Gender is a very complex term beyond the ordinary constructs that society assigns to it. In a well-pronounced western culture, gender is largely viewed in two binary concepts, the perspective of male and female. When a child is born, people care so much about the genital structure more than other gender spectrums that the child might poses. The fact that the nature of sexuality places the new born in the two worldly known categories, we are okay with our new born. Society has strongly stereotyped gender to the extent of approving the two known binaries of male or female. Any other gender outside male or female is not easily accepted in the society. Whereas, we perceive gender in the image of male or female, there is so much to gender especially in our constantly evolving world than just being identified as male or female.
The society is evolving and shifting the established constructs in the society. In the eyes of gender spectrum, gender is no longer about the sex of a child. There are more multifaceted issues to gender that seek to eliminate the binary concept of male and female that the western culture has popularized around the world. This paper would argue that gender does not exist in the context of sex designation of brain and body, mosaicism, and anatomy variations.
In a widely evolving world as the 21st century, nothing is same as we used to know them. The perpetual changes that are occurring in the 21st century seek to shake every popular construct out of its
‘‘Sex’ is a biological term; ‘gender’ a psychological and cultural one’ (Oakley 1972, p.158). To further expound on Oakley, ‘sex’ refers to the biological framework a person is born with while ‘gender’, an identity that we acquire as a result of social and cultural influence. Sex is naturally constant throughout an individual’s life whereas gender is a variable. Via gender socialisation, men and women constantly learn to adapt to society’s expectations associated with their biological form as society changes. This very concept clearly elucidates the dichotomy between sex and gender. Therefore, coming from such a perspective, it is true to say that we are born as human beings (males, females or intersex) who formulate socially accepted gender identities as a product of social and cultural implications (Abbott, Wallace & Tyler 2005). Conventionally, societies associate the male and female sexes with their definitions of masculinity and femininity respectively.
In society these days there is a noticeable difference in the treatment of men and women, the most common examples would be found in the social, business and culturally convention realms. These ways of life have double standards in many different ways. There are many ways to convey the ways of discrimination towards women by men.
There are hundreds and thousands of athletes all around the world but the main problem in the athlete world is gender inequality, women are not shown equal as men. They are discriminated in many ways such as pay, employment opportunities, value of women 's sport, media coverage etc. Despite the federal law passed called Title IX that “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination." there is still gender inequality women are considered less than men. No matter what happens people will always have inequality against men and women because of the environment they live in and how they were raised. Women are
Gender is actually a set of rules, customs and traditions assigned to people of a particular sex. Gender is not biological but sex is. Rather, according to Lorber, it is influenced by our society and our culture. By proving this claim, Judith Lorber has put forth the example of the man and this example is efficient in distinguishing “gender” as a practice than as an innate attribute.
Gender and gender roles are a somewhat complicated idea to understand. Contrary to popular belief, gender and sex are two different things in that “gender is not inherently nor solely connected to one’s physical anatomy” (“Understanding Gender”). When parents automatically assign their child a gender based on their sex organs, it leaves very little room for change later in the child’s life, because children born with female sex organs are not necessarily girls, just as children born with male sex organs are not necessarily boys. Rather, gender is based on mindset, personal identity, outward presentations, and behavior of the individual. Binary genders, or the broadly
After the birth of newly born babies, a specific gender is engraved on them based on their sexual dimorphism – male babies are assigned as boys and female babies are assigned as girls, and another category generally involves intersex babies. According to the scholars gender does not have natural existence but instead it is just a concept that is constructed by cultural and
Gender inequality plays a critical role when it comes to social progress. As a woman,
Throughout many studies, researchers have said that gender develops from families, which is part of the social construction in children. According to Coltrane and Adams, Gender is defined as “To what it means to be a man or a woman in a specific time and place” (Coltrane and Adams). People in this world think that gender is automatically part of biological sex, but according to Coltrane and Adams, it is not a direct result of biological sex. The term is defined as “to refer relatively distinct biological differences between male and females such as genitals, hormones, and chromosomes” (Coltrane and Adams). For gender it is also social and it refers to how a person thinks that someone should look, act and feel (Coltrane and Adams). On the daily life, people will usually assume that a person “is” the gender that corresponds to his or her sex: females are feminine and males are masculine (Coltrane and Adams). In addition, gender also describes how the typical man and woman are supposed to present themselves. A man presenting himself as masculine and a woman presenting herself as feminine in particular cultures (Coltrane and Adams). In other words how women should act and how men should act.
The authors suggest that gender identity transitions through various stages much like cognitive development. As children age from toddler toward more maturity into adolescence they move from less gender awareness towards a complete awareness of differences in sexual make up. Typically many of us have been socialized to participate in groups, dress and play with toys that are gender specific. Some examples that explain this is the way in which we bring babies home from the hospital. Girls are dressed in pink and boys are dressed in blue. This continues
I never really put much thought into the difference between gender and sex. I, like most people, would have assumed that they were the same thing. After reading Multiple Choice: Gender, Orientation, and Sexual identity by Heather Corina, it made me think about my perception of these two words. I also now believe that they are in fact different. This article put sex and gender in a different perspective to me. Gender is characteristic of a person that they choose to identify as. This may or may not be different then their actual sex, which is the anatomical characteristic of people that we were born with (Corina, 2007). The broader aspect of this article challenged my way of thinking rather than just one small aspect of it.
When It comes to gender spectrum, most people believe that when the sex is determined for a baby, they come up with a preconceived notion of the child’s gender. However, gender is not just based on the sex of the child, there are a few more qualities that are to be taking into consideration. How one identifies themselves, the emotions and experience one goes through in their own body, and also gender expression all play a role and how one can identify their gender. Gender is the state of being male or female but is also considered a social and psychological reflection of one’s self-image that cross references with one’s sexual nature.
Children learn from a incredibly young age that mothers and fathers are different, that girls and boys play different, and both grow up to be mothers and fathers. This article explains how the human psyche is branded; “The input is from family, friends, media, religion, and even politics” (Diamond, 2000, p. 46). Sex is referred to as human’s biological make up, either males with a penis, females with a vagina, and in some rare cases a mixture of both. Use of the term ‘gender’ was first introduced to most people at school
“Gender” is a social construct that is developed solely by our society and the early developmental stages of an adolescent’s life. By introducing youths to the roles, behaviors, expectations and activities that correspond with males or females we give a clear guideline of what is accepted from a young male or female. An individual however can identify his or her gender based on their own system of beliefs without corresponding to their natural biological sex. Our lives are shaped by our true biological identities but the influence of the world and society is enough to define what a male and what a female truly is to an individual.
Throughout the past few decades, the gender inequality discourse have became a dominant feature of international, national and local policy debate on the subject of economic development. This policy concern has emerged as an area of scholarly research which seeks to show that improving gender equity leads to economic growth.
A topic that has been heavily discussed throughout this course is the difference between sex and gender. For past several centuries the word gender has been used particularly as a substitute for sex and vice versa. It has proven to be quite a useful term in the past, however, distinctions between the terms sex and gender, in instances where one word would be more proper to use than the other, have not been fully recognized. In most instances, particularly casual conversations, the words sex and gender are substitutable. They are used as synonyms to describe defining characteristics of an individual without altering the direction of the conversation. In scientific, medical, legal, and even religious contexts the use of the terms lead to misperception and lack of understanding. Although many people believe that sex and gender are essentially the same thing, it is evident that they are inherently different defining characteristics of an individual and that each plays a separate, yet impactful, role in defining who we are. In simple terms, sex refers to a person’s anatomical orientation and gender refers to the characteristics that the person, society, or culture defines as either masculine or feminine. This paper discusses the meaning of gender and sex, as defined through society, and delves into the fundamental differences between the two terms.