The Biological Aspects Of Gender And Gender Differences

From gender roles, we, the people of society, are able to determine whether someone identifies as a male or a female. Both biological and social factors tend to determine what gender roles a person takes on. However, there are also gender stereotypes, which are “the fixed and oversimplified beliefs about the ways in which men and women ought to behave” (Rathus, 2010). Often times, gender stereotypes are related back to the traditional beliefs of when women were responsible for staying home and being the caregivers and men were responsible for going out to work and bringing home the food, supplies, and money that the family needed (Rathus, 2010).

Society has drilled an image into our minds as people of how the role of each gender should be played out. There are two recognized types of genders, a male and a female. Most people come to think that gender is just male or female. Yet it has become more complex then that. Today it is not just that if you have male parts, you are a man, the opposite goes for women. According to the authors Aaron Devor and Deborah Blum. Gender is much more complex then just male and female, it is more socially composed. We are taught to be male and female trough things like media, our parents, and role model figures. These

The concept of gender was debated and changed throughout time. The traditional logic on such concept regards a binary division, meaning, something that divides in opposites, for instance male and female. From this point of view, human beings are born with biologic characteristics that define if an individual as male or female, the biological sex, and that each of these extremes acts and behaves in a specific way. However, that is not the only factor when describing an individual. Gender, in a sociological perspective is understood as a social position in which a person identifies with certain traits of the imposed biological sexes. "A set of social arrangements that are used to differentiate people in a collective context, taking into account historical and cultural patterns attributed to men and women". Since gender is a social role, it can be constructed and deconstructed, meaning that it can be understood as mutable and unlimited. Considering that it is based on a social background some cultures have extremely specific gender roles.

Children learn to process information in terms of an evolving gender schema. According to (Hetherington & Parke, 2016, Chapter 15) “Gender schema theory suggests that children develop naive mental schemas that help them organize their experiences in such a way that they will know what to attend to and how to interpret new information. According to this theory, we should expect individual differences in how gender-schematic children will be”. This gender-based schematic processing is at the heart of the present account of sex

When babies are born, they are expected to behave in a certain way because of their gender. When these babies enter childhood, they are exposed to many different influences

Equality between men and women is more than a matter of social justice .gender roles is a way of characterizing and labeling other in society. Gender roles include attitudes, actions, and personality traits associated with a gender within that culture. Gender roles determines over all how men and women should act, speak, dress, and think. Gender defines masculine and feminine roles on society. Social influence parents, teachers, peers, movies, television, music, books, and religion teach and reinforce gender roles.

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.

Gender roles determine the way society works, and the way it views people. Whether it is considered unfair or not, there are many factors that are created from gender roles. Almost all parts of English life from 1674 to 1913 was influenced by gender(Clive, 1.) This way of life made a lasting impression, causing the years to follow to develop and abide by what is known as gender roles. Although gender roles have become a lot more diverse in society, there are still stereotypes and misconstrued gender identity, gender-specific expectations, and gender-specific separation and gaps that still exist today.

Sex is defined as “the average, reliable, biological differences between males and females” (Auleb 1). One biological difference between males and females is in external genitalia: males have penises whereas females have vaginas. Sexuality refers to one 's sexual orientation, sexual behaviors, and capacity for sexual feelings (YourDictionary.com). Someone who is not sexually attracted to anyone may identify themselves as asexual. And sexual identity is one 's conception of themselves in terms of to whom they are sexually and romantically attracted, if they experience sexual or romantic attraction at all (Wikipedia.org). Someone who is attracted to people regardless of gender may identify as bisexual, or as pansexual if they do not adhere to the belief that there are only two genders.

Children are introduced to gender roles at a very early age especially in American culture. As a child, we are taught to follow the norms of society in a variety of ways. For example, by the way we are told to dress, typically pink colors for girls and blues for boys. The term "gender role" refers to society's concept of how men and women are expected to act and behave. Gender roles shape individual behavior not only by dictating how people of each gender should behave, but also creating issues for those who don’t confine to the gender norms of their

Men and women are sexually dimorphic: they possess characteristics that differ on average for males and females of a given species. These attributes can be physical, but are also seen in behaviour. This is also known as a sex difference. Given that differences in behaviour between the sexes have long been the subject of social discourse , it is paramount to examine to what extent these differences are dependent on society, or whether they have a basis in biology. Here, it is beneficial to observe the behaviour of children, instead of relying on self-reporting- this provides empirical evidence for a sex difference. They will not have been exposed to as many potentially gender-shaping stimuli as adults have, and so their observation can provide more accurate results when examining phenomena that cannot normally be seen. Therefore, it is also of particular use to investigate why some children show more gender-typical behaviour than others. As all behaviour is controlled by the brain, the terms “sex” and “gender” will be used interchangeably, despite some convictions that the term “gender” has more social connotations than the term “sex”.1

There are attitudes and expectations made upon on these roles, and therefore it effects the behavior of the individual naturally. In the article by Schilt and Westbrook, it is emphasized that people who live their lives in a social gender, that is not the gender that they were assigned at birth, are disrupting the cultural expectations of gender identity. Two case studies were performed to see how gender normals react to mismatch gender identity and biological sex. West and Zimmerman explain how gender is performed in communications and interactions, and behaviors of people are evaluated based on socially accepted conceptions of gender. They identified and distinguished between sex and gender. Sex was agreed to be broken down as male or female. Thus it is based

From the day we are born we are categorized either a male or female. From that day onward society molds, and shapes us into what it means to be a man or women. Aaron Devor’s “Becoming Members of society: Learning The Social Meanings of Gender” discusses the formation of gender roles. Devor talks about how quickly children develop, and placed into their gender group.He also discusses about the gender role behaviors and attitudes . In Jamaica Kincaid’s ,”Girl”, Kincaid focussed on her relationship with her mother, mainly on the expectations her mother had for her. From the personal observations, examples from Devor and Kincaid’s passages, I see that gender roles are not rooted into our biology, but formed from expectations from society.

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.

Today when a human baby is born the first question that is asked is '' Is it a boy or a girl?'' In human culture the answer to this question is gigantically significant. This definition of ''femaleness'' or ''maleness'' is the hypothesis of the society which assumes that the child who is born a girl will remain female forever, while a boy will be a male. Gender roles are created by society and vary from society to society as it takes all sorts to make a world. It does not matter where ever you are in the world its just ''society'' which assigns the gender roles without even having enough knowledge about one's gender identity. We living in 21st century but when it comes to gender role orientation we are in total chaos.