Gender Schema Theory

Gender roles are defined as the “widely accepted societal expectations about how males and females should behave” (Rathus, 2010).

Whether it is on TV or movie screens, the faces of white actors and actresses have always been prevalent in the media. For generations, many teenagers have been exposed to countless movies with white people in major roles. Moreover, the few roles that are cast to minorities feature the characters in their stereotypical personas (Bonilla-Silva 179). Even in advertising, Asians are placed in business settings, upholding the hard-working Asian stereotype (Taylor and Stern 50). As Taylor and Stern mention in their paper, the “model minority” has made the issue of stereotyping seem less important for Asians. The majority of these actors that are examined, regardless of race, are typically middle-age and well established in their acting careers. However, there is a lack of research behind Asian youth acting and their perceived roles. To account for this knowledge deficit, I examine how whiteness influences the media to portray youth actors as individuals that stray from their stereotypes in an attempt to achieve whiteness. My research site centres around Fresh Off the Boat (FOB), a comedic television series featuring a Taiwanese family. The title of the show Fresh Off the Boat or “FOB” is also a term used to describe a person that is considered too ethnic and as a term of denigration. I utilize Pyke and Dang’s categorization of “FOB” and “whitewashed” to analyze the narrator, Eddie Huang. I chose to limit my research primarily to the first “pilot” episode where the audience is

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.

While the significance of gender roles has declined in the past fifty years, they still play an integral part in our perception of others based on their gender. Gender roles create gender stereotypes that influence our view of someone and their aptitude in work and child caring. Gender stereotypes depict women as caring, compassionate, and kind; however, gender stereotypes also imply negative qualities for women such as cranky, overly emotional, and submissive. On the other hand, gender stereotypes classify men not only as dominant, assertive, and powerful, but also as aggressive, violent, and uncaring. Many people apply gender roles in how they view other’s aptitudes and responsibilities in a work or home setting, but by doing so they subconsciously discriminate against a person for his gender. Extreme Feminists focus on the discrimination and harassment women face in everyday life due to traditional gender roles and complain that “men have it so good”. However, extreme feminists fail to realize, due to their blind but justified hatred for traditional gender roles that supposedly benefit men, traditional gender roles disadvantage men as well. Similar to how many women fail to climb up the corporate ladder because their superiors view them as too caring and soft to hold a demanding leadership position, many people look down on men when they care for their own children considering them too tough and insensitive to take care of children properly and label their care as

Every Christmas morning as a child, I would be disappointed because I would always get toys that I didn’t like. My mom scolded at me for being ungrateful as I would complain that Barbie dolls wasn’t what I wanted for Christmas. My mom replied, “Barbie dolls are what girls are supposed to have. Girls don’t play with Transformers or Power Rangers. You aren’t a boy!” As a child, I didn’t understand what she meant. Acting like a boy wasn’t my intention, as I simply expressed that I would rather have action figures instead. I was simply blinded by the fact that there was a social construct happening, and realized the social constructivism of gender roles. As the troublemaker child that I was, I disagreed with her. Instead I had these questions like,

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

The word gender can be described as the state of being male or female and is typically used to describe cultural differences as opposed to biological ones. Additionally, the definition of gender has continuously been a controversial issue due to its lack of clarity in regards to battling complicated social injustices. Furthermore, the construction of gender as a social category has recently been criticized for the lack of inclusiveness to women of color and the consistent habit to view both gender and race as restrictive divisions of experience and reasoning. Seeing those criticisms has led to the development of the term intersectionality which deals with various layers of subjection that women live with and addresses more than just the

Standpoint theory claims that marginalized groups can generate unique insights into how society works” (Wood, 51-52).

“I was young and dumb,” said Kim Spight, a forty-year-old FedEx sales manager who became pregnant her freshman year at Howard University. Ms. Spight had the mindset to succeed so instead of dropping out of college to raise her daughter, she kept studying until she received her masters degree and now manages a 12-person sales team in Dallas. Meanwhile, her daughters father continues to work odd jobs and live at home with his mother (Cauchon, 2013). Can you believe at one point in time this reality wasn’t heard of or seemed impossible to achieve? Gender roles continue to transform year after year in relationships where men have began welcoming in the ideas of being a stay at home dad while the mom is the breadwinner. Women have the capability of climbing up the ladder in the workplace and even a little change has swept through different cultures. Let’s take a leap into the past to see just how gender roles have transformed history in the workplace, culture, and marriage.

Race is a system of categories put in place by society in order to make each individual fit into a certain social group. It is due to societies implementation of such a system that individuals in these racial categories do not always look at each other as equals, causing a race to not always identify themselves as a homogenous front. This essay will delve into the poetry of a popular Def Jam spoken word artist Black Ice, whose piece Bigger Than Mine looks into the dualism within Black society in the United States with an undertone of what it means to a man. A schism as described by Black Ice being between two distinct groups, Blacks and “Niggas”.

Women are seen powerless in many instances and Marilyn Frye details the accounts where women are viewed as second to men in “To see and Be Seen.” Frye uses a metaphysics approach to better understand how people come to power. She gives a metaphysical understanding of how the world has been determined by people of power, which throughout history has been men. Men have been in authority throughout history and have come up with society’s conceptual schema. Frye alludes to people in power don’t want to see people who are submissive. Men fit into the conceptual schema, women are excluded but are allowed in the schema in certain ways and lesbians are not included. Lesbians are seen as unnatural and are not recognized in the schema. Their perspective on society is not taken into account, whereas women are recognized but their own perspective on society is completely erased.

Throughout history, humans have always been expected to act a certain way depending on their sex. These societal expectations are called gender roles. (Rathus, 2010, p.447). These roles begin to develop even before a child is even out of the womb. A mother may decorate their nursery pink if they are having a daughter because “girls like pink,” and “boys like blue.” Gender roles should not be confused with gender stereotypes. A gender stereotype is a narrow way of thinking about how men and woman are obligated to behave. For example, men have always been considered to be the breadwinners of the family. Females, on the other hand, are seen more as the gentle homemakers that stay home to clean and take care of the children. (Rathus, 2010, p.447). These types of stereotypes have caused certain out-of-the-home jobs to be mainly categorized for either women or men, causing an even more distinct line between the genders.

In society, people are told to fit certain molds regarding how they are represented in the media such as movies, advertisements, and standards that are set by society. Both men and women are depicted in different ways in American society with unattainable standards that can only be achieved by photoshop or body surgery and alterations. Women are envisioned having the ideal body type that’s shown in media. They’re assumed to be emotional and delicate by much of society. Men are often expected to be muscular while not showing other people their emotions other than aggression and power. There are different ideal body types throughout the world, America for example has an unreachable standard that’s set through uses of photoshop and other alterations that can cause some people to develop emotional disorders. In the book, Composing Gender by Rachael Groner and John O’Hara, it explains how gender is a social construct and how people are often under set gender standards which plays into McDonaldization theory. The McDonaldization theory is explained as the use

The society has regulations in which people have to obey making social life be structured. Society has expectations for people to live by. People tend to live up to the norms in order to feel part of the world. Individuals do not want to be judged and labeled, so unconsciously live by the roles that they believe their gender has to follow. Gender is socially constructed concept in which society acts upon. The family is the first to influence individuals to this idea. Gender has roles in which boys and girls are supposed to follow. Depending on one’s gender, they are expected to dress, behave, and act accordingly to either portray a masculine or feminine personality. These gender roles are implied by society and if individuals do not follow are seen as outcast. It is difficult for people to comply to these characteristics and roles because they might have different life experiences and situations that might influence to act other than their gender roles imply.