By Rojina Kandel
In the American dictionary, the breadwinner means the person in a family who works to provide the money that the family need to live on. Work and career can be a weird topic to discuss especially for women. Many women feel more comfortable discussing personal topics such as family, hobbies and social issues than they do their work. It exposes the reality that collectively, women struggle to value their own work. That, of course, stems from our larger cultural issues of valuing women as equal workers. The Center for American Progress has stated that; 42% of mothers are sole or primary breadwinners, and 22.4% are co-breadwinners (making up 25-49% of family income). Gradually, women are stepping up to provide for their families financially. Yes, it may be out of necessity (if they are a single mother), but that’s beside the point.
Typically, till now also women are taken as citizens who are less capable of becoming the breadwinner of the family in comparison to men. When it comes to the question of why can’t women perform the role of being the breadwinner of the family, people have various reasons for that like; women are weak, they are unable to earn enough to look after the entire family etc. But this stereotype perception has changed these days as people have become familiar with the fact that women are equal to men in the context of earning money and they can also become the breadwinner of a family.
Most children who grow up in the United States in the 21st century will be raised in households in which all of the adults work. They are most likely to be raised by a single working parent or two married parents who are both employed and only a minority of children will grow up in families with a full-time, stay-at-home parent throughout their childhood. However, there is still a deep and often unconscious belief that women’s earnings are not central to their families’ economic security. This same belief too often has created a tolerance for gender-based wage disparities that have resulted in fewer resources for families. Unfortunately, these views are still too widely held through research that has consistently proved them wrong for years – and gives workplaces and lawmakers little incentive to pass policies that support working families.
The Center for American Progress first published a report on mothers as breadwinners for their families a decade ago, in a chapter titled “The New Breadwinners” in the Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything. This groundbreaking research, authored by former CAP economist Heather Boushey, was among the first of its kind, quantifying women’s increased labor force participation since the 1960s. Boushey’s work has been replicated over the years by a number of different authors, sometimes using slightly different variables and definitions.
Although the women in this world’s economic female breadwinner families may often wield relatively greater power in the family, the commitment of the man to the family is likely to be weaker than in the equity type of persistent female breadwinner family. Hence, it can be concluded that even though in today’s globe, there’s a higher trend of women being the breadwinners of a family, there are lots of challenges along with opportunities in front of women while being the breadwinner of family.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect People’s Review’s editorial stance.
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