Gender discrimination at work connecting gender stereotypes Essay Assignment Paper

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(APA format)

This is scenario:

A
father and his son are out driving. They are involved in an accident. The
father is killed, and the son is in critical condition. The son is rushed to
the hospital and prepared for the operation. The doctor comes in, sees the
patient, and exclaims, “I can’t operate, it’s my son!” How could this be?
Elaborate. Provide thoughtful discussion about the topic.

This was my response:

Stereotypes are generalized people’s beliefs about a specific
social group regarding their characteristics or traits that they possess or
share. Stereotyping simplifies the social world because it minimizes the amount
of cognitive processing people have to do when they encounter new people or
situations. This statement by far means that people assume a bunch of
characteristic and abilities that a certain group could infer, leading to
social categorization, while ignoring the differences between individuals. For
instance, in this scenario, the first thing that came to my mind was that the
doctor was a male. Because the society has placed women to be in a different
category from men, they view them as kind, warm and less competent. Gender
stereotype relates to differences between men and women concerning their traits
and characteristics (Branscombe & Baron, 2016). Because of this gender stereotype, women are ranked low in the
society that is why I could not come to think that since the boy’s father had
died in an accident, the doctor who went in shock and refused to operate on the
patient was the patient’s mother.

An individual can process information regarding a certain
stereotype more easily than that which is not related to it to reduce the
cognitive effort that would enable them to perceive others differently. In this case, the surgeon is
the mother when she said, “I cannot operate, and it’s my son” since his father died in the
accident. But because the society has categorized women as inferior and
incapable of holding high positions in the community such as doctors, it
becomes difficult for people to think of them differently like in this scenario. Women experience barriers when
it comes to their careers because of gender stereotypes; and this is referred
to as glass ceiling (Branscombe & Baron,
2016). Even when they break these barriers, the stereotypes still stay
because they receive less favorable outcomes.

Part 2

Respond to following posts:

The first time reading this statement I was very confused as to
how the father could “magically” come back to life and see his son laying there
needing and operation. My mind automatically went to thinking that the Doctor
was the father, but it could not be possible since that statement said the
father was killed from the accident. After thinking in depth, it only made
sense to me that the doctor was the child’s mother. Up to today there is still
a lot of stereotyping against women such as women being the more “inferior”,
because I see it happening in my household all the time with myself and my
brother. My brother is older than me but certain things that my parents allow
my brother to do they don’t allow me to do. For example if my brother wants to
go out and stay out late he could with no questions asked, but if I ask my
parents to go out and stay out a little, they ask the world of questions and
when I tell them they don’t do this kind of investigation when my brother goes
out my parents say its because “he’s a boy and he can protect himself”. This is
a prime example for stereotyping not only girls but women in general. I am sure
when I get to my brothers age my parents will still be this protective of me
because “I’m a girl”. Since this riddle is from many years ago It is safe to
say that during this time period women were not really looked as “smart enough”
or even had enough education to be able to be a doctor or any of those
positions that held a sense of “value”. Chen and Hanson stated “The category of
“woman” has long been understood (though less today than in the past) to be
quite separate and in many ways inferior to the category of “man”: women were
fragile, emotional creatures that lacked wisdom and were unfit for many “manly”
tasks and vocations.” (2008, p. 1114) This quote was in response to the riddle
that was given in this week’s discussion that merely proves my point that women
were in fact “inferior” and “lacked wisdom” that it took in order to become a
doctor, at the time that the riddle was originally published.