I was recently caused to think about how women might be insulted or irritated with regard to how their roles in society are perceived by men. The stirring point came with a female being questioned by a male about whether she would be the one to reposition a utility trailer as opposed to a male handling the task.

First, I think one must decide whether the female was being questioned as to her abilities. In such a case, assuming the female was capable of the task (and there is no reason to believe otherwise), there would be good reason for her to feel offended. Or, was this a case of the male reacting to what he perceived to be more common.

The ratio between male and female airline pilots, as far as I’m able to determine at this moment, is 19:1. If I was told by a female that she worked for an airline; and I asked her what her job was; would I be out-of-line being more surprised learning she was a pilot rather than a flight attendant? If so, I would be wrong in being surprised that a man is a kindergarten or preschool teacher, when over 97% are female? Surprise occurs with the uncommon.

Since the  1960s-1970’s feminist movement, women have taken on more and more jobs which had been historically held by males. This is not to say that females didn’t do so before, but it was less common. There was an upsurge in the late 60s when folks like Gloria Steinem discounted the value of women’s lives who chose the June Cleaver life (from the TV show “Leave it to Beaver”) of stay-at-home moms. This led to two income families and the marketplace took notice by raising prices to compensate. The traditional family and its values began an accelerated erosion at the same time. There are up-sides and down-sides to almost everything.

Certainly during world wars women assumed the jobs males traditionally performed as the men went off to war. But times change. Now, women fly fighter jets and go into combat as ground troops.  The homogenization of male and female roles can take some getting used to. It makes no sense to take offense at innocent comments made by those who simply aren’t keeping up with the times. One can take heart in the fact they are generally older men whose attitudes will die with them.