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Gender roles today
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Argumentative essay on gender bias in sports
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Rosemary Okumu PSYC 1113 – Section 11/18 /2016 Gender Gender is the state of being male or female. Male are thought to be adventurous, aggressive, strong whereas females are to be affectionate, attractive, shy and sexy. While I highly identify with my feminine gender characteristics, at times l possess masculine characteristics like confidence, ambition, and sometimes aggression.
Burak defines gender socialization as “the process of interaction through which we learn the gender norms of our culture and acquire a sense of ourselves as feminine, masculine, or even androgynous” (Burack, 1). According to Burack, people of different genders behave differently not due to biological factors, but due to socialization that teaches individuals to behave in a particular way in order to belong to a certain gender. For example, women may tend to be nurturing, not because they are biologically programed to be caretakers, but as a result of society teaching them through toys and media to act as mothers. In this way, gender becomes a performance based on expectations rather than natural behaviors or biology, a phenomenon called “doing
Quotation: “Once it was simply assumed that gender was socially constructed but firmly rooted in biological sexual differences. Now there are many feminist scholars who argue that such differences are made important and central because they keep the male-dominant power structure” (Anderson and Young 206). My Questions: Why are women portrayed the way they are in the bible of other sacred texts? How did gender roles form?
So what happened? Why did neither of these two women get elected? Hillary Clinton, who early in the race was the Democratic hopeful, and was neck and neck with Obama in the poles. Why did Clinton lose so much political ground during the primaries? For Sarah Palin, she is only the second woman to ever be nominated as a vice presidential candidate on a major party nomination.
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.
In social psychology, we talked a lot about gender roles. At a young age, you are exposed to them regardless if you know it or not.. Starting at a young age, these children learned what they were supposed to be like. Little girls are dressed in pink dresses and bows, while boys are dressed in blue jeans and a t-shirt. Baby girls are talked to in calm, soft voices and told how precious and beautiful they look, while baby boys are told how tough and strong they look in louder aggressive voices.
Racism is a prevalent theme in the book "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett. Set in the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi, the story follows the lives of black maids working in white households and the relationships they form with the young white privileged women they work for. These women have dedicated their lives to raising white children and caring for their households. Despite their hard work and dedication, they are treated unfairly and with disrespect because of the color of their skin. The maids are paid less than their white counterparts and are not allowed to use the same facilities as them.
Over time, societal values have evolved along with a society's sanctions, and normalities. These changes have affected many topics like marriage,racial relations, and gender roles in a society. these changes affect the way a society functions and succeeds. Gender roles in society have been affected over time due to an evolution in societal values. For instance, before the second world war, women had to stay at home and do housework.
So how exactly is this still possible? Well it can be shown that early-on gender roles & stereotypes given to men and women at young ages can affect their future decisions and ambitions. However, males can be affected by gender roles in a very stereotypical way, “Girls tend to conform less strictly to gender-role stereotypes than do boys, possibly because there is greater pressure from parents and teachers for boys to adhere to the masculine role”(Gender Roles and Gender Differences). The stereotype in this fact itself is the idea of men having to fall behind the masculine role. What exactly does masculine mean?
Children and young adults are identifying with gender roles at a young age due to mass media. Children develop within a society that is gender-specific when it comes to social and behavioral norms. These come from the family’s structure, how they play with others and by themselves, and school. Girls were expected to be more passive while boys were to be more aggressive and expressive with masculine behaviors. “Before the age of three, children can differentiate toys typically used by boys or girls and begin to play with children of their own gender in activities identified with that gender.
Although gender roles have changed over time, where males and females have become more equivalent , a certain level of behaviors and tasks which are acceptable for men and women still exist today. Alternatively of women and men steadily playing the gender roles they always play, they should change it around and try to do something divergent when being defined in a category of gender roles. However, women are becoming equal to men in our generation. For instance , would be men can take supervision of the children when the women go to work. Women are more maverick that they don’t need to depend on a man.
Gender roles, also known as gender stereotypes, are social and cultural norms on how females and males should conduct themselves within a society. Every culture has certain roles both genders are expected to follow. An example of this in traditional American culture is a man becoming a doctor while a female becomes a nurse or men being the hard workers and women being stay at home mothers. Gender development researchers, similar to other developmental researchers, focus on questions of change over time in gender related subjects (Ruble and Martin 1988). Research suggest that children are socialized to understand gender stereotypes at an early age.
For example, girls should play with dolls, while boys are forbidden to play with dolls, unless they are male action figures. Or it is ok for boys to become mechanics, but it is not suited for girls. Children gradually learn the do’s and don’ts of being a female or a male. It is constantly reinforced on a daily basis through the media,
Although some people believe that nature affects the gender identity, others argue that, based on the education an individual receives, it is actually nurture. For example, John Moore, a teacher at a female-only school, says, “My findings suggest that, in some senses, the single-sex school is strongly feminist” (Moore, 2005). On the other hand, many societies teach the children gender stereotypes to try and limit them from becoming against what the society feels is appropriate. Gender roles or stereotypes are “a set of qualities, behaviors, and attitudes that are considered appropriate for males and females based on their biological sex” (Whalen & Maurer-Starks, 2008). Most of the time, these stereotypes are taught and explained to the children in the early stages of learning, since as mentioned above, gender identity is most likely detected after the child is two years old.
This article, “Gender Development Research in Sex Roles: Historical Trends and Future Directions” was written in a 2011 on NCBI, which points towards how the gender roles are different and how the society views them. This text includes the study of gender development, sex roles and trends over the past 35 years. Today gender roles, especially in the United States, are different from what they were in the past. But there are still many differences in roles of sex in many places around the world where women are considered less than men. They are not allowed to go out without a man going along.
