The Social Construction Of Gender Essay

Prior to reading the article Doing Gender, I have never paid attention to the concept of doing gender. I found it interesting how these roles go so unnoticed because they are so enforced in our society. We never stop to think or questions if an individual’s actions are masculine or feminine. For example, some of us are just so use to having our mothers cook and our dad’s do all the heavy lifting but we never stop to think why is it like this or what does this represent.

During early thirties and forties which was right after the depression, government and corporate felt the necessity to revive the market. At that time, people thought women were the ones with dominating consumption powers. As Kenon Breazeale quoted in his article, “Women are indeed the shoppers of the world.” (Breazeale, 231). However, some people such as those in journalism fraternity regarded women’s buying power as “gullible vulnerability to consumerism’s trashy faddishness” (Breazeale, 232). Those people spread wide hostility toward women’s taste and argued that men should be the ones with

Real Lives of Most Men." He says to a friend of his "This must be a

The purpose of this paper is to critically analyze the male stigmatized ideology of gender as it pertains to parenting and domestic labour and how it relates to the course theme regarding the social construction of gender, more specifically that of hegemonic masculinity. First in Part I, I will define hegemonic masculinity and discuss the social construction theory developed by Raewyn W. Connell, as it relates to the structure of labour. I will also discuss the concept of “doing gender” outlined by Candice West and Don Zimmerman. Second in Part II, I will critically examine multiple author’s arguments about the socially constructed stigmas around stay at home dads, as it is seen to be tied to femininity. Finally, in Part III, I will analyze the implications of the social stigmas presented in the previous section. I will also examine how new forms of masculinity are being created as solutions to combat the binary system surrounding

The construction of gender has always been a controversial issue. We tend to think that gender is developed through a natural process as we experience it everyday, while it shapes us unconsciously into who we are, to how we think and why we do certain things in a considered gender-appropriate manner. From a sociological point of view, according to Macionis and Plummer’s study, cultural meanings about what is considered masculine and feminine varies from one society to another and from one historical period to another (2012). According to their study, this is all part of a gender order, which are the ways in which societies shape notions of masculinity and femininity into power relationships, this enhances the differences between both genders and our expectations of them in society. This categorisation involves various factors including gender identity, gender role, gender stratification, patriarchy and feminism, all of the above aspects contribute to the social construction of gender.

Heteronormartive notions of gender create challenges and issues that require a complex process of resolving gender inequalities. In particular, one of the challenges is resolving the inequalities that are reinforced by male and female gender norms. The notion of gender creates a dichotomy in male and female roles. Through socialization processes, we learn to identify specific behaviours as 'masculine' or 'feminine', and boys and girls are taught to perform and display these traits, which become a dominant part of their identities. Western society has constructed gender roles that promote and maintain notions of suitable behaviours and expectations. For instance, males and females are required to act a certain way according to their

Gender roles, and the mere existence of a gender binary, has been a recent topic of conversation for many churches, theologians, and individual believers. As the cultural pressure to remove gender-specific limitations builds, many of those aforementioned have turned to scripture for answers. Seldom are women’s roles in the Old Testament characterized by decision making or personal merits. Rather, a woman’s capacity to produce an heir for their husband complements his dominance and responsible faithfulness and allows God’s plan to be fulfilled through their combined efforts. In the New Testament, through the transformative power of Christ, prominent women became less of an anomaly, but were still held to a different set of standards and expectations than men and were usually still praised according to their actions and their faith. The Pauline epistles, written in the context in which the Church still exists today: the age to come, provide a basis for today’s understanding of women’s roles in marriage and in church leadership. Although there are many instances of women fulfilling God’s plans and proving their worth among the community of Christians, the biblically normative role of women is to avoid authoritative church leadership positions and remain submissive in situations of teaching and interpreting the Word.

The term gender acts as a basic biological means of dividing and classifying men and women. Even though being biologically male or female merely means one has the corresponding reproductive parts, there is much more to gender than this. Within the United States, being male or female comes with many social implications and expectations. The issue of gender is so powerful that it has become an organizing construct for national development.

After entering STEM fields, women are continuing to face societal pressures and negative stereotypes about their abilities in college. Higher Education Research Institute survey showed that “29 percent of male freshmen planned to enter STEM majors while only 15 female freshmen planned to enter similar majors.” Women get tied into gender role that makes them stuck to certain fields even within STEM. In post-secondary level, women are less likely to earn a degree in STEM fields than men because of the exception to this gender imbalance is in the life sciences. Usually biological sciences were tied with medical fields that were seen as ‘nurturing’ acts, tied with women’s place in society. This ties back in with women’s childhoods in which they were encouraged to believe that they didn’t have the mental capacity to analyze mathematical concepts as sufficiently as boys. This has nothing to do with their ability because “on average, high school girls take more math and science credits and earn higher grades in these subjects than boys”. Women have higher GPAs on average than men do in all majors that include STEM fields. The fact that it disturbs everyone that there is no

Susan Bordo in her work, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body, points out that “the human body is itself a politically inscribed entity, its physiology and morphology shaped by histories and practices of containment and control.” (1993, 21). That is, a pure body cannot be found, it is already inscribed, defined and explained by its very origin. But it is significant to analyze that body cannot be included and excluded in a fixed definition of society as in the way it’s beyond the fixity. Body is a social construction and its performance itself is a socially constructed notion. Performance of body according to gender, race, class, cast, power, in this way the very body and its performance are assigned, classified and conditioned by the society. Performance of a body in a fixed notion rightly points towards the imitation of the constructed norms of society. It is the way gender also

There is a huge social construction of gender and resulting in male domination, the male definition of the self and the world is what is seen as the human norm. Further exemplifying this belief that women’s values have continuously been ignored and see as deviant, instead of different. Lloyd is further arguing that male experiences and values have shaped this idea of being the norm of human values and experiences, creating a socially constructed society believe that male beliefs and characteristics are human and women’s are ignored and seen as bad. Emphasizing on the idea that the highest stage of moral maturity means “right is defined by the decision of conscience in accord with self-chosen ethical principals which, appealing to logical comprehensiveness,

Moreover, let’s take the correlation women and prostitution in a gendered socialization point of view. On one hand, prostitution can be directed in multiple ways such as by not legalizing prostitution is a violation of human rights. Therefore, it is logical to undertake that prostitution should be accepted and legalize do to the fact that everyone has their own rights to establish and practice whatever they desire. The problem here is how do we know if these so-called prostitutes are free exercising rather than being subjected to prostitute themselves and they happen to be women? According to the European Journal of Psychology Applied to Legal Context, (2011), it argues that from a prohibitionist point of view, prostitution is conceived in

People all over the world with different cultures, religions and beliefs teach us that they are two different genders, which are male and female. This fact is the foundation of social structure; some people are discriminated because they do not fit in any of the categories in society’s structure. On that note, social construction of gender, is how the “stereotypes” or the expectations of what each gender has to do, or is expected to do, shapes a child as they grow. For instance, the pink and the blue, how the girl areas in stores are full if pinkish delicate stuff and the boy are full of blue and cars and dinosaurs. In other words, people feel the need to separate these two genders in such drastic ways that if a mother decides to dress her baby boy in pink, people will mistake the boy for a baby girl. Furthermore, some people that do not identify themselves as male or female, are classified as genderqueer. “We may use scientific knowledge to help us make the decision, but only our beliefs about gender—not science—can define our sex. Furthermore, our beliefs about gender affect what kinds of knowledge scientists produce about sex in the first place.” (Ann

Where does a boy learn to be a man and a girl learn to be a woman? If is impossible for one to pinpoint the exact moment in time where they learned what it means to be a boy or a girl. The reason? Gender roles are a result of constant exposure to gender socialization. From birth forward, we become susceptible to society’s opinion on what a male or female should consist of. The way we dress, the way we act, the choices we make, and the way we interact with others can all be linked in some way back to the gender roles present in our lives. While that may not seem like such a bad thing, gender roles can prove to be quite detrimental to the growth and development of a child. This is because gender roles provide stringent guidelines that one

“A businessman is aggressive; a businesswoman is pushy. A businessman is good on details; she is picky. He follows through; she doesn’t know when to quit. He stands firm; she is hard. His judgements are her prejudices. He is a man of the world; she’s been around. He isn’t afraid to say what is on his mind; she is mouthy. He exercises authority diligently; she’s power mad. He’s closemouthed; she’s secretive. He climbed the ladder of success; she slept her way to the top.