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Here's a shocker for ya:
"Women in the United State do not have a status that is comparable to that of men" (Orozco, Lee, Blando, & Shooshani, 2014, p. 67).

Despite the strides that have be made toward equality, women still have not acquired equal status to men .. Why?

Consider the following:
Imagine if you were asked to rank the following by order of "power" in society.

1. Caucasian men

2. Caucasian women

3. Minority men

4. Minority women

I would imagine that many of us would leave the ranking in the presented order and that is still where we are in 2018.   This begs to question again... Why?
Is it due to biological differences, personal differences, or simply because leveling the playing field would cause men to have to share power.  I wonder??  I don't have the answer, but aren't we all "created equal"?

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I chose this topic in light of today's "me too" movement and my own personal journey into adulthood, motherhood, and beyond. I come from a place of "You can never have to many resources," therefore, I decided to use Padlet to pass along the information I collected for this project.

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Equal Pay Act of 1963

Women's Educational Equity act of 1974

Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act (1975)

Comprehensive Education Training Act (late 1970s)

Fair Pay Act of 2009

(Orozco, Lee, Blando, & Shooshani, 2014)

Does anyone else find it sad that we have to pass an "Act" so women can receive equal pay!?
And yet, we still have not reached equal pay.

Consider the following:
The wage gap has decreased less then 0.5% per year since the Equal Pay Act.  Therefore, "at this rate of change, it will take at least 46 more years for women's pay to be equal to that of men"  (emphasis added; Orozco, Lee, Blando, & Shooshani, 2014, p. 169).  In addition, African-American and Latino women earn less then white males, at 69.5 % and 60.5% respectively (Orozco, Lee, Blando, & Shooshani, 2014).

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Looking for The Simple Truth About the Gender Pay Gap

The report and webpage are currently being updated and will be available in early October.

For more information, contact:

AAUW Media Relations
202.785.7756

Every U.S. state has a gender pay gap, and some are wider than others. Share this information with state and federal legislators as a call to action for stronger laws, use it to educate folks in your community about the gender pay gap, and share it with your online networks.

See How Your State's Gender Pay Gap Stacks Up

Share State and Congressional Resources

Sharing with policymakers, local press, and on social media is a great way to start moving the needle on the gender pay gap. Download your state's policy guide, with state and congressional information, for sharing. Read more about working with the media and contact AAUW's staff with questions.

More Pay Gap Resources

Changing the gender pay gap begins with you. Learn more about how you can fight for fair pay.

Back up your advocacy with research by reading about how the gender pay gap affects different people in different ways.

See how we evaluate each state's equal pay laws and take action to improve yours.

The pay gap persists across all racial and ethnic groups, and it is found in every state.

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The Gender Pay Gap by State: An Interactive Map

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Looking for The Simple Truth About the Gender Pay Gap The report and webpage are currently being updated and will be available in early October. For more information, contact: AAUW Media Relations 202.785.7756 Every U.S. state has a gender pay gap, and some are wider than others.

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According to Chodrow (1978) and Gilligan (1982) "female development emphasizes attachment and connection, whereas male development emphasizes separation and independence" (Orozco, Lee, Blando, & Shooshani, 2014, p. 170).

"A more relational focus can lead women to place the needs of others before their own or have difficulty being aware of their own needs (Murphy, 1992)" (Orozco, Lee, Blando, & Shooshani, 2014, p. 170).

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Recently I discussed with a friend of mine why we find it so excruciatingly difficult to put our needs first, especially when it comes to our family. My friend said that if her mother needs her, she will rush to her side, even if her mother hasn't asked for help. She said that she feels super responsible for her mother's wellbeing and happiness, and if she doesn't respond when she knows her mother needs her, she feels terribly guilty. And it isn't just with her mother that my friend drops whatever she is doing and rushes in to help. She does this with her friends as well.

I understand my friend's behavior. I too have a tendency to drop whatever I am doing and help someone out, especially when it comes to my adult children. Both my friend and I have a long history of over-accommodating other people's needs and under-accommodating our own, even when we know that we are neglecting ourselves, and we know that we will feel stressed because we have not done the work we intended to do.

Why is this? Why do my friend and I have this built-in tendency to put ourselves last? And why is this theme so prevalent in the work I do with mothers and daughters? My friend and I, and my clients are intelligent, accomplished women. We should know better, but somehow, when the call comes from our mothers, adult children, family members and friends, the conversation that asks what we need, and what is right and best for us gets pushed aside. Other people's needs override our own because they somehow ring more loudly in our ears, and feel more important in our hearts.

One reason why this happens for so many women is that we come from a long generational female history where women's needs have been deliberately silenced and denied by sexism and patriarchy. My friend and I, and many of my clients, come from families where what our mothers and grandmothers needed was not inquired after or honored. The language that asked women what they felt and needed was not spoken in our mother's and grandmother's day. And because this emotional language is missing, our mothers and grandmothers did not learn how to speak it. They did not know how to ask themselves what they felt and needed, and they did not know how to teach their daughters how to honor their own feelings and needs.

The other reason why this is happening is because of what I call "The Culture of Female Service." This is an umbrella term I use to cover all the cultural beliefs that we have about how females are the nurturing gender, and that it is a woman's role and duty to care-for and nurture their family and community, without needing care in return. This mindset has created the above generational pattern of women's unacknowledged needs. It has created a pattern of self-neglect that our mothers and grandmothers learned to tolerate and normalize, because they did not know anything different.

It is sexist to treat women as if they have no emotional needs, and expect them to over-accommodate other people's needs and under-accommodate their own. But even though it is sexist and wrong, this attitude is widespread throughout the world. It is so ingrained in our psyche and entwined in religious doctrines that we often do not recognize the damage it inflicts on our emotional wellbeing, empowerment, equality and mother-daughter relationships. In my friend's family and my own, this belief forms the norm of how women are viewed. And if we dare to say no and do not come when we are needed, we are treated by our family as being selfish and a bad, neglectful daughter.

Families like ours do not recognize that women have needs of their own. They do not see the juggling act women perform as they balance their own needs with other people's needs and expectations. They do not recognize that it is sexist and emotionally neglectful to expect women to sideline themselves. But when you grow up in a family where women's needs are not voiced or recognized, you do not learn how to recognize or voice your own. You become too comfortable with being last on your to-do list, and you learn to tolerate relationships in which you don't matter. And when you are called on to help out, your generational imprinting kicks in hard, even though at some level you know that you are neglecting yourself and you are in a relationship that is emotionally neglectful of you.

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Why Do Women Find It So Difficult to Put Themselves First?

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Recently I discussed with a friend of mine why we find it so excruciatingly difficult to put our needs first, especially when it comes to our family. My friend said that if her mother needs her, she will rush to her side, even if her mother hasn't asked for help.

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Consider the following:
Women want to be equal.  However according to Horner's theory "fear of success,"  could women actually be part of the problem?  Or, does the problem lie in traditional societal forces?

According to the American Association of University Women (1991), "in adolescence, when traditional society views of women as less competent become salient, girls are much more at risk for loss of self-esteem than boys are" (Orozco, Lee, Blando & Shooshani, 2014, p. 170).

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According to Orozco, Lee, Blando, & Shooshani (2014)":

Women talk to become more intimate.

Men talk to share information.

This notion has important implications to the field of counseling.

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Lesson Planning, Assessment & Classroom Management

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Lesson Planning, Assessment & Classroom Management

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Consider downloading the following resource.

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It isn't what it seems... "Feminist theories have been characterized as more relational, more equalitarian, and emanating from women's experiences, compared to the major theories of counseling,

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Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development

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Gender: early socialization | The Role of Schools in the Early Socialization of Gender Differences | Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development

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Schools are major contexts for gender socialization, in part because children spend large amounts of time engaged with peers in such settings.

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Cultural Values, Worldviews & Communication Styles

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Cultural Values, Worldviews & Communication Styles

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What?!
"Goddess psychology applies the Jungian concept of female archetypes to counseling women.  By exploring the myths of female archetypes, women are able to gain an awareness of the coping behaviors they use to deal with their lower status in contemporary society and release self-blame" (Orozco, Lee, Blando, & Shooshani, 2014, p. 172).

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This approach is key to helping women as victimization and multiple types of trauma occur at a higher rate then that of males.

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As a mother, fiancé, student, volunteer, daughter, pet mom, cook, housekeeper, etc.  multiple role strain effects my life on a daily basis.  I often feel the guilt and frustration of having to address the needs of one role over that of another.

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Research on college students that reflect the issues of double minority students. Although the population may be slightly older, this research provide us with issues to address with these students that could affect future education.

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Due to the high rate of victimization and trauma in this particular population, it is important that counselors are aware of Vicarious Traumatization and the signs and symptoms associated.

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This article addresses breaking through resistance with adolescents in counseling.

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This PDF provides methods to use with girls

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Gender Roles & Their Implications in the Classroom

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Gender Roles & Their Implications in the Classroom

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Gender roles are the patterns of behaviors, attitudes, and expectations associated with a particular sex-with being either male or female. For clarity, psychologists sometimes distinguish gender differences, which are related to social roles, from sex differences, which are related only to physiology and anatomy. Using this terminology, gender matters in teaching more than sex (in spite of any jokes told about the latter!).

Although there are many exceptions, boys and girls do differ on average in ways that parallel conventional gender stereotypes and that affect how the sexes behave at school and in class. The differences have to do with physical behaviors, styles of social interaction, academic motivations, behaviors, and choices. They have a variety of sources-primarily parents, peers, and the media. Teachers are certainly not the primary cause of gender role differences, but sometimes teachers influence them by their responses to and choices made on behalf of students.

Physical differences in gender roles

Physically, boys tend to be more active than girls, and by the same token more restless if they have to sit for long periods. They are also more prone than girls to rely on physical aggression if they are frustrated (Espelage & Swearer, 2004). Both tendencies are inconsistent with the usual demands of classroom life, of course, and make it a little more likely that school will be a difficult experience for boys, even for boys who never actually get in trouble for being restless or aggressive.

During the first two or three years of elementary school, gross motor skills develop at almost the same average rate for boys and girls. As a group, both sexes can run, jump, throw a ball, and the like with about equal ease, though there are of course wide significant differences among individuals of both sexes. Toward the end of elementary school, however, boys pull ahead of girls at these skills even though neither sex has begun yet to experience puberty. The most likely reason is that boys participate more actively in formal and informal sports because of expectations and support from parents, peers, and society (Braddock, Sokol-Katz, Greene, & Basinger-Fleischman, 2005; Messner, Duncan, & Cooky, 2003). Puberty eventually adds to this advantage by making boys taller and stronger than girls, on average, and therefore more suited at least for sports that rely on height and strength.

In thinking about these differences, keep in mind that they refer to average trends and that there are numerous individual exceptions. Every teacher knows of individual boys who are not athletic, for example, or of particular girls who are especially restless in class. The individual differences mean, among other things, that it is hard to justify providing different levels of support or resources to boys than to girls for sports, athletics, or physical education. The differences also suggest, though, that individual students who contradict gender stereotypes about physical abilities may benefit from emotional support or affirmation from teachers, simply because they may be less likely than usual to get such affirmation from elsewhere.

Social differences in gender roles

When relaxing socially, boys more often gravitate to large groups. Whether on the playground, in a school hallway, or on the street, boys' social groups tend literally to fill up a lot of space, and often include significant amounts of roughhousing as well as organized and "semi-organized" competitive games or sports (Maccoby, 2002). Girls, for their part, are more likely to seek and maintain one or two close friends and to share more intimate information and feelings with these individuals. To the extent that these gender differences occur, they can make girls less visible or noticeable than boys, at least in leisure play situations where children or youth choose their companions freely. As with physical differences, however, keep in mind that differences in social interactions do not occur uniformly for all boys and girls. There are boys with close friends, contradicting the general trend, and girls who play primarily in large groups.

Differences in social interaction styles happen in the classroom as well. Boys, on average, are more likely to speak up during a class discussion-sometimes even if not called on, or even if they do not know as much about the topic as others in the class (Sadker, 2002). When working on a project in a small co-ed group, furthermore they have a tendency to ignore girls' comments and contributions to the group. In this respect co-ed student groups parallel interaction patterns in many parts of society, where men also have a tendency to ignore women's comments and contributions (Tannen, 2001).

Academic and cognitive differences in gender

On average, girls are more motivated than boys to perform well in school, at least during elementary school. By the time girls reach high school, however, some may try to down play their own academic ability in order make themselves more likeable by both sexes (Davies, 2005). Even if this occurs, though, it does not affect their grades: from kindergarten through twelfth grade, girls earn slightly higher average grades than boys (Freeman, 2004). This fact does not lead to similar achievement, however, because as youngsters move into high school, they tend to choose courses or subjects conventionally associated with their gender-math and science for boys, in particular, and literature and the arts for girls. By the end of high school, this difference in course selection makes a measurable difference in boys' and girls' academic performance in these subjects.

But again, consider my caution about stereotyping: there are individuals of both sexes whose behaviors and choices run counter to the group trends. (I have made this point as well in "Preparing for Licensure: Interpreting Gender-Related Behavior" by deliberately concealing the gender of a student described.) Differences within each gender group generally are far larger than any differences between the groups. A good example is the "difference" in cognitive ability of boys and girls. Many studies have found none at all. A few others have found small differences, with boys slightly better at math and girls slightly better at reading and literature. Still other studies have found the differences not only are small, but have been getting smaller in recent years compared to earlier studies. Collectively the findings about cognitive abilities are virtually "non-findings," and it is worth asking why gender differences have therefore been studied and discussed so much for so many years (Hyde, 2005). How teachers influence gender roles?

Teachers often intend to interact with both sexes equally, and frequently succeed at doing so. Research has found, though, that they do sometimes respond to boys and girls differently, perhaps without realizing it. Three kinds of differences have been noticed. The first is the overall amount of attention paid to each sex; the second is the visibility or "publicity" of conversations; and the third is the type of behavior that prompts teachers to support or criticize students.

Attention paid

In general, teachers interact with boys more often than with girls by a margin of 10 to 30 percent, depending on the grade level of the students and the personality of the teacher (Measor & Sykes, 1992). One possible reason for the difference is related to the greater assertiveness of boys that I already noted; if boys are speaking up more frequently in discussions or at other times, then a teacher may be "forced" to pay more attention to them. Another possibility is that some teachers may feel that boys are especially prone to getting into mischief, so they may interact with them more frequently to keep them focused on the task at hand (Erden & Wolfgang, 2004). Still another possibility is that boys, compared to girls, may interact in a wider variety of styles and situations, so there may simply be richer opportunities to interact with them. This last possibility is partially supported by another gender difference in classroom interaction, the amount of public versus private talk.

Public talk versus private talk

Teachers have a tendency to talk to boys from a greater physical distance than when they talk to girls (Wilkinson & Marrett, 1985). The difference may be both a cause and an effect of general gender expectations, expressive nurturing is expected more often of girls and women, and a businesslike task orientation is expected more often of boys and men, particularly in mixed-sex groups (Basow & Rubenfeld, 2003; Myaskovsky, Unikel, & Dew, 2005). Whatever the reason, the effect is to give interactions with boys more "publicity." When two people converse with each other from across the classroom, many others can overhear them; when they are at each other's elbows, though, few others can overhear.

Distributing praise and criticism

In spite of most teachers' desire to be fair to all students, it turns out that they sometimes distribute praise and criticism differently to boys and girls. The differences are summarized in Table 1. The tendency is to praise boys more than girls for displaying knowledge correctly, but to criticize girls more than boys for displaying knowledge incorrectly (Golombok & Fivush, 1994; Delamont, 1996). Another way of stating this difference is by what teachers tend to overlook: with boys, they tend to overlook wrong answers, but with girls, they tend to overlook right answers. The result (which is probably unintended) is a tendency to make boys' knowledge seem more important and boys themselves more competent. A second result is the other side of this coin: a tendency to make girls' knowledge less visible and girls themselves less competent.

Table 1: Gender differences in how teachers praise and criticize students

Type of response from teacher

Boys

Girls

Praises

Correct knowledge

"Good" or compliant behavior

Overlooks or ignores

"Good" or compliant behavior; in correct knowledge

Mis behavior; correct knowledge

Gender differences also occur in the realm of classroom behavior. Teachers tend to praise girls for "good" behavior, regardless of its relevance to content or to the lesson at hand, and tend to criticize boys for "bad" or inappropriate behavior (Golombok & Fivush, 1994). This difference can also be stated in terms of what teachers overlook: with girls, they tend to overlook behavior that is not appropriate, but with boys they tend to overlook behavior that is appropriate. The net result in this case is to make girls' seem more good than they may really be, and also to make their "goodness" seem more important than their academic competence. By the same token, the teacher's patterns of response imply that boys are more "bad" than they may really be.

At first glance, the gender differences in interaction can seem discouraging and critical of teachers because they imply that teachers as a group are biased about gender. But this conclusion is too simplistic for a couple of reasons. One is that like all differences between groups, interaction patterns are trends, and as such they hide a lot of variation within them. The other is that the trends suggest what often tends in fact to happen, not what can in fact happen if a teacher consciously sets about to avoid interaction patterns like the ones I have described. Fortunately for us all, teaching does not need to be unthinking; we have choices that we can make, even during a busy class!

References

Basow, S. & Rubenfeld, K. (2003). "Troubles talk": Effects of gender and gender-typing. Sex Roles, 48(3/4), 183-188.

Braddock, J., Sokol-Katz, J., Greene, A., & Basinger-Fleischman, L. (2005). Uneven playing fields: State variations in boys' and girls' access to and participation in high school interscholastic sports. Sociological Spectrum, 25(2), 231-250.

Davies, J. (2005). Expressions of gender: An analysis of pupils' gendered discourse styles in small group classroom discussions. Discourse and Society, 14(2), 115-132.

Erden, F. & Wolfgang, C. (2004). An exploration of the differences in teachers' beliefs related to discipline when dealing with male and female students. Early Child Development and Care, 174(1), 3-11.

Espelage, D. & Swearer, S. (2004). Bullying in American schools: A socio-ecological perspective on prevention and intervention. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Delamont, S. (1996). Women's place in education. Brookfield, MA: Avebury Publishers.

Freeman, D. (2004). Trends in educational equity of girls and women. Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics.

Golombok, S. & Fivush, R. (1994). Gender development. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hyde, J. (2005). The gender similarities hypothesis. American Psychologist, 60(6), 581-592.

Maccoby, E. (2002). Gender and social exchange: A developmental perspective. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Measor, L. & Sykes, P. (1992). Gender and schools. New York: Cassell.

Messner, M., Dunca, M., & Cooky, C. (2003). Silence, sports bras, and wrestling porn. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 27(1), 38-51.

Myaskovsky, L, Unikel, E., & Dew, M. (2005). Effects of gender diversity on performance and interpersonal behavior in small work groups. Sex Roles, 52(9/10), 645-657.

Sadker, D. (2002). An educator's primer on the gender war. Phi Delta Kappan, 84(3), 235-240.

Tannen, D. (2001). You just don't understand: Men and women in conversation. New York: Quill.

Wilkinson, L. & Marrett, C. (Eds.). (1985). Gender influences in classroom interaction. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.

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Gender roles are the patterns of behaviors, attitudes, and expectations associated with a particular sex-with being either male or female. For clarity, psychologists sometimes distinguish gender differences, which are related to social roles, from sex differences, which are related only to physiology and anatomy.

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Ainbinder, D.  (2016, May 14).  Counseling Women [Video File].  Retrieved on October 27, 2018 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwmHFT_QdKg
American Association of University Women (AAUW) (n.d.).  The Gender Pay Gap by State: An Interactive Map.  Retrieved on October 27, 2018 from https://www.aauw.org/resource/gender-pay-gap-by-state-and-congressional-district/
American Counseling Association (ACA) (1022, October).  Fact Sheet #9: Vicarious Trauma.  Retrieved on October 26, 2018 from https://www.counseling.org/docs/trauma-disaster/fact-sheet-9---vicarious-trauma.pdf
Bennett, E.D., Lee, K., Lindahl, K., Wharton, S., & Mak, T.W. (n.d.).  Five Out of the Box Techniques for Encouraging Teenagers to Engage in Counseling.  Retrieved on October 27, 2018 from https://www.counseling.org/docs/default-source/vistas/encouraging-teenagers.pdf?sfvrsn=4
Bigler, R., Roberson Hayes, A., & Hamilton, V.  (2013, December).
Elephant saying "I now have additional questions". Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web.
Elizabeth Fry Society of Peel Halton, The (n.d.).  Building the Resiliency of Girls.  Retrieved on October 27, 2018 from  www.halton.ca/common/pages/UserFile.aspx?fileId=147866
Fear of Success [PowerPoint Slide] (n.d.). Retrieved on October 27, 2018 from http://slideplayer.com/slide/5926755/20/images/37/Fear+of+Success+In+1970,+89+Men/+90+women+asked+to+complete+the+following+sentence:.jpg
Gender: early socialization.  Retrieved on October 26, 2018 from http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/gender-early-socialization/according-experts/role-schools-early-socialization-gender-differences
Goals of Feminist Therapy [PowerPoint slide]. (n.d.).  Retrieved on October 25, 2018 from http://image.slideserve.com/329712/goals-of-feminist-therapy-l.jpg
Hayes, J.A., Chun-Kennedy, C., Edens, A., & Locke, B.D.  (n.d.).  Do Double Minority Students Face Double Jeopardy: Testing Minority Stress Theory.  Retrieved on October 25, 2018 from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230503843_Do_Double_Minority_Students_Face_Double_Jeopardy_Testing_Minority_Stress_Theory
KCPT (2017, September 7).  What is Trauma-Informed Care? [Video File] Retrieved on October 27, 2018 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnBEROaeiak
Meryl Streep saying "I'm a girl". Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web.
Orozco, G.L., Lee, W.M.L., Blando, J.A., & Shooshani, B.  (2014).  Introduction to Multicultural Counseling for Helping Professionals (3rd ed.).  New York, NY: Routledge.
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Sadker, M. & Sadker, D. (n.d.).  Classroom Tips for Non-Sexist, Non-Racist Teaching [Adaptation].   Retrieved on October 25, 2018 from https://www.napequity.org/nape-content/uploads/R1a-Classroom-Tips-for-Non.pdf
Seifert, K. & Sutton, R. (n.d.).  Gender Differences in the Classroom.  Retrieved on October 25, 2018 from https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-educationalpsychology/chapter/gender-differences-in-the-classroom/
United Nations (n.d.).  Goal 5: Achieve Gender Equality and Empower all Women and Girls.  Retrieved on October 27, 2018 from https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/gender-equality/
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In my counseling experience, I have learned that one of the best ways to deal with cultural/gender differences is to ask. One should never assume that they can understand another experiences, therefore, it is important to be willing to listen, ask questions to clarify, and not be afraid to dig deeper into a client's cultural background. By providing the right context and building a strong rapport, students especially, will be more likely to tell you the truth about what is occurring in their lives. When in doubt, when you feel as though you are not getting a complete picture, ASK.  Be willing to acknowledge that you don't know , but that you want to learn. After all, our students will be the best resource we have for understanding future students.