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Are Gender Roles Affecting One's Gender Identity?

1352 Words6 Pages

One of the greatest labels a person wears in today’s society is their gender. If you are a male or a female dictates how you should speak, dress, act, and even which jobs you should have. Certain expectations are given to both males and females. Gender roles control many areas of our lives today. We live in a society that tries to dictate who you should be, and what you should do based on your gender. Gender identity should be whether we internally identify as male or female, but instead is often only defined by society and our anatomical sex. According to Yarber and Sayad, (2012) a person’s sex is determined by genetics and anatomical sex characteristics that identify whether a person is male or female. Gender is defined as cultural …show more content…

One’s culture plays a significant part in gender-role learning. Yarber and Sayad, (2012), explain that the cognitive social learning theory promotes learning by observation of others. It is based on a beliefs that consequences control actions. This theory emphasizes that our identity is molded by what is expected of us. For example, that we would stay away from behaviors that would be frowned upon and act according to what is acceptable in society. A few years ago I decided that I wanted to be a short-term missionary. I had made plans to quite my job and serve in Costa Rica for three months. As I enthusiastically communicated my desires to my pastors they were a bit discouraging. They said “it’s not safe for a young women to be traveling alone.” I was shocked I never considered my gender to be such a huge factor. I went on the trip anyways and was glad that I didn’t let anyone’s comments discourage …show more content…

I believe gender-role stereotypes are most seen in marriage. The man is supposed to be the breadwinner and the women is supposed to perform all the house duties. Even with more women in the workforce, they are still expected to perform the majority of the chores at home. When I first got married I worked at the refinery and would work approximately 70 hours a week. Then I would go home and cook dinner and prepare our lunches. I remember calling my mom telling her how exhausting it was to have to do everything. I remember she told me “well, you wanted to get married. That’s the woman’s job.” I still do not comprehend why a woman is assigned certain duties and men others. I recently decided to return to school to complete my bachelors degree. Working full-time and going to school full-time is overwhelming at times. This is one of the times that gender role stereotypes has most affected my life. Although I have my own aspirations, such as finishing school and volunteering, being a wife is supposed to come first. I recently had to turn in an essay and I was one minute late to turning it in, and missed the deadline. At this moment I felt so frustrated because although I wanted to put school first, I have to make sure that my house is clean, that I have gone grocery shopping, and that my husband is fed first. A women is always expected to support all

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The women were expected to create a happy home, guard the religion, and the morality of her family. The unmarried and married women who tried to seek work outside the home faced limited employment opportunities because of their gender. Women were expected to only focus on domestic duties and her role were limited to continue living in the man’s world. Women roles were expected to be in line with the culture and norms set by the society. The American culture perceived that women were not intellectually and emotionally stable to be involved in the complex world of work and, therefore, women did not take up leadership and political roles.

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In the following essay, we will explore how your sex and gender affect your identity in society. Let us take a look at the word identity. According to the dictionary of psychology on alleydog.com, a persons identity is defined as their “own sense

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Society disapproved of women working outside of their homes. People believed that women were not smart or strong enough to maintain a proper job. Magazines, including Esquire and Life Magazine, highlighted women in the workplace and wrote about how working outside of the house would “jeopardize their children’s mental and emotional health”. Women only had one goal in life which was to fulfill the role of being a good housewife. The housewife stereotype took control of suburbia and created a predetermined role for women.

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Women were often viewed as nothing more than a wife/mother. And being a wife did not have the same connotation as it does now in our free country. However even if you aren’t a wife or mother, you should know that both of those rolls are very taxing. Women are very emotionally mentally and physically invested in these roles.

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The Impact of Culture and Gender Roles Heather Richardson-Barker Drexel University Society has clearly defined boundaries between what is considered to be male or female. The development of an individual’s gender role is formed by interactions with those in close proximity. Society constantly tells us how we should look, act and live based on gender, as well as the influence of family, friends and the media have a tremendous impact on how these roles are formed and the expected behavior of each gender role. The term Gender, as defined by the United Nations, includes the psychological, social, cultural, and behavioral characteristics associated with being female or male. It further defines acceptable

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Women are expected to be the caretakers and the maids for the home. Any deviation from these roles are seen as unusual and are treated differently because of it. Even if the women do have careers that are as hard and tedious as their male counterparts they are expected. If we the second shift is to be less burdensome for women, first we must rid ourselves of the ridiculous expectations placed on

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Gender is something that is brought to the attention of people well before people are even brought into the world. Take for instance, when a woman finds out that she is pregnant and is about to have a child. The first question that that women is asked is “What are you having?” In doing this we are automatically emphasizing the importance of being able to identify whether or not to buy “boy” things or “girl” things. As a society we deem it important for each sex to practice a set of “norms” of how to behave via that sex.

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Gender Roles are viewed as behaviors norms based on the individuals sex. Gender roles often deal with the expectation’s associated with males and females. To begin with, gender roles are seen a lot of in today’s society, weither it is seen in a movie or a television show there is a perception that females are the weaker sex. If we look at males and females roles in cartoons, we can see those two genders are represented differently regarding their roles. Majority of the time the male characters have been more important and viewed as, independent, strong, smart, athletic, and more important than female characters.

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Gender is it a concept or is it made apparent by our DNA when you are born or does it change as you grow older? Often gender is something that society defines at birth. According to society certain gender roles are pre established when we are born. The majority of society believes that if you are born to a specific gender you should adhere to the gender roles while other people believe that instead we may be born to a gender but it does not always decide if you are that gender. Science has proven that just because you are born a male or female does not mean that you mentally see yourself as that gender.

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Females are definitely more restricted by conventional gender roles. A woman is expected to do all the dirty work around the house, while a man is expected to go out and earn the money for his family to support them. A woman, by social definition, is confined by the walls of her home, never being able to leave or to make something of herself. Conventional gender roles state that a woman must attend to her husband and take care of him by cooking his meals, cleaning up his messes, and making sure he is happy.

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This theory was developed by Alice Eagly in the 1980’s as an effort to understand the causes of sex differences and similarities in social behavior (Eagly, Wood, & Diekman, 2000). The theory evolved from the content and ideas that people have about women and men and the scientifically documented sex differences in social behavior and personality between the sexes (Eagly, et al., 2000). This theory argues that the beliefs people hold about the sexes are derived from their observations of the roles performed by men and women and thus reflect the sexual division of labor and gender hierarchy of the society (Eagly, et al., 2000). Therefore, this theory focuses on two social structural aspects of the gender relations; a gendered division of labor and gender-based hierarchy, in which men generally have more status and power than women (Rudman & Glick, 2008). The theory suggests that these structural factors determine the content of socially shared beliefs about men and women as well as observed gender differences in personality, skills, and behavior (Rudman & Glick,

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Educated, married men with full time homemaker wives in the USA are less egalitarian in their views than younger, unmarried, more educated, high status men with full-time employed wives. The labour market participation of women has increased in the past few decades in industrial societies. This development has the potential to influence beliefs about gender roles and the division of labour housework, and child-care. Most of the published studies regarding gender differences in gender-role beliefs have found that women generally hold more egalitarian gender-role beliefs than men Majority, talks are the about feminist movement, have led made efforts to change aspects of society prevailing in gender roles. At last I would like to say that gender and sex are not interchangeable terms, neither are gender development and sexual development

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In today society gender roles have changed, most mothers work household are shared though not shared equally. For instance, in today, a man can assemble the furniture, and women find themselves with the duty of cleaning it. Nevertheless, the marriage type does not determine the duties or roles to be taken by the man or the woman, but the gender roles agreed upon by the two spouses depending on their schedules or even other factors like financial status of a spouse that means the responsibilities are not specified to any gender (Eileen,

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“Gender is fundamental to the human experience, and society has created such a distinction between the two that the lack of neurological information regarding the differences between the developing sexes creates a remarkable paradox” (Glaeser, 2011, p. 2). Males and females are thought of to be vastly different in terms of “their personality, abilities, interests, attitudes, and behavioural tendencies” (Zell, n.d., p. 3), as well as their “interruption, risk taking, helping behaviour, leadership styles, body image, intelligence, occupational stress, jealousy, and morality, among other topics” (Zell, n.d., p. 9). However, it is society’s strict gender roles that seem to keep males and females from having close to anything in common with each other. “Gender roles involve the degree to which people adopt stereotypical masculine versus feminine traits, behaviours, and interests, rather than their gender identity (i.e., whether they identify as male or female”

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There are many expectations in gender roles historically. Gender roles vary from different traditions. In this world, and for the past decades, the world had an expectation that men had to have some source of income to bring into the house to live and have a job no matter what. The world just did not have expectations for men, there were women expectations of that woman took care of the house, like cook, clean, look after the children, serve food after their partner came back from work. Women have been portrayed to be weak, as men have been proven to be more masculine and having those strong characteristics.

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