Gender Roles In Gender Socialization

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.

The store in which I completed my observation was Target. Target’s general layout made it easy to decipher the section designated for boys and the section designated for girls. While Target did not specifically label the aisles by gender, it was not difficult to decipher where the toys for each gender were located. The section designated for boys encompassed about three aisles consisting of various toys that would interest boys, while the section designated for girls encompassed three aisles as well. Target also consisted of about two aisles of gender-neutral toys. The kinds of toys offered for boys included guns, action figures, building sets, and cars. Types of toys offered for girls included dolls, stuffed animals, play kitchen sets, and

When someone is pregnant, people will usually ask for the sex of the unborn child thus proving that people are socially categorized from the beginning of life and is something that is continued throughout life. One is expected to behave the way their assigned gender is supposed to behave. Gender socialization is when people are expected to act a certain way based on their “gender”. Through the following agents: family, schools, peers, and media, gender socialization is emphasized and made very real in the world today.

Growing up, many Americans ' childhood consisted of playing tag outside, having cooties, and experimenting with as many toys as possible. Hundreds of thousands of toys flood kid stores such as Toys R ' Us, Baby Depot, and KB toys. With imagination, kids are able to become doctors, presidents, and princesses during the contents of one day. Television shows such as Barney or Blues Clues encourage having such imagination, thus inspiring kids to want to become one of the many options stores can transform them into. Walking into a regular toy store, people generally do not dissect the sexism that lays within the aisles, however, when walking in specifically to compare and contrast boys and girls toys

Children love toys because they find them enjoyable and help them in building an imagination. Toys are advertised on televisions and radios in order to get parents to buy them for their kids. Playing with toys helps to build character and teaches children the basics of early life, like shape-sorting or building things with building blocks. Some toys are educational and teach kids numbers, letters, and how to read using fun ways that they find understandable and delightful. All kids have their own preference of toys, boys like cars and Nerf guns and girls like American Girl and Easy-Bake Ovens. Girls and boys are different genders and have their own preference of toys based on what society says is “for girls” or “for boys”. Since the beginning of time, societies have made women out to be frail people that do “feminine” activities, such as: making clothes, cleaning the house, and taking care of the children. Today, we see these activities as “sexist”, women can other things when given the proper motivation. It’s demeaning to think of women as people who only love shopping, overly romantic tokens-of-affection, chick flicks, and etc. Stereotypes and demeaning rumors still go around today, it’s even shown in toys that young children play with. Toys in today’s society affect gender stereotypes.

This starts off at infancy through the toys we are given as we grow up. Boys are given toys such as Legos, Tonka trucks, and superhero action figures. Theses toys are centered around creativeness and safeguarding such as building a house from scratch, or saving the poor damsel in distress. The ads for these toys feature only boys recklessly running around or dabbling their curiosity, as well as valuing competition and control. Simultaneously, girls are given Barbies, makeup, kitchen sets, and baby dolls. While boy toys encourage boys to use their imaginations and to role play their dream jobs; such as doctors, police officers, CIA agents, etc. girl toys continually and increasingly enforce the housewife role for women and convey how the ideal woman must look. In the YouTube video, “Toy ads and Learning Gender”, creator and host of Feminist Frequency, BA in Communication, and MA in social and political thought,

It appears that toys play a significant role in molding a child’s identity. It seems that pretend play, including social interaction with other children utilizing the pleasures of toys, can shape and influence characteristics that lined up with what is considered gender appropriate in the Western Culture today. The toy section at the local retail store is actually a reflection of narrative taking place in today’s society. It is a puzzle piece that completes an image involving a description of a script with many characters, yet a limited amount of roles.

Gender norms today have become a big part of our society as they are present in our every day life from advertisements, clothes, to the way we are supposed to act, and even in toys. In order to appeal to a certain customer, advertisements use many gender norms that apply to customers. One of the most impactful gender norms that I find to be is in the kid’s toys because I believe that it’s teaching these kids about how to act. Kids ranging from very early ages know what types of toys they should play with and what toys they aren’t supposed to play with. For example, little boys would play with cars and action figures while on the other hand girls would play with dolls and a tea party set. Many of the toys for girls have been shaped to show them that are supposed to be more friendly and kind. These toys have made it so that there are certain way’s little girls should act and also what things they should like.

Toys play a major role in socializing young kinds into “appropriate” gender roles. The first obvious characteristic that separates toys for boys and toys for girls,

Toys. When you walk into any store you’ll find two seperate toy rows. A bright pink row filled with Barbies, My Little Pony, and Littlest Pet Shop. Princesses, stuffed animals, dresses and sparkles. The other section is cool blues with Nerf Guns, Legos, and Hotwheels. Action figures line the aisles. Two genders, separated like night and day. Why should we separate them? What do the “expected” toys for each gender say about gender roles and how our society silently enforces them?

The toy manufactory industry has implanted the idea that toys that children play with should correspond with their gender. Manufacturers differentiate whom the toy is for by the color of the toy and type of toy. The toys that I observed at Target, were categorized based on the stereotypes of gender roles, and age groups. For children ages two and under, the types of toys included in their aisles were musical “instruments” that are geared to help them learn.

Gender is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex (2017). Gender and the way we carry out gender have been linked to many different terms to try to create a better understanding of why we have or do gender accordingly to what was assigned at birth. Through the process of gender socialization, a plethora of social norms and expectations are bestowed upon all individuals as early as when an embryo’s sex is determined. To further describe and understand the prevalence of gender and its socialization I spent a night and a day with my little cousins Leah age 5 (Female) and Landon age 4 (Male). They are a part of a biracial four-family member household in which their dad works full time and is the sole earner of resources and their mom is in school and works a part time job. I believe the structure of their family is modeled as the typical “American Family” and as far as their family’s classification in an economic class, they would be considered Upper- Middle class. After taking their economic class into consideration I have realized that these children are and will be able to gain access to more resources associated with gender than their lower classed counter parts. Not meaning that they will be more aware of how their gender is supposed to act but they will have access more access to resources like being able to obtain psychological help and education.

Gender socialization often begins early once parents are shown the sex of their child; from then on, baby showers are planned according to gender “appropriate” colors, which are often pink for girls and blue for boys. Even differences in how children are spoke to can be picked up easily in Western cultures. Girls are called pretty and sweet, whereas boys are handsome and strong. Ultimately, the way children learn to identify with their gender culture is in part due to not only family and friends, media, schools, and religion, but also from the toys that may inexplicitly advertise gender expectations. Gender-typed toys may be bought for children as a way for parents to encourage and reinforce gender-appropriate behaviors. However, recent debates have engulfed toy manufacturers and major retailers, which has brought about changes in toy design and marketing in an effort to make reflect more realistic and gender neutral options.

Going into different stores, one can easily pick up on the major gender roles each store supports. Even the morals of an innocent toy store, such as KB Toys, is tainted by the gender-differentiating dolls for girls, and trucks for boys. Upon entering the store you can tell right away which aisles attract which kids. To the left there is pink fluffy bears, pink Barbie and friends toys, white teddy bears etc. To the right there is a less vibrant color setting, coordinating army green, black, and gray color schemes. I think it is apparent to anyone who enters these stores that the pink pretty isles are meant to attract little girls, and the dark green and gray isles are meant to attract boys. Upon the packages of toy trucks and guns, there are pictures of young boys playing with them and/or cartoon male figures controlling them. On the packaging of Barbie and her friends there are also other girls on the packaging. I was unable to pick up on a single female on the package of any toy truck or gun throughout the entire store. The

Socialization is this expectation that you must live by with the rules of conduct and behavior. Where you have laws and must live by because it’s a must or you’ll be punished but socialization is where you have to follow nature's law although its not negatively reinforced. You are to do things that people expect and if you do otherwise you are looked at weirdly or thought to be the odd ball. Which then brings me to gender socialization, some people are very strict when it comes to gender roles. For example video games. Some boys and girls are limited to the type of games they are allowed to play based on their gender.