With International Women’s Day just recently passing on March 8th, a topic I’d like to touch base on is the ongoing phenomenon of undervaluing women’s work and passions. From academic fields such as education, psychology, and nursing being deemed “less important” or “less difficult” simply because they are female dominated disciplines, to the belittling of interests that seem to have more female interest—such as crochet and crafting—reducing such careers and hobbies to something minimal whereas male dominated professional fields and hobbies are deemed more important and considered harder is harmful and reductive towards women’s work ethic and achievements.
In light of the Winter Olympics, the U.S. men’s hockey team’s recent actions towards the U.S. women’s hockey team was what prompted me to write about this topic. In a video where the men’s team can be seen on the phone with President Trump, they’re celebrating their gold medal victory and accepting an invitation from the president to the State of the Union address. Trump then makes a joke about having to invite the women’s hockey team, who were also celebrating a gold medal victory, stating “I do believe I would probably be impeached.” Instead of defending the women’s hockey team, or simply just not giving him a reaction, every single one of the men in the locker room laughed.
It’s incredibly sad because these two teams were both representing the nation and both brought home gold—this could’ve been an opportunity for the men’s hockey team to have defended their fellow hockey players, but instead it turned into a divide. On the other hand, I think it’s worthy and a bit laughable to add the fact that before this year’s win, the last time the men’s hockey team won gold in the Olympics was 1980, meanwhile, the women’s hockey team last won gold in 2018. Yet, only one of these teams gets their success undermined and undervalued. Not to mention, the women’s team has recently won more gold medals compared to the men’s. I think what made the situation even worse was, when asked about it, the men’s team captain, Auston Matthews, stated he doesn’t “like to get political or get into that kind of stuff.” When you’re on the phone with the president and he completely disregards the hard work of your peers—and you stay complicit in that sort of ignorance, going as far as to laugh along—you don’t get to say you “don’t want to be political”.Â
Another recent example in pop culture of this phenomenon is an interview of TimothĂ©e Chalamet, where the actor stated “…I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera, or things where it’s like, hey keep this thing alive even though it’s like no one cares about this anymore.” While this wasn’t a direct hit at women and their work, I think the subtle implication is pretty clear. Ballet has always been a female dominated practice, and saying that no one cares about one of the oldest performance arts anymore just completely disregards the passion, dedication, and hard work that many put into its craft. A statement like this is even more disheartening coming from a figure like Chalamet, because you would assume that as a fellow performer, he would have at least some sort of respect for the dance instead of dismissing it like he did. Again, while it wasn’t an overt attack on women, his undermining of ballet is on par with people undermining fields like nursing, education, psychology, etc. When people undervalue these fields, they aren’t directly saying it’s because they’re female dominated, but the overall act of minimizing these fields contributes to the idea that passions and professions that are usually occupied by women are somehow less important or less difficult.Â
Whether it’s in sports, classrooms, hospitals, or performances, the dedication and effort women put into their craft or hobbies seems to be disparaged no matter what. It’s easy to brush things off and say, “It’s not that deep”, but this only further contributes to shaping and contributing to a culture where women are seen as secondary and their achievements unimportant. Gender really shouldn’t dictate what achievements are worthy of respect; hard work is hard work and passion is passion. As basic of a concept as it should be, it unfortunately isn’t. Respecting the dedication and effort women put into their jobs, hobbies, and passions shouldn’t be something revolutionary, it should just be standard.
