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, nursing, etc. being deemed as less important or less difficult simply due to the fact that they are female dominated fields to belittling interests that also seem to be more female dominated, such as crochet and crafting, reducing these hobbies down to something minimal whereas male dominated professional fields and hobbies are deemed more important and considered harder.
With the Olympics having recently happened, 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.
I just think 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 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 a group of people–and you stay complicit in that sort of ignorance–going as far as to laugh at it, you don’t get to say you don’t want to be political.
Another recent example in pop culture of this phenomenon, is an interview of Timothée Chalamet, stating “…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 field, and saying that no one cares about this anymore just completely disregards the passion, dedication, and hard work that many put into this craft.
I feel like a statement like this is even more disheartening coming from a performer like Chalamet, because you would assume that as a fellow performer, he would have at least some sort of respect for the craft instead of disregarding it the way he did. Again, while it wasn’t a direct hit on women, I think his undermining of ballet is on par with people undermining fields like nursing, education, psychology, etc. When people undervalue this field, they aren’t directly saying it’s because it’s a female dominated field, but the overall act of undervaluing these fields contributes to the idea that passions and professions that are usually dominated by women are somehow less important or less hard.
Whether it’s in sports, classrooms, hospitals, or performances, the dedication and effort women put into their craft or hobbies seems to be belittled 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.