Page 132 - South Mississippi Living - October, 2019

so long stereotypes
BREAKING TRADITION: Men Entering Professions Dominated by Women
story by Lauren Rackley photos courtesy of Peyton LeTard and Stacy Simmons
Think back to when you were a child. If you’re a woman, did you babysit? If you’re a man, did you mow grass? Often, these gendered career expectations that begin when we are children follow us as we grow older and result in a gendered division of labor. Suddenly, there is “women’s work” and “men’s work.”
< Stacy Simmons, a licensed massage therapist.
> Peyton LeTard, an ICU nurse at Memorial Hospital at Gulfport.
New technologies and overseas production have reduced the need for manufacturing work, which has been traditionally understood as a masculine career path. As a result, more and more men have started careers in service work, including early education teaching, social work, and occupational therapy. These jobs have traditionally been dominated by women because they were understood as feminine jobs that focus on nurture and service.
Stacy Simmons, a licensed massage therapist
and instructor at Blue Cliff College, worked in the shipbuilding industry for 20 years before beginning his career in massage therapy. He believes that “if you’re going into your job for the right reasons, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a masculine job or a feminine job. It’s can you do the job.”
However, he does recognize the difficulties that he faced entering a field traditionally dominated by women. As a black man, Simmons worked hard to contradict the assumptions and stereotypes he knew he would face. He said, “You have to know how to maneuver speculations to achieve your goal.”
These assumptions about careers and gender are engrained in us through media, our friends and family, and popular culture. When discussing his career as an ICU nurse at Memorial Hospital at Gulfport, Peyton LeTard stated, “People generally assume when they see me in scrubs that I’m a physician.” This is because there are still many cultural assumptions that equate nurses with femininity and doctors with masculinity.
Although more men are entering fields traditionally labeled feminine, the breakdown of gendered divisions of labor is still moving relatively slow. LeTard said, “it can be easy for a nurse, who is the only male during
the shift, to be singled out or left stranded in workplace socialization.”
By confronting the gendered division of labor, we are forced to recognize the ways culture has taught us what roles we are supposed to fill, and, consequently, how much those roles are valued.
132 SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living • October 2019
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