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Equality is an inevitable topic among today’s society. Everyone of every sex, race, age and class wants to be treated equal, given equal opportunities. This has been fulfilled to an extent throughout the years, but the humanity’s greed fails to cease. Many studies from literary scholars such as Mark Van Vugt, Theodore Greenstein, and Rich Cinamon have been conducted to explore the effects of ignoring gender differences and advantages, with the biggest conflict being between work and family. Women work hard to gain equality in the work force, wanting to work just as men do. However, according to the studies, this can not be entirely fulfilled due to natural differences between the genders. For example, women and men have different strengths in intelligence that will give them strengths and differences in different areas (for more information, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligence). Also, physically and mentally, men and women differ in so many ways, that in a way it’s impossible for one gender to efficiently complete the task of another gender (for more background information on this topic, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology). Also, men and women were educated differently from the early stages of life to take part in a certain role (more information at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_education). Although the society has grown so that women and men are given equal opportunities in every field, studies propose that women and men each have a field in which they can succeed over the other gender. This big controversy did not arise without a reasoning—the topic has been built up over the years (for a general idea, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_construction_of_gender_difference). In Mark Van Vugt, David Cremer, and Dirk Janssen’s article Gender Differences in Cooperation and Competition: The Male-Warrior Hypothesis, the evolutionary scientists propose that human cooperation came from a long history of competition among rival groups. The article mentions a study which concluded that men contributed more to their group when their group was competing with another group, and the females were relatively unaffected. The findings propose that "recent experiments in social psychology have shown that whereas women are more interpersonally oriented, men are more group oriented” (Vugt, Cremer, and Janssen 19). Vugt, Cremer, and Janssen speculate about the evolutionary origins of gender differences and hypothesize that ancestral history of frequent and violent intergroup conflict has shaped the social psychology and behavior of men in particular. The authors support Audrey Lorde’s article by conveying how gender differences formed the society since the earlier times. Because men were physically stronger, they were more proactive towards intergroup threats, whereas women were more interpersonally oriented. Although it seemed as if men were conducting the roles that caused more impact on the society, although the roles might not have been viewed “equal” at the time, the study proves that gender differences helped to build a well-structured society, giving each gender a role according to the necessities of the society. As it was in the history, today’s well known division of work between genders is household tasks vs work outside of home. In Theodore Greenstein’s paper Economic Dependence, Gender and the Division of Labor in the Home: A Replication and Extension, he proposes a study that explains the reasoning behind the gendered division of labor. The study started from a question: “why does household work remain as women’s work even when there’s an increase in the labor-force participation of married women and more women are becoming the one who makes more income in the household?” (Greenstein 322) This study took 4 different approaches to suggest process of factors that affect the division of labor: relative resources, time availability perspective, gender ideology, and the economy dependency model. The relative resources approach demonstrates that housework remains as women’s work because it argues that wives tend to bring fewer resources and therefore are less able to produce an outcome in which housework is equally divided between them and their husbands. According to this approach, the recent increases in the wives’ earnings should have been proportional to the decreases in the amount of housework wives do, but this hypothesis was not supported by the data. The time availability perspective focuses on how the family members’ time is allocated between work and household tasks. According to this perspective, there should be a strong correlation between the amount of time the wife works out and the amount of time she spends doing household tasks. Although studies found that working wives do spend less amount of time doing household tasks, the differences are too small to say that there exists a strong correlation. Gender ideologies convey how a person identifies oneself in relation to marital and family roles that are traditionally linked to gender. Marriage is where these ideologies are demonstrated. This perspective assumes that activities of household tasks reflect the gender ideologies of married couples. The study hypothesizes that the division of household tasks between married couples who hold stronger traditional beliefs about gender and marital roles will have the wife do more household tasks, while couples who have less traditional ideologies have a more balanced division of labor. The fourth approach, the economic dependency model, suggests that household tasks are women’s work because it is more likely that some are economically dependent on their husbands. The dependency makes wives allocate more time to household tasks than the husbands. Brines (1994) found support for this model—a negative relationship between the amount of wive’s income and the amount of time they spend doing household tasks. The results of the four approaches demonstrate that in today’s society, women are more fit for household work, whether they provide an income for the household or not, and men are more fit for taking responsibility for the household’s economic necessities. This shows a clear division of work, a clear difference in the strengths and weaknesses between genders, that works to better the society by the division of work. An issue between the division of labor between genders lies within the work vs. family conflict. Rachel Cinamon and Yisrael Rick, in their article Gender Differences in the Importance of Work and Family Roles: Implications for Work-Family Conflict, describe how in today’s society, both men and women are busy, trying to grasp both work and family. Therefore, there are many work-family conflicts among today’s society, which has been associated with the dysfunctional outcomes such as burnout, decreased family and occupational well-being, psychological costs and physical complaints, and job and life dissatisfaction. A video from CNN, an interview of a working mom Lisa Sylveste (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikKpnLQWCvg), supported that women felt more conflict than men in this work-family issue (Cinamon and Rich, 532). The results of this study were that men fit more in the work profile and women fit more in the family profile. The photo of the father trying to get through his work while in need to take care of his baby demonstrates that the father would eventually value and commit to his work more, merely holding the baby in his hands for safety purposes. The father is unable to give undivided attention to his baby. On the other hand, many career women including those who have nontraditional jobs and paid housekeeping help continue to invest heavily in caring for their children and in tasks and home. As shown in this photo, a working mom, no matter how important her work is, is unable to let go of her baby while taking care of the business. This indicates that women have high work values, but not as high work commitment. This article conveys a point that both men and women put high values in work outside of household tasks but women end up putting more commitment and time to family and household tasks. Therefore, women feel more work-family conflicts in their lives. This proposal is used to support the need for gender roles, because there are obvious gender differences which affect the roles in the society. This does not necessarily mean that men need to work outside and women need to work at home, but this is a good example of how men and women have different strengths and they put more value in different areas, and this should be used to benefit the society. Rich and Cinnamon state that “they theorized that the more important a role is to an individual, the more time and energy that person will invest in it, which will allow less time and energy for other roles.” Their statement supports the idea that gender roles are necessary in this society, because everyone trying to grasp all aspects of this society is not possible according to this study. Although there are many more important areas where gender differences act as a crucial contribution to the development of today’s society, research and studies propose that the work vs. family conflict is the most common issue that would catch everyone’s attention. This conflict is also the one that needs the solution the most, since it applies to the lives of the majority of the population. According to the three studies, men do not work outside of home and women do not focus on household chores and family because one gender is superior over another. This occurs because men and women each have strengths in each field, and the society would run more efficiently if men and women focused on the field they have advantage in.

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