The secret behind 'secretaryzation'

"Do you think that boys are better than girls at using computers?" That was the question they asked us to debate over at school. I was pleasantly surprised when my male classmates did not immediately agree with the statement and go on endless rants about girls not playing enough video games and boys understanding more about how computers work because of their superior innate knowledge.

Instead, it started off with the typical, playing-it-safe, "it depends on the person..." type of answer. "There are girls who use computers more often as there are boys..." followed by the inescapable "Although it is true that boys tend to spend more time in front of a screen". I am not arguing with statistics, nor am I saying that these answers disrespect females and discriminate our species. I, for one, don't mind saying that I don't spend hours on end in the middle of the night shooting monsters, and I don't care that other people do. Instead, I am arguing against the whole point of the question. I am arguing against the taking of these surveys, the statistics describing male and female activities as if they were the only definition of who we are. Against the necessity to divide ourselves in every little thing dependent solely on what's "down there". How many surveys have we read depicting the difference between women and men? How they act in relationships, their performance in school, from their personalities to what they like to eat for breakfast. However, I'm also not saying that there is no truth in this differentiation. If I think from personal experience, I would be lying if I said that there were the same number of grade A students girls than there were boys. But as I said, that's from my personal experience. Not yours, not someone else's, and certainly not every single reader of that survey.

What I'm simply trying to convey is the problem in separating gender in every aspect of our lives. We've been ceaselessly brainwashed, up to the point where our perception of boys and girls is so detailed and specific in our brains that we don't even look to our neighbors to define the word inside our heads. There's a boy with long hair sitting on the bus? Not normal. A little girl playing with toy soldiers? Strange. We're told what's right and what is wrong before we even get the chance to figure it out for ourselves. I'm going to argue that these surveys concluding that 'male adolescents understand computers better than female adolescents' depend exactly on this brainwashing by the media, literature, society itself, convincing us all to act a certain way in order to fit into our very own stereotypes.

Moving on from that, I actually wanted to tackle a different topic. After this short discussion concluding that gender doesn't define understanding computers, my teacher asked, "How do you explain the greater number of men engineers than women?". The answers ranged, and nobody really knew what they were saying. Adding this to the list of many things tumblr taught me better than school, a few days later I found the exact answer to this question.

The post explained the history behind the 'secretary' profession and the

connotations behind its image. One can say that the first form of secretaries were scribes, dating back to the Ancient Egyptians. Back then, this was an esteemed profession that only well- educated and literate men (as women were obviously deprived of the opportunity) could take on. Only in the mid 20th century was this career given the negative image that we associate with it now. And why? Simply because more and more women started succeeding in this branch of work. The more women, the less notorious the job becomes. The less men choose to follow in thier footsteps. The same can be found in other cases, such as doctors and engineers. We'll never stop fighting to be recognized as equals, yet the system just seems to be against us. Once we get to the 'equality' part, as we go to the same universities as men, we gain the same degrees, the same careers... this moment of 'equal glory' is immediately snatched away from us by the thousands of chains society still holds to our throats. Starting from the ridiculous issue of the wage gap. Same job, same education, same daily schedule, yet we are not worthy to be paid the same amount. Duh.

The truth that we have to admit is that once greater numbers of women start entering the engineering field, that is when it will go through the same process of 'secretaryzation'. We won't be paid the same, and we won't receive the same dignity associated to the job as it once was, and eventually men will find it embarrassing to follow the career 'for a woman'. Seems legit, right?