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Gender aspect in socialisation
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Gender aspect in socialisation
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In 2011, Peggy Orenstein published Cinderella Ate My Daughter to examine how princess culture impacted girlhood. “What Makes Girls Girls?” is a chapter in this book that delves into the implications of sexual difference and whether or not it is rooted in biology. By studying various research projects conducted by professionals, Orenstein discovers that, ultimately, a child’s environment plays a key role in behavior. To pose the question of whether the concept of gender is inherent, Orenstein references several examples that have sparked a considerable amount of discussion about how a child’s gender expression is molded by upbringing.
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
The definition of morality is principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour. Young children do not have normally have a belief system and take their position from their parents/carers. Children learn what is right and wrong from the carers around them and the reactions they get from their parents/carers towards their actions. For example, a child how breaks their toys will be told off by their parent and will know that their actions were wrong.
The documentary “The Pinks and the Blues” and the podcast “Can a Child be Raised Free of Gender Stereotypes” discuss the unconscious gender stereotypes and assumptions that our culture places upon children. Children are enculturated with ideas about who they should be, how they should think and behave, and this enculturation has distinct effects upon the child psychology and way of living in the world. The viewer is left with the question: Is it possible to raise a child without gender stereotypes? “The Pinks and the Blues” states that gendered treatment of children begins within 24 hours of the child’s birth. Descriptors for male infants and female infants were different, with boys being labeled as big, strong, and alert while girls were labeled as being delicate, petite, and inattentive.
In this article, Penelope Eckert addresses many important findings about the correlation between language and gender. To begin with, she discusses the pursuit of conversation. She states the nature of conversation between men and women and how conversation is highly structured which includes many communicative conventions (Eckert, 2003). These communicative conventions serve many purposes such as, regulating talk, it governs how many people can talk at once, it also governs when it is the right time to speak and the appropriate duration when speaking (Eckert, 2003). Overall, these communicative conventions aid and play in providing routines and organization as to when to initiate and end conversation (Eckert, 2003).
If you are a woman, then you were probably deeply offended in one way or another by the title of this essay. Sadly, this is the way that some people still think in this day and age. The essay “Learning to be Gendered,” by Eckert and McConnell-Ginnet, at one point states “Gender is the very process of creating a dichotomy by effacing similarity and elaborating on difference, and where there are biological differences, these differences are exaggerated and extended in the service of constructing gender” (Eckert). Today, gender bias has become a disease throughout society. We say we want to cure ourselves of it, yet very little is actually being done, especially with television and media.
From the moment of my birth, I was declared a girl and my parents immediately attempted to raise me to be every aspect of my gender, from behavior to beliefs. In sociology, this is known as gender role socialization, which is the process of socializing boys and girls to conform to their assigned genders’ attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, values, and norms. My parents taught me how think and behave like a girl through the way the way they dressed me, how they did my hair, and the toys they allowed me to play with. However, having been raised with a brother, I also picked up on some of his supposed gender roles. I am exactly who I am due to the way I was socialized by my parents and others around me.
Aleah Smith Response Paper 2 In a society ruled by the gender binaries between men and women, Ursula Le Guin challenged these ideas in her novel, The Left Hand of Darkness. Le Guin’s goal was to eliminate gender to discover what it truly means to be human. This book was a thought experiment in order to open the eyes of society and reflect on the constructs in place. However, Le Guin’s literary choices inhibited the reader from truly seeing Grethen as the sexless planet Le Guin hoped to portray.
Criticism of heteronormative institutions such as marriage is often met with resistance and struggle in America even today. A little over a year after Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), queer sexuality has been accepted, but polyamory is still considered a taboo. Within our borders society has declared that men may lay with men, but only if it is with each other. Fifty years ago, the environment was quite similar. In France, to criticize the hegemonic institution of marriage was still deemed radical.
As a child, it is parents who imprint their own expectations of what a model child should look like. Gender is often used as a stencil to guide the behavior of the child and introduce the distinctions between feminine and masculine roles. Females are typically given dresses and Barbie’s to embrace their femininity while males, are typically given Legos and athletic gear to display their masculinity. As the child grows, teachers and other authoritative figures guide the child by this same stencil of what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. Males are expected to exude confidence, strength, and courage.
These joyous new grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends then go out and buy everything that they think the new parents will need for their new boy or girl. Although this common gesture is only a form of congratulations, it can force the new child and possibly parents into a form of gender stereotyping. Girls get the cute pink clothes and dainty stuffed animals. While boys receive the blue boxes full of things that society views to be more masculine. Even though babies aren’t yet old enough to analyze what these colors and objects mean, as the child grows up, it views these things to be normal: girls are to be associated with pink and gentleness, while boys are to be associated with the color blue and more physical activity.
When planning my lessons, I need to focus on incorporating gender-sensitive activities. In “The Gendered Brain” courses, I learned to ask myself, “Did I CAP my lesson?” CAP stands for Cognitive, Affective, and Psychomotor. Cognitive, also known as the Neomammalian, is where the frontal lobe allows learning to take place at a higher level. Affective, also known as the Mammalian, is associated with emotional response.
The process of learning about different sex roles from different factors of society is commonly known as socialisation. It is the responsibility of parents and others, holding equally important positions in a child’s life, to guide the child in sex-typing and identity formation with the same sex. How they behave with girls and boys helps the child develop their gender identity. Secondly, culture also instills sex stereotypes amongst children and aids in their identifying process. Gender role can vary according to the social group to which a child belongs to or associates themselves with.
Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (1990) and Bodies that Matter (1993) works are fundamental texts of study for this thesis. Both works are deeply influenced specially by French structuralism and post-structuralism schools of thought. In Gender Trouble, Butler deconstructs the established, normative, Western construction of the Gay/Straight and hetero/homosexual binaries to discuss the lack of perspective regarding the heterogeneity of sexual identity and diversity as it is present in twentieth century society. Her arguments focus not only on the production of binaries and their rigidity from a sociological standpoint, but also on how the use of these binary structures can affect us in processes of sexual identity construction because of interpretations and constraints coming from various fields such as: the
Sexual Identity In “Gender Socialization and Identity Theory” by Michael J. Carter, he asserts gender identity originates with the family. The writer maintains that families are the agents of identity socialization. Carter argues that beginning with infancy children are taught how they are expected to socialize primarily by their families, simply due to the continuous contact with one another, boys are dressed in blue while girls are dressed in pink. The author plainly elucidates children gain knowledge of homophily through playmates by self-segregation into homogeneous groups.
