McLaughlin 1

Jaylan McLaughlin
Ms. Cassandra Blandford
UWRT 1103
7 October 2015
Proposal
My parents are what one would consider backwards when it comes to careers. The topic
that I chose for my Extended Inquiry project is men on a feminine career path; women on a
masculine career path. I dont have much previous knowledge of this subject but I do know a
few things. I know that historically, people going on career paths outside of their social norms
was frowned upon. This act however, is becoming more prevalent in todays society. There are
still barriers that people face when choosing to go down this route as far as a career is concerned.
After some research, I found that women tended to lean towards jobs that involved beauty, caring
for another, and assistant type jobs. Men had jobs that were usually in the fields of
maintenance, construction, or corporate level careers. I chose this subject because my parents are
the epitome of this topic. My dad had the interest of going down a feminine career path (he
wanted to become a nurse) and my mom chose to go down a masculine one (she became an
engineer for IBM). When I was young, I never really payed attention to jobs and genders because
it was all the same to me. Grown-ups went to work and came back home. It wasnt until I started
going through school that I realized it wasnt quite that simple. This subject interests me because
growing up I always saw guys as police officers and firefighters while women were nurses and
teachers. Personally, when I

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think about my career, I cant see myself doing anything that would be considered feminine. I
feel like it would make me feel more girly but I know that it doesnt make me any less masculine.
However, I still cannot get over this concept when picking a career. I want to know why we
associate jobs with gender. I also what influences a change in these peoples minds that makes
them want to go against the standard. The most important questions I want to have answered are:
What are the reasons people decide to go down a career path thats considered opposite of normal
for their gender? What are the discriminatory challenges that people who do this face? Do
peoples sexual identities significantly shape their decisions when it comes to careers? How are
these people treated in the work environment of their career? I think Ill find the answers to these
questions in scholarly research/studies that may have charts or graphs to display percentages of
each gender in different careers so I am able to compare them. This should help me determine
the social shift in job preference over time. I will also use my parents as a source by interviewing
them. I think it would give me good insight to the minds of people who do this considering they
fall right into the category. Lastly, I plan to use articles from websites to get an understanding of
some journalists opinions on my topic. Maybe they can make statements regarding this job shift
that help me more than just throwing out statistics. If the results of my research are too
numerous, I would narrow my subject down to only be about men on a feminine career path. I
would do this because it is the one I understand the least of the two so it is the most interesting
one to me. If my research doesnt bring up a lot of information, I would broaden my topic to be
about women and men in the workforce and equality. Im sure I could come up with a lot of
information about it considering it is a controversial issue in todays society.