Gender Socialization And Social Stress

Humans are typically classified by one of the two genders which is male or female. A baby’s gender is determined at the time he or she is conceived however it doesn’t become clear until 16 to 20 weeks into the pregnancy. After the sex of the baby has been defined, this is when gender socialization begins. Although one may not realize it simply buying blue items for male babies and pink items for female babies is just where it starts. Males and Females act differently due to the different social roles they learn throughout their time growing up, however by gender socializing children, we are doing more harm than good for them as the get older.
Personal health of a single person is based off a number of circumstances; however, a vast majority

Rarely anyone thinks to examine the concept of gender socialization that plays a huge part in this factor. Researchers have begun to wonder if the kind of psychosocial undertaking has anything to do with the differentiation of stress in males and females. A previous study explored the question above by revealing both genders to psychosocial stress tasks with highlighting achievement tasks or social rejection tasks. “The achievement task consisted of challenging mathematical tasks given under time pressure, with immediate verbal feedback provided by the audience. The social rejection task consisted of a faked discussion about how to get to know each other with two confederates of the investigator who posed as participants but who actually acted in a socially rejecting and ignorant way to the participants and their remarks” (Dedovic 49). The results at the end of the study displayed compelling gender variances. “Men showed significant cortisol stress increases in response to the achievement-oriented mathematical challenge, while women did not. On the other hand, in

Pascoe, he visits River High where a Mr. Cougar assembly was going on. At River High this is a yearly assembly in which six senior boys present a set of skits to win student votes in hopes to be named most popular. Brent and Greg are two of the six senior boys who named their skit “Revenge of the Nerds”. Both boys are all-American water polo players, but they came onto the stage dressed as nerds with matching outfits. Throughout their skit we see them experience stereotypes such as having nerd girlfriends, facing a group of gangsters who forced both of them aside ultimately taking the girls, being unable to lift weights only to be showed up by a female fitness coach, and wearing red mini shirts later to drop them to reveal matching shorts. Brent and Greg later frightened the group of gangsters by throwing chairs and rescuing their girlfriends. According to Pasco, he opens with this scene to “highlight the themes of masculinity I saw during a year and a half of fieldwork at River High School. The Mr. Cougar competition clearly illuminates the intersecting dynamic of sexuality, gender, social class, race, bodies and institutional practices that constitute adolescent masculinity in this setting” (Pasco 3). Each human being has their own independent aspirations, opinions, and feelings despite their gender, but stereotypes are treated as much simpler than they actually are and fail to portray the characteristics of every person of a specific gender.