Because the Chalkboard won't allow me to comment on comments

Honestly, it begins in childhood and stems all the way up through late adulthood experience (which I know of through secondary sources since I am only in my late 20's and it would be unfair to extrapolate on experiences I'm too young to have had). While I'd hate to overgeneralize, it's still highly common for young women to be raised as caretakers and boys as pioneers. Take the toy industry or the advertisement of certain colors and clothing. From near birth, our gender roles are neatly laid out for us. Some rebel later in life, some families consider their homes color and gender neutral--though it goes far beyond homelife, but most are still comfortable conforming inside the lines. In brother and sister dynamics, from a young age, certain behaviors are encouraged for men and not for women, and it really doesn't have to do domesticity, although those factors can be included. Such qualities and attributes as assertiveness, ambition, competitiveness, roughness, horsesplay, and the questioning of authorities, are areas which young girls are more often than males, scolded, dissuaded, and shown altnerative methods. The allowances for this behavior in males far excedes that of women, and it parlays into a grander scale when the individuals start making decisions for themselves. What to eat, body shape and size, style and neatness of clothing, alcohol consumption and risky behaviors, use of language, hubris and ego-inflated expressions (especially in the area of sports). Tolerances and excuses are consistently made for males, and criticisms and chastising are designed for women. This expands into adult years wherein women will be expected to compromise their career as opposed to their husbands, to take care of the children and home, or to slow down and nest while pregnant. To do anything but would be a cut to a woman's desire to be a good mother. This is not every person out there, this is simply an overview of the majority. And yes, it is changing slowly, but it is still very much everywhere. When a family is considered, a woman may have to take fewer hours to accomodate having the baby, but what about when she wants to go back? Does she take fewer hours and a lesser salary, and recieve flack because she chooses to have someone else watch the child while she is at work? Men are less likely to move for a wife's job, whereas the wife and family will move for the male. In divroce, women generally end up losing most of what they had, because they postpone their own lives to put their spouses first, stemming back from a childhood cultivation of thinking of yourself last while men put themselves first (except when following a social custom such as holding the door or allowing a woman to pass ahead on foot). Do we know if the male resents that he is expected to do this, or do we know if he thinks its justified because he pulls in a higher salary and it isnt much to contend with?

I'm not saying things haven't gotten better. Have we progressed much since 1950? absolutely. Is this the case in each and every American and European family? Absolutely not. However, I didn't even get into the tougher issues like a woman's sexual prowess, physical and emotional abuses, and our so-called civil rights. Just because laws are passed stating that equality must be enforced does not mean that all people accept or abide by them. When slavery was abolished, it still went on for decades, taking on different forms, undermining the very laws which eradicated them. Racist groups were formed in secrecy and made every attempt to intercept the acception of such laws. Bigotry, bias and stereotyping were the infrastructure of the new enactments. Professionals in trusted fields were dominated by men, who used their intellect and statistical findings to incite public persuasion to show that woman's brains were smaller, less active or to endorse that a woman's menstration caused periodic dementia. This was not in a third world country. It was right here, and while we have grown  significantly, and enough research has shown how wrong the theorists and scientists were, men still held tight to their authority, because to adopt any new notion, however much the old was disproven, would be to give up that superiority which comes with possessing power and subsequent control.