The Men We Carry In Our Minds: Gender Roles

Ever since the beginning of time, men have been the ones who were faced with heavy responsibilities of going to war, working on the railroad…etc. Women have also suffered a great amount of difficulty and hardship, but not to the extent that men (such as toilers) have. In “The Men We Carry in Our Mind” Sanders explains why men’s lives are often harder or why their lives have been considered harder than the lives of women.

Women have easier lives than toilers because they have more freedom of choice available to them.

For example, A housewife has the freedom of being able to schedule her own chores, but a toiler has to do what his boss tells him to do. Housewives have the ability of taking breaks whenever they want and the ability to postpone certain tasks for a later time, but toilers don’t. Toilers have no right to re-schedule their tasks or take breaks as they wish.

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Another reason why women’s lives are easier than the lives of toilers or soldiers is mainly due to their working environment. Women tend to have a calmer and more peaceful environment than men do. Their environment also tends to be much safer, for example, toilers who work on the railroad have a greater possibility of losing their fingers and going deaf than women who are housewives and stay at home. Also, seeing as housewives are their own bosses, they tend to have less stress than the toilers and soldiers.

The reason for this is there is no one bossing them around and telling them what to do, and no one there to shout at them if they make a mistake.

Sanders mentions that toilers have harder lives than women because of what they work with by stating that working with a baby is much easier than working with a machine. Working with a baby is easier for several reasons. For example, Babies have intelligence so they are capable of doing something on their own, and some of the things they do may entertain the caretaker. On the other hand, men who operate machineries are less likely to be entertained since the machine keeps on doing the same things over and over again.

Furthermore, operating a machine is considered to be more dangerous than working with a baby. When operating a machine, one has to be awake the whole time since the machine doesn’t go to sleep, and if one doze’s off by mistake then that simple mistake may lead to death or serious injuries, depending on the type of machine. Babies can learn to do some things on their own such as going to the bathroom, but machines can not, they are totally dependant on us for all things such as oil changes…etc.

Although occupations such as construction work are nowadays readily available to women, they were not back in Sanders childhood. That is probably why he mentions that men had harder lives than women