase when the mother returns to work. In order for both partners to be happy and feel fulfilled, there needs to be a clear definition of roles with in the family unit.
This is something that should be discussed and decided well before the mother returns to work. In making role decisions, the parents must somehow combine their perceptions of the rewards and costs associated with each role in order to determine which combination of roles will provide them with the best role position. In other words, they need to figure out what they can do best for the family when they both parents work. If this is accomplished, the family will function better as a unit, and stress will be alleviated for all. Another set back that is constantly facing working mothers is that their work is looked upon as optional, it is also viewed as less important than their partner's. When these attitudes are confronted, it makes the transition for the working mother all the more difficult.
The constant backlash from the public makes these mothers feel so guilty that some may even quit just to alleviate the stress. In order for working mothers to feel needed, and to have their work mean something, others need to look upon their work as something substantial, something important, not simply an option. When workplaces provide flexible scheduling and childcare services, these are the first steps in getting working mothers into the workforce and alleviate their feelings of guilt. Many working mothers today are facing the reality of the “second shift”. This is where they put in a full day of work at the office only to come home to start their “second shift”, the one that entails all the housework and the raising of the family. Mothers feel that they have no choice in the matter, in order to be the “perfect” mother, they need to put in this shift, because it is their responsibility.
But why is it their responsibility? Why does the father feel it is his right to come home and relax, when the mother is busy fixing dinner, and disciplining children. In order for the working mother to keep her sanity, the father needs to jump in and help with the chores that were previously held by the homemaker. In this day and age, the ideal homemaker is a thing of the past. Many women today want and desire careers and a place in this world. They want to stand on their own two feet, to become a self-sustaining individual, free of dependence on another individual. When the mother considers the idea of working and raising a family, many things need to be considered.
The responsibilities need to be divided evenly so as to alleviate the stress that will evolve due to all the changes. For the working mothers, understanding is first and foremost needed in order for the psychological well being. They need to feel that their work is important, and necessary, and that they are not sacrificing their child's well being in order to benefit themselves. The danger involved is that the mothers could feel so guilty in working that they feel that they are abandoning their child to the caregivers that they are in contact with daily. The mothers need a support system in order to survive the roller coaster involved when they go back to work. If all these factors are taken into consideration, the transition to working mom will be that much easier for the entire family and the child will not suffer.
(Men and women) (398)
However, It seems that the modern man is facing an identity crisis, because he doesn't know how to act in order to please his female partner. Today's women have extremely high expectations as far as the dream guy is concerned.
In former times a man was supposed to conquer a woman, and she was supposed to defend herself at first and then to capitulate. Later in their family life he had to forage for food and compete with other men in doing so while she had to take care for the children and home. These men were expected to win every fight in life.
Nowadays women prefer softies to machos.
(Softies are popular because they spend a lot of time at home with their families, they care a lot for their children and they always react in a nice and helpful way. What women appreciate most is the fact that they are also good listeners. The traditional macho types cannot live up to the expectations of independent and free women because in general, a macho is a man who rules his family, he doesn't accept anybody else's opinion and he thinks that his wife is a cheap working slave. So we can clearly see that there are many reasons why softies are so popular among modern women.)
This development is mainly due to the fact that social structures have undergone several changes in the last few years. Today's women have more self-confidence than their mothers and grandmothers used to have.
What's more modern women have access to all kind of educational programmes and institutions. Consequently they are now able to fulfil the requirements of the professional world better than they used to do in former times. Women are also no longer discriminated against in industrialised countries. In my view, women lead better lives now than they used to do in the past because they have loving and caring husbands who help and assist them in all fields of private life.
So on the whole it can be stated that the dividing line between the man's and the woman's world have become blurred. This is a development which only few regret and which society tries to cater by giving boys and girls a very similar education.
In fact, both sexes need tough and tender qualities for their different roles in life as lovers, parents, workers or citizens.
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