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Analuisa Alonzo
Professor Beadle
English 115
1 December 2016
The Unwanted Sex Gap
Research has shown that women are less likely to major in a STEM based career, as well
as being less likely to be employed in that field. STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology,
Engineering and Math. When most people think of mathematicians they think of: Albert Einstein,
Thales, and Isaac Newton. They do not think of Sophie Germaine, Isabel Maddison, and
Elizabeth Dickerman. Important women are often forgotten when it comes to STEM fields
because people automatically assume that STEM is only for men. The gender norms that society
places on women has affected the female genders ability to choose a career and maybe the
ability to get hired by an employer to be slim. This can be demonstrated by the recent research
people were able to conduct and it can be implied by visual aids such as magazine
advertisements.
Advertisements in magazines have been undermining women by the way they perceive
the female gender as compared to how they perceive the male gender. The Vogue magazine
advertises both men and women fashion. On the left page of the advertisement, you see a topless
woman with a bottle of wine gushing all over her. While on the right page, you see four welldressed men in what seems to be a study room. You can clearly assume that the formally dressed
men are advertising suits. The advertisement the woman is in, is not clear as to what it is trying
to sell. At first I assumed that she was advertising the wine because it seemed to be the main
piece of the ad. It turns out that they are trying to advertise the necklace, towel and, pillows in

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the background. The advertisement for mens clothes is very simple and straight to the point,
while the womens advertisements is confusing and off topic.
The ads make it seem as if men are the intellectuals and women are supposed to be the
wild and fun gender by placing the men in a study room full of Law books and the woman on
what seems to be a yacht with wine gushing on her. In other words, women are not serious and
unfit to be in serious careers. It restates a certain gender norm that is being expected about
women; women are supposed to be skinny, busty, a certain color tone, have a flat stomach and
always with a smile on her face. Women are expected to look a certain way in order to be
considered pretty when men have no expectations at all in this ad except for them to be smart.
The men in the ad are of different height, different hair color, different skin color, and different
facial structures. Generally speaking, men are shown in groups while women are singled out in
advertisements. Because of this many women have experienced depression because of the
pressures that society has about the way women should be dressed, how women should act, and
how women should physically look.
Extremely profusive and overbearing gender norms have stuck like glue in our society.
According to Hubbard in her article, Rethinking Womens Biology, in the early nineteenth
century scientists have claimed that women were not able to be educated because our brains are
too small (Hubbard46). It is true that womens brains are smaller than that of mens, but that all
depends on the height of the man and woman. Since men are larger and taller than women, their
skulls have to coincide with that of their body structure and if you have a big skull, naturally
your brain is made to fill up the space to the size of your skull. Therefore, size and intelligence
are not linked. Ruth Hubbard states that norms are self-fulfilling prophecies that do not merely
describe how we are but prescribe how we should be (Hubbard 47). This is essentially stating

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that norms tell us how we are supposed to be and thus the everyday norms describe us and
because norms describe us in that way, we are more likely to fit the description since most of us
are trying to fit in the crowd.
One of the major ways we, as human beings, organize our life is by gender (Lorber 21).
Advertisements are not the only place that divide women from men and push gender norms
towards women. According to Lorber, women were still divided in the Marine Corps by having
to wear skirts and makeup with bright lipstick at military balls (Lorber 27). The article,How
stereotypes impair womens careers in science, written by Ernesto Reuben, Paola Sapienza, and
Luigi Zingales, mainly focuses on the sciences fields and why women tend to not have a career
in it and why they minor in the field as opposed to majoring in it. In order to support their
hypothesis, the researchers/authors chose random subjects that were not able to opt out of the
studies and asked them a series of questions. Connecting back to the visual aide I have explained,
the article is supporting the claims made about the advertisements. Women are more likely to
chose fun careers as opposed to the more intellectually stimulating career. It teaches the
narrow minded sense of womens identity, roles, and jobs in society.
There isn't enough diversity when it comes to STEM careers and no matter if women do
apply for those certain jobs, employers may be inclined to hiring males more than females.
Women are perceived to be less talented for the arithmetic task, (Reuben). According to the
study, college-graduate men outnumber the women in nearly every science and engineering
field, (Zafar). The same study has shown that men are more likely to boast about their
performance than women which then leads men to get hired by the employer. Because women
underestimate their performance, they create a sex gap. This sex gap is shown by the wages
women and men are being paid for the same exact job. Full-time women are paid seventy-seven

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cents for every dollar full-time men make. This allows men to feel powerful and free to express
their own identity based on their intelligence while women are more likely to be hired by a male
employer because of their looks or apply to a more sexually driven career. There have been
instances where women directly change the gender dualities by demanding recognition as
women while performing masculinity (Denissen). According to Denissen and Saguy, women
compromise less than 2% of the construction trades workforce like electricians and sheet metal
workers. The 2% of women that are in the construction trades workforce, are branded as lesbians
and thus, not fully women. This relieves men because they do not want to have their
masculinity to be compromised by women in the same fieldwork.
Society has implicated many norms on women to the point that women struggle to find
jobs. Not only are women struggling to find jobs but most women are not able to identify
themselves because of the limited choices in majors. Women feel pressured into nor majoring in
the STEM fields because is it highly populated with men. Advertisements help support this
thinking by the way they decide to have women and men in ads. Although this may be the case
for most people, many others believe that no type of advertisements affect the way women
choose their majors or their ability in being employed.

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Works Cited
Denissen, Amy M, and Abigail C Saguy. Gendered Homophobia and the Contradictions of
Workplace Discrimination for Women in the Building Trades.
doi:http://gas.sagepub.com.libproxy.csun.edu/content/28/3/381.full.pdf.
Hubbard, Ruth. Rethinking Womens Biology. Composing Gender, edited by Rachael Groner
and John F. OHara, Bedford Spotlight Reader, 2014, pp. 46-52
Lechtenberg, Kendra. Ask a Neuroscientist: Does A Bigger Brain Make You Smarter?
neuroscience.standford.edu/news/ask-neuroscientist-does-bigger-brain-make-you-smarter.
Lorber, Judith. Night to His Day:The Social Construction of Gender. Composing Gender,
edited by Rachael Groner and John F. OHara, Bedford Spotlight Reader, 2014, pp. 1934.
Reubena, Ernesto, and And Paola Sapienzab. Ernesto Reuben. How Stereotypes Impair
Women's Careers in Science, www.pnas.org/content/111/12/4403.full#content-block.
Zafar, B.Project MUSE - College Major Choice and the Gender Gap. Project MUSE - College
Major Choice and the Gender Gap, muse.jhu.edu/article/521434.
Picture: https://goo.gl/images/BQVNX1