The Russian language has different endings for the past tense verb, depending on whether the subject is masculine, feminine or plural. This means you have to match the gender of the verb to the gender of your subject. For example, the word for "snow" is masculine, so if you said, "Snow fell," you would use the masculine form of the verb.
While learning proper Russian grammar is important, that's not the point. I'm studying Russian in Latvia right now, a country where many people speak Russian. Latvians tend to have more traditional values. Most of the girls here studying with me have either been asked if they have a boyfriend, if they're planning on getting married soon or both. Just to give you an idea of the culture here.
We were working on past tense one day in class, and my partner and I wrote the sentence "The doctor gave the patient medications." In English, no problem. The doctor could be anyone — it's not really important. But in Russian, we used the feminine version of the verb "gave," and our teacher repeated the sentence back to us as a question. We didn't think anything was wrong with it, so we said it again, and this time she just repeated the verb, emphasis on the feminine ending for a doctor.
It wasn't a big deal. She didn't correct us. She was just surprised to hear the feminine ending for what is traditionally a masculine profession. I honestly don't think anyone else caught it, but since I want to become a doctor myself, I did. My first reaction was disbelief. No one else noticed it, so was I wrong? Had we just conjugated the verb wrong? Or was our teacher really shocked that we assumed the doctor was a woman? If anything, you could also say she assumed the doctor was a man.
Women have undoubtedly advanced in America much more than other places in the world, but this was a subtle reminder that women aren't expected to be in typically male professions. And that's the problem. Stereotypes are more subtle than blatant sexism, which means they can also be more dangerous. If a young girl wants to be a doctor, but she only ever sees pictures of men as doctors growing up and only has male doctors, she might start to doubt herself. After all, she hasn't really had any female role models to look up to, so what if girls aren't supposed to be doctors? It can be disheartening.
It's not just helpful for girls. Young boys who do something that's traditionally considered "girly" get made fun of or are questioned for their choice of activities. Dancing comes to mind. Dance recitals are usually full of little ballerinas in their tutus and buns, but very rarely do you see little boys plie-ing across the stage. Ballet dancers are some of the most athletic people in the world, but our culture especially puts emphasis on football, basketball and baseball for young boys. Dancing is just too "girly."
We've come a long way, but there's always room for improvement. I want to be able to practice medicine in a culture where no one thinks it's strange. Let me get this straight, though; I am in no way advocating for equal outcome. That's ridiculous, and it would mean professions would start to fill quotas with less qualified people just to get a certain amount of diversity. What I do want to see is equal opportunity and more open mindedness about what professions people choose.
It shouldn't matter what gender you are. As long as you're passionate and competent, that should be good enough. Next time you catch yourself making snap judgments based on stereotypes, take a second to think. First, congratulate yourself on being aware enough to recognize that, then try to open your mind a little bit.
