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Gender Norms And Gender Socialization

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Research has shown that our gender and race are two factors that heavily shape our lives. While many people in our society tend to ignore how these two factors play a role in their life, I will be further exploring how they have impacted my life personally. With that said I will incorporate how gender norms and gender socialization have shaped my life and identity as a woman, as well as how my race of being a white person has shaped my life chances and opportunities. Gender norms and socialization structured many aspects of my life and allowed myself to have the gender identity of a woman. Over the past 19 years, I have followed certain gender norms that are commonly associated with identifying as a woman. For instance, my appearance has …show more content…

For instance, whenever my mom would be getting ready to go out for the night I would sit in her room and rummage through all of her heels trying on each pair to see if I could walk in them. I was so fascinated at such a young age with watching my mom apply makeup, do her hair, and dress up to go out. This was the gender socialization that formed how I am today with my appearance and led me to follow the gender norms associated with being a woman. In the reading Gender as Structure by Barbara Risman she explains how once you categorize yourself as a woman you are expected to “do gender” and follow the gender norms that correspond to the gender you identify yourself as. By being presented with all of the gender norms at such a young age I carried those ideas with me as I grew older, which allowed myself to “do gender” by expressing my appearance as a typical woman such as by wearing makeup, doing my hair, and dressing …show more content…

She mentions in her article how whites are taught to not recognize themselves having white privilege, yet I believe this puts myself and others at a disadvantage because it seems as if we are ignoring the problems of racism in our country today. In the reading What Is Racial Domination? By Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer, they explain how the word whiteness is associated with all powerful and positive words while blackness is associated with weak and negative words. This right here is an example of how white people, including myself, don’t have to worry or think about certain things such as being questioned from a cop just because of our race, while this could be a daily obstacle for someone of a different race. Recently, I was driving around one night in Iowa City with one of my good friends who happens to be a black male. As soon as we stepped foot in his car he said to me “I have to be smart about my driving because I don’t want to get pulled over again”. After him stating this I started getting confused on why he would get so nervous driving at night, however, he went on to tell me how had recently been pulled over and gotten his car searched just based on the fact that the police officer viewed him as “sketchy”. This single story made me realize how white privilege does work because this is something I

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