Gender Roles In American Cultures

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

Gender can be a hot topic within cultures; a male or female does not want to be told that they can or cannot do something based on their gender. Every culture views gender roles differently, and some cultures are more serious about gender than others. Many times, male and female actions are determined by what a person has been taught is right; furthermore, gender roles are a set of societal norms that are the behaviors that a sex is generally known to do and what is considered accepted of a person based on their sex; gender roles can also known as stereotypes (“Gender”). Many times men are associated with masculine and logical ways in the United States, whereas women are associated with nurturing and passive ways.

Improved independence (economic, technological, and social) leads to more gender role dynamics. However, this can be shown as the root and not purely the correlation because in absence of these freedoms, gender roles are more unyielding. This is true in the United States, which already ranks #21 on the Legatum Institute’s and ranks #49 on the World Press Freedom Index ; this is true for higher ranking countries, and you can infer that this will become true for other countries as they increase with their personal freedoms.

For generations, cultural norms have significantly influenced male and female gender roles. Gender roles emphasizes that social and cultural influences are the main energy force for differentiating between gender roles and the root of division of labor based on sex. Furthermore, contingent to our social environmental conditions, we adapt to our cultural characteristics, learn accepted behaviors, and pass those characteristics from generation to generation. The following section looks to guide the reader through the biological and communal impacts of gender roles and discusses how it relates to America culture.

On a different note, Schmitz and Sarah (1998) examined traditional gender roles among men and women in the United States as well as in Mexico. The study revealed distinct differences between traditional gender roles perceptions held by Americans and Mexicans. The authors state that family settings in Mexico have been characterized by a dominance of the husband. The women are expected to make sacrifices for the sake of their families. They engage in household chores while the men are tasked with the role of providing income to the family. Some of the ultimate sacrifices that the women have to make include: the acquisition of education, development of careers, and having a social life. On the other hand, men enjoy all these rights as their work is majorly within the public sphere and their involvement with their family’s actual functioning is minimal. Due to Mexicans’ beliefs that gender roles stabilize families, they believe that “men should play the role of decision makers while women should play the roles of homemakers and family caretakers” (Schmitz & Sarah, 1998, p.140). On the other hand, the study found out that gender roles in the U.S were not generally delineated according to gender since they are more focused on the attainment of gender equity. Therefore, household chores can be done by either gender. However, the general trend was that women mostly performed household chores especially in households where both the husband and the wife were professionally working.

The topic of gender has been of great debate for quite some time. Talks of social constructs used to segregate genders based on the concepts such as race, biology, and tradition and have people conform and believe in these ideas of gender. The very idea has shaped what society considers gender and gender roles, “the cultural expectations imposed on men and women to behave in ways deemed appropriate for their gender” (Ciccarelli, White). These beliefs control the perception of oneself and others and often these expectations are branded with stereotypes. Gender roles uphold sexist, misogynistic, and racist viewpoints that withhold individuality and so forth should be dismantled to have true gender equality and acceptance.

“Family, a group of individuals connected by either marriage or blood, is the most elementary social, economic, and residential collective unit in most human societies” (Xie, 2013). Family is a vital aspect of every human being’s life. The importance of family is learned at a very early age and it is a factor that applies to all situations. It reflects ethical values and morals of a culture and of a nation as a whole. Every culture has its own interpretation of the meaning of family.

Gender Theories Christabel Ekechukwu Walden University Indians are collective society that promotes social cohesion through interdependence. Gender roles in the Indian society are revealed from the household level. In India, the male power is exposed right from the nuclear family and femaleness is seen as inferior. In this society, the male gender while boys are taught how to exercise their authority over the female gender, which are required to submit.

Gender roles are determined by both societal culture and the result of biological makeup. Media as an impact on the decision of what your role will be in society. Your decision on what you want to be is formed through the span of grown and observing what happens in society. Your biological makeup can also guide what you gender role is because it categorizes you into male or female.

Gender roles have been a big part of society since the eldest known cultures in history had existed. It is not only applied to an individual’s behavior, but to their appearance, their way of thinking, their ideals, and, in some cases, their importance in society. In today’s society we see people stepping outside the binary realm of gender to assume identities that better fit the perception they have of themselves on a psychological level. Because of situations like these, gender roles have proven to be obsolete in modern times; but back in the time where it was only male or female, black and white, or strong and weak, people’s duties, rights and assigned characteristics based on their gender were the way many cultures and belief systems were

To understand gender differences within language and society, we must first realize how our genders were divided. The division between the sexes began with the agricultural revolution that transformed human civilization that is believed to have taken place between 8000 and 7000 B.C.E. The consequences of agriculture and the ability to harvest and store food, eliminating the need to hunt and gather, were life changing. Settlements began to develop and gender roles were forming. Men would tend to the fields and the herds while women had a tendency to remain close to the homes, becoming the caretakers of the children and households. As civilization developed, the work done by the men away from the home grew to be regarded as more important than the work done by the women. Due to this newly found perception, “men came to play the more dominant role in human society, which gave rise to the patriarchy” (Spielvogel 4-5). This mindset has been fortified in human culture and has defined gender roles in societies throughout the centuries.

Major contributors to the prominence of gender roles in society are defined as early as birth. As it is, we are defined as male or female when we are born, leaving the hospital in pink or blue clothes. This is first time you were introduced to the world and gender

Ever since the dawn of time, women and men have been associated with specific gender roles that can be seen controversial in the eyes of many. Traits and roles associated with a specific gender can be either innate or learned over time. Looking into the deeper concept of gender roles and stereotypes, it is clear that these fixed gender roles are not naturally born with, but rather taught, learned, or influenced by external forces.

Gender is in fact a very unfamiliar topic for me at first and I did not have much cogitation about it until I took the colloquy classes of this unit. The discussion about gender rules particularly attract my attention. According to what I have learned from class, gender is the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities and qualities that a given society considers appropriate for men and women. I gradually found that from the ancient time, back to the age when humans were even too original to be called ‘humans’, the gender rules had already filled almost every part of our life. For example, most men were expected to go out together for hunting while most women were expected to stay at the habitat for child raising. Even today, it is fair to say that the effect of gender rules can be presented in almost everywhere of the society. My own experience can be a good example. Actually, before I was born, my parents always dreamed to have a daughter. While they were telling me this later, it seems that they had more expectations for a girl than for a boy.

Today we live in a world that continually stresses to us that, "All men are created equal." While this sounds great at face value, further inspection tells us that this is far from realistic and sadly may never be. One can examine any aspect of society whether it be race, religion, language, level of education, sexual orientation or economic status and notice that there are numerous characteristics and factors of identity that enable others to treat others differently. This truth may not be pleasant or make one feel all warm and fuzzy inside, however it is our society’s reality, however dismal it may be. Even if the statement above as to the equality of all men were true, how about women? Clearly women have made tremendous strides towards