Perhaps you’ve seen this riddle before:
A father and his son were both in a car accident. The father was killed, and the son was rushed to the hospital, where he needed an emergency operation to save his life. The surgeon examined the boy before the operation and said, “I can’t operate on this child. He is my son.”
How can this be?
Well the answer, quite simply, is that the surgeon was a woman. Whether you guessed it right away or took a moment to ponder (like I did when I first heard it!), what’s important is not that the right answer was found, but that this is considered a riddle in the first place. A riddle is defined as a “question or statement requiring thought to answer or understand; a conundrum”. Why would we need to stop and think about whether or not the surgeon is a woman; why would that be considered difficult?
The answer to that is equally riddling, but has some very plausible answers. Our society’s view of gender roles tends to place high-status, high-earning, and high-education level jobs in the realm of “men’s work”. Although we might say to each other than we don’t subscribe to certain gendered ideas, sometimes what we have internalized is more pervasive than we think.
A study published in the journal “Sex Roles” shows just that. Participants were timed in how long it took them to identify stereotypical roles with certain genders versus counter-stereotypical roles. What was found was that it took longer for participants to go against the stereotype. Thinking stereotypically seems to be the default, even if we are willing to take the time to mentally correct ourselves!
Which ultimately makes me wonder: if the above riddle replaced “surgeon” with “nurse” would it still have been a riddle?
For more information on gendered perceptions check out:
- a great overview of all the studies conducted on Masculinty/Femininity
- Andrew Kimbrell at MENSIGHT Magazine asks “What is a man?”
- a look at “Gender Stereotypes and Sexual Archetypes” with lots of pictures, illustrations and diagrams
