The Transformation from Housewives to Career Women

20年前，更多女性选择待在家中做家庭主妇；但随着时代的变化，越来越多的女性选择在职场中去实现自己的价值。究其原因，首先现代女性越来越过的受过高等教育，其次独立意识和自立的女性越来越多。这样的趋势也导致家庭关系的变化，如何做到家庭和职业之间的平衡，成为现代女性必须面对的问题。

Twenty years ago, if you randomly asked some people about their preference for the two options: working or staying in family, most men would surely pick the first option, while many women would prefer the latter. However, the world has changed quickly during these years, so have people’s attitudes and concepts. Thus, there is now a common case that many women are not willing to be housewives in a traditional way, but to choose to pursue their careers in job market. According to a recent study([1]A report of current changes in modern women, 2013), the percent climbed up to 30% in terms of career women among all the women researched, whereas the number was slightly less than 5 percent in the past ten years.  

As far as I am concerned, there are several reasons that can explain why this trend occurs. For one thing, I believe that it is partly because of the high education women received. In the past, especially before 20th century, it is men’s privilege to receive education. Except those women from renowned families, most of them had no opportunity to be educated, let alone to get equipped with latest knowledge. However, with the development of modern society, the education for women has acquired increasing attention. And it is no longer a rare phenomenon for them to learn knowledge from schools. Therefore, with their abilities in learning and working increased, more and more women has transformed their previous social role as housewives to be a career women.

For another thing, the awareness of independence and self-reliance of women also accounts for this change. Given that they were not satisfied with the life living under the shadows of men, an increasing number of women have been on the way to purse the independence to support them financially. As some of them saying goes, they would be the masters of their life. ‘I can now rely on myself to live a happy life, which means I do not have to turn to men for help’, said a modern career woman online.

Moreover, I think the phenomenon is partly owing to the advantages for women in several industries. Accounting industry, education industry, and public relations industry, just to name a few. Women tend to be talented in such aspects, and then they generally are able to perform better than men do, which, on contrary, can serve as a motivation for them to continue to chase after success in their jobs.

While this trend of role transformation enjoys popularity nowadays, some problems along with occur inevitably. For example, it is not a sole case to hear from some women that they are very busy for their work, and then they have less time spent in their families than before, not to say their personal entertainments. Therefore, more and more of today’s career women are experiencing high-level stress and tend to be easily bad-tempered. 

Nevertheless, it is not the main problem for this trend, while something more serious should not be ignored. Actually, the main problem lies in the their families’ relationships. There is a common sense that men usually worked outside to earn money whereas women did housework at home in the past. This pattern could guarantee the balance between work and daily life. However, after more career women devoting themselves on work, the question in terms of who is to be responsible to take good care of family life has become a severe problem naturally. Now it is difficult to such kind of career women to continue to look after the family, and at the same time, most men follow the traditional path to work outside to earn money. So the methods how to fix the problem has become extremely urgent for those people. 

Recently, some people came up with a solution that can be adopted to handle this problem. From their idea, men can change their social role to be a so-called ‘househusband’, letting their wives replace their positions to earn money to support the whole family. In this way, they think the double win for both the family and the career can be attained.

Quickly when this solution has been spread, totally different voices can be heard from opposite sides. For most career women, it is natural for them to support the idea because it means they can work hard for successful careers without the concerns for their families. However, other people seem to disagree completely about this solution. From their standpoint, it may easily result in a highly unequal relationship between men and women. Since men are no longer the one who earn money for their family, most of them are worried that they may lose the rights to express their opinions in families. Moreover, they will find it hard to adjust the role to get along with their wives, who are now the bread makers.

What’s worse, some people also put forward several concerns for this idea, because they believe that it is not easy for men to take the duty for women to look after their families. The biggest concern lies in the fact that men tend to be not good at housework, like cooking. Therefore, it is likely that they cannot take good care of family tasks, but they will cause more troubles to this aspect. 

For this topic, a social institution in China conducted a survey([2]Chinese Women in Social Transformation, 2013) within the group of 5,000 people in Beijing, the capital of China. The group is composed of the same number of people, with 2,500 per gender respectively. Based on the results, nearly all the men preferred to keep the current situation that men work outside while women put more emphasis on families. To our surprise, a large proportion of women, more than 40 percent, said that they would like to continue their roles in families, to focus on family life rather than working hard for their careers. From their prospect, it is much more harder to succeed in careers. Actually, only a part of women showed their willingness to let their husbands take on their roles instead. 

It can be known from the survey that the idea is somehow not welcome by the public. Also, I think both of the opinions above can make sense in several ways, but it may not be the best solution for this problem, given that both sides cannot reach a feasible compromise. Instead, I think other reasonable measures can be taken.

From the macroscopic degree, government should take some actions to help solve the problem. For example, it would be great if it can provide with modern families with some convenient service. For example, some baby care institutions can be introduced in some communities, which can make sure that children would not be a factor that will affect both their fathers’ and mothers’ work. Also, to build more nursing rooms for the old in cities may help, since the young generations do not have to worry about their parents and other elder family members. At the same time, financial and other forms of assistance can also be given by government to women in need, which can help them release the pressure in some ways.

Besides, as an important part of our society, enterprises are supposed to offer some convenience for career women. Some welfare system such as offering maternity leave for female employees, which can not only give them enough time to spend on their families, but also make it possible for them to return to working positions later on. For those companies, although some loss will be caused, its human-friendly system can help win a good branding, which is an important part of goodwill.

Even just for the career women and men themselves, it is advisable for them to hire some babysitters to solve the problem. Quite similar to babysitters, there are some existing babysitting communities, which seem to be a good place to send children to. Maybe in the short term, a certain amount of money has to be spent. But the money cost would turn to be worthwhile for careers in the long term.

To sum up, it is not so difficult for career women to strike a balance between work and family life as it was thought to be. For one thing, mothers are just as entitled to career advancement as fathers. Working mothers have every chance of being good mothers, as proven by countless single mothers who are doing very well working and caring for their children at the same time. For another thing, for those people who are still worried about the negative effects upon their families, they should be aware that the amount of time spent with families is not what counts most, the quality of it is. There is absolutely no need to sacrifice what you have a strong desire about to stay with families all the time. It is not a single-answer question, which you have to choose one option. In contrast, my overall advice for career women is to try different effective means to achieve the balance from both sides. 

Source:
[1] Reform & Opening, A report of current changes in modern women, 2014
[2] Journal of Fujian Commercial College, Chinese Women in Social Transformation, 2013
(All the thesis are written in Chinese and translated in English as reference)