The Importance Of Identity And Gender Roles

Sex, gender- gender roles and gender identity, are words that one might assume to mean the same but in reality they don’t. It is an incorrect assumption and everyone should understand the difference. They each have their own distinct meaning, for a reason and purpose. The definitions are concrete and make sense once a person hears and applies them.

​​Gender is defined as whatever behaviors and attitudes a group considers proper for its males and females. Unlike sex, gender is something that we learn from the day we are born. “Young children begin to acquire gender role stereotypes at about the same time they develop gender identity and by the age of 3 or 4 most children” (Amanda Youmans). Peers, community, media, religion and our upbringing all play a role in the understanding of our culture and what is considered acceptable for males and females. When the sex of a child is revealed, they are automatically placed into a gender specific role with certain expectations. There are things in this world such as colors, toys, media depiction and taught behaviors that play into these gender roles.

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.

America used to have the same gender roles as Hispanic culture but now it’s been fading away quickly and are getting close to gender equality while Hispanic culture are still behind compared to other developing countries culture. In Hispanic culture there are two types of roles, Machismo which applied to the male and Marianismo to the female. Machismo is associated with dominant and Marianismo is associated with dependent and submissive.

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.

People criticize everything, they criticize buildings, they criticize schools, they criticize the news, but one thing people criticize the most is gender. They say that it is not right for a guy to be in show choir or a girl to be on the football team. Girls should be girls and do girly things and participate in feminine activities such as ballet or paint nails, and boys should be boys and get involved with masculine activities such as football or boxing. Why does it matter what kind of activities boys and girls get involved in? We criticize the activity someone is interested in based on their gender rather than what they are interested in. We also criticize on the romantic relationships some people are involved in. I am wondering why it is so important to people that boys and girls stick to the activities their gender represents.

The word identity has become the most discussed idea in our society. It is described mostly, to be a word that stands for who we are. Therefore, because of who we are, identity has come to be a word that we use to claim and understand people’s actions in our society. So in this paper I will be analysing how social practices surrounding identity relates to gender in social, personal levels, through the work of three authors; by Ian Hacking on “kind making”, Margaret Somers on “Narrative construction of identity” and finally, Frederick Cooper and Rogers Brubaker on “beyond identity” . However, I will tilt more toward Frederick Cooper and Rogers Bruakers article on identity. This is because I feel that their article contributes better to my

Many professions are traditionally occupied by one gender over the other, identified as occupational segregation (Hoffnung et al., 2013). Furthermore, Hoffnung and colleagues (2013), state that females are often perceived as carrying the burden of parenthood and general domestic chores, often in positions such as domestic labour. Whereas males are traditionally employed in positions with lower social demands, in more quantitatively and physically demanding positions. During the last thirty years there has been a notable increase of females into traditionally male roles,

In today’s society people look past who someone really is. They only see what is on the exterior and not what is in the inside. What people do not know is how people who have trouble identifying their gender struggle through society. People who have this struggle in society struggle because people are not accepting of people who are different from the normal stereotypes of male and female. Therefore, society’s view on gender identity in the United States are causing people to be socially impaired, physical hardships, and poor mental health problems.

Transgender can be defined as a person whose self-identity does not conform precisely to conventional notions of the male or female gender. This self-identity problem can usually be accompanied by numerous forms of treatment to change ones’ physical appearance, and make it more consistent with their identified gender identity. In many cases, the individual can identify with the gender of the opposite sex to the point one believes that he or she is a member of that gender group trapped in the wrong body. This is also called Gender Dysphoria or formerly known as Gender Identity Disorder. The person with gender dysphoria or GD at times does not know that he or she have an actual disorder but more of a general discomfort with his or her biological sex. This also creates complications in their everyday life, when they are unable to interpret their feelings or rationalize problems they experience in a social setting (Gender Dysphoria, 2014).

Gender identity display people’s understanding of themselves according to cultural definitions of female and male. In this essay I will attempt to enhance our understanding by exploring different aspects of gender identity, gender roles & sexual identity issues. Relying mostly on my research that is conducted in the U.S.

When contemplating the topic of gender role and its impact on identity one cannot help but realise that these gender roles have a huge part to play on a person’s identity. As gender is a combination of male and female it gives way for a number of characteristics to accompany each sex making them different from each other. This has an important position to play on identity which Kath Woodward stated in her book “Questioning Identity: Gender, Class, Nation” where she said “Without difference there would not be such thing as identity”. (Woodward, 2000, pp.51) Unfortunately, however, with these differences there are inequalities. In this essay I would like to elaborate on this further by looking at the meaning of gender and how it impacts

Gender roles are the norms for a specific gender that influences how you act according to your gender. Gender identity is how you identify yourself to the world. In these days, you are not simply a boy or a girl. There are many ways to identify yourself and they are becoming more socially acceptable and creating new norms for our society. The toy industry I believe is catching onto these new norms a little slower than we would like but is getting there with making more toys non-gender specific. According to the article, androgyny is a mix between characteristics of we assume are male and female meaning gender neutral. It says that more children growing up in androgynous households will result in adults being more intimate and close between each other,

Many would argue that social justice is being served when someone says “we are all the same under the skin”. We are not all the same under the skin. Within us are our own senses of identity, constructed by our familiar discourses, the physical environment and its embedded culture, and our individual differences. Our sense of identity accounts for our perceptions of ourselves and how we are positioned by others in terms of culture, tradition, rituals, race, family, religion and education (Allen, 2004). Our identities affect our life chances through our positions in society, the access we have to power, status, education, and wealth (Allen, 2004). Examining our own identities gives us insight into the