Gender Roles

What is gender roles really about? What really makes it so important in our day to day lives? Well to first understand gender roles, you have to understand gender. The dictionary definition of gender is "either the male or female division of a species, especially as differentiated by social and cultural roles and behavior:" While Gender roles are more complex, they are something that society has shaped us to look at in a certain way. The sociological perspectives all help justify gender roles. They are seen as essential to society's makeup because the assigned roles work together. Men are, also, seen as dominant and women as submissive. These views are what make individuals in society act a certain way towards a gender because of the beliefs

When a person is born, they are either male or female. Before they are born, their parents are going to set goals and expectations for them. Sometimes parents will name their child after a famous celebrity hoping they will be just as great as them. Each gender will have different ways they should live their life in order to stay within their gender role. Some will meet the expectations and other will not. That does not make them look less of their gender, they will just be expected to meet them. Over the years, some gender roles have submerged and others have risen above. They will be able to show how the gender roles are supposed to be in jobs, education, and marriage and also how they can benefit from stepping out of the gender roles.

In many shops, there seems to be an obvious separation between boys and girls items, for example, the birthday cards, books, clothes, and toys. This is shown in a variety of ways the boy's items are mainly the color blue and the books have pictures of either action figures, superheroes or tools. Whereas the girl's items are mainly the color pink. The books show pictures of fairies, princess, and Bratz. The cards also have the theme of the color pink for girls and blue for boys. The girl's cards have a lot of sparkles and pretty pictures whereas the boy's cards are covered in camo kind of illustrations and also have action figures on the covers. The children's clothes are separated into sections where there are labels for the boy's clothes and labels for the girl's clothes. The girl's clothing is all pretty and pink, it is covered in sparkles. Whereas boys clothing has camo patterns, blue colors, and pictures of action figures.

In present day all around the world, society has certain expectations for the actions and behaviors of males and females. There are many factors in our everyday lives that contribute to the gender norms that society has set. This essay will discuss how situations in life can play a part in how people treat other people based on their gender. It is believed that males are the leaders of our world, but in present day woman can do as much as men can do. From The Journal of Marriage and Family, Hu states, “Differentiated gender roles in adulthood are rooted in one’s gender role socialization. In order to understand the persistence of gender inequalities in the domestic sphere, we need to examine the gendered patterns of children’s housework time.”(2015, P.1). Gender roles are society’s expectations of the proper behavior, attitudes, and activities of males and females that they must be taught. These roles define how females and males are viewed in society, their household, and workplace. In The Journal of Sports behavior by Hardin, he states, “Although gender role differences from biological and “Natural” exists in popular consciousness, research has long demonstrated that instead, many are long time socially constructed… Individuals understand their gender because they are given names and treated in particular ways, such as dress in pink for girls and blue for boys, that reflect social construction of gender. Bandura's social cognitive theory is key in understanding the factors in socialization”(2009, P.3). Bandura's theory of of social cognition is that behavior, environmental events, and cognitive factors are the main keys that shape attitudes and actions of an individual. Although, gender roles play a very big part in our society, specific genders are treated differently while dealing with peer influence, media influence, as well as employment.

Your _____ depends on whether you were born with distinct male or female genitals and a genetic program that released either male or female hormones to stimulate the development of your reproductive system.

Societies today are highly affected by the way people are believed to act. Gender roles are created by society, and they are a way to define how a gender should or shouldn't act. In “Answers” by George Singleton, there is a husband and wife thinking about getting divorced, and they begin answering questions in a book, and realize that the other turned out to be less manly or trustworthy, than they believed to be. In “Public Relations” by George Singleton, a man and his wife are out eating with his boss and his wife. While eating he gets fired for talking about how women should act, and how they will amount to nothing without an education. In both of these stories, men and women act differently than the stereotypes put on them by their

Puritan and Early American society separated the male and women gender roles into two categories; men owned and undertook all the responsibilities while women were not allowed to posses anything leaving them with the job of keeping the household in order . Gender roles helped establish family structures due to the fact that families in the 1800’s were essentially the basis for all the institutions. For instants, institutions like the government, church, and the community relied on the gender roles to keep their associations in routine. Women and men were almost always separated for day to day tasks or meetings arranged by their towns. Quaker meetings were just one of many communities that separated the men to discuss judicial

There are billions of people in the world with many different ethnicities, backgrounds, religions, and beliefs. There are many families with their own characteristics and ways of running their home, whether they are Hispanic, Native American, or African American. Perhaps they are in upper class or maybe they live below poverty. They could be a Muslim or Catholic and perhaps they believe education is not the key to success, but the real key is hard work. Regardless of these variations, one factor that plays a role in all aspects: gender. When a person is born, they are automatically dressed in either blue or pink. The newborn is either boy or girl. Have people thought about why girls wear dresses or why boys wear jeans and sneakers? There is more to what culture tells us, when it comes down to how we play our gender roles. It is really about how our bodies are naturally made that determines our gender role. It is not, society that tells a person they can be a mother because only women can give birth to children. It is not culture that makes men stronger or bigger, it is hormones and the natural structure of males to have more muscle

The social construction of gender roles is based on the differences in presentation of self in everyday life. Since during 1900s, women were confined to the domestic sphere and had their rights suppressed to a minimum, the social expectations they experienced were complete polar then those of men. As Gilman recalled her experiences prior to her nervous breakdown, John expected her life to revolve around their unborn child. His expectations made it clear that she had be a good housewives and a good mother. However, after giving birth to their child, she was no longer able to perform her expected duties, which led John to wonder about the state of her sanity. In this example, gender roles are clearly defined by patriarchal expectations from

This class focused on sexuality, gender roles, and gender expectation and how it is all related. All of these we discussed are a big part of human sexuality. We talked about how gender roles are put on a person before he or she is even actually born. Gender roles are established as soon as we are assigned a gender by color. If you are a boy more than likely you are going to be associated with baby blue. If you are a girl on the other hand you are identifies as pink.

The media plays an important part in the everyday life of today’s people. Media such as television, radio, press, internet and so on. The way people receive artifacts and knowledge today is greatly dependent on media, especially television. Does media effect the way people’s view of the world and the people in it? Yes it does, the formation given to us via the media is based on data they have gathered and how we choose to interpret it is how it has an effect today because not everyone will interpret information given to them the same way. Society’s view of different gender roles in society is greatly affected by the media, not every source is going to portray the same message therefore people develop different perceptions, ideas, views on who

I learned how the traditional perceptions of masculinity and femininity are restricting to both sexes, but in different ways. Men are told to stay inside their man box, but doing so would make them sacrifice important human qualities, like emotion expression, sensitivity, and empathy. Because masculine men are supposed to be strong and have no weak emotions, men are constantly pressured to be tough in order to validate themselves. On the other hand, femininity devalues women to subordinate and inferior roles to men. This makes strong, independent women seem like anomalies since women are supposed to be weak damsels in distress. This is important to me because having grown up as a tom boy who loves sports and being active, I occasionally felt dejected for not being more “lady-like” like the other girls around me. However, the faulty, sexist natures of masculinity and femininity has taught me to appreciate myself more for my strong, athletic self.

In the past, Men and Women had a fixed set of “roles” each gender was expected to do. Women were meant to not have a job, stay home and take care of the house, watch the kids, prepare the food and everything else domestic. The Men on the other hand were expected to be the breadwinners and basically do anything manly. In today’s modern society, the roles of Men and Women have changed drastically. But in today’s more diverse society, Women now can have a job and be one half of the bread winner in the household and Men can stay home without a job and not be frowned upon as harshly. The Buddhism religion was one of the first religion to encourage equality between the sexes unlike the Hinduism religion which originated in India just like Buddhism.

Gender roles are changing everyday and it all depends were and the views you were raised with. Every parent want their kid to be successful, so they will help them with what they need in order for them to achieve their goal. They also will teach them morals and how a woman or a man should act and what society is expecting from them. The majority of young adults will do as thought and some will be great full for the knowledge passed by their parents but will make their own future no matter what society demands from them. Men are raised to be the providers of the family and females are the one’s that stay home and take care of the kids. These roles apply for some, however this is changing drastically to the point that males are the stay at home

I briefly discussed in my first reflection paper that “Women are able to be open about their emotions and be open to