The Social Construction of Gender Essays

As they grow older though they development different socialization, cognitive, personality, and emotional skills. Males and females socialization affect their development. Females tend to have a closer relationship with their parents, where the males like to be independent. With the females developing a strong relationship with the parents it helps them create self-control, which deters them from wanting to commit delinquent acts. Females may have self-control, but they tend to blame themselves for all their faults. With males wanting to be more independent, it shows their aggression and anger. Men typically have more aggression because their “right brain” modulates more aggression because males have bigger heads then females, which is why they can produce more anger than females. Sounds silly that just because males have bigger heads then females mean they can produce more anger. Females have aggression as well but have a stronger attitude towards hiding their aggression. Cognitive differences show in a female or males childhood. As females grow up they normally walk and speak earlier than males. For females being able to speak earlier than males allows them to have better pronunciation and read better. Yeah, yeah females are more suitable then men when it comes to speaking and reading but males dominate us having clearly eye vision and are better at math. Which makes sense because there are more

On the other hand, boys might be more physical and aggressive because it is expected for boys to prove their manliness. They face intense pressure to demonstrate their masculinity front birth. Boys are treated differently while the girls are supposed to be meek and not demonstrate unladylike qualities in public. Unfortunate for boys, the society expectation of aggressive male as seen in sports such as football manifest in violence on and off the field at an early age and other anti-social behaviors

Both Deborah Blum’s The Gender Blur: Where Does Biology End and Society Take Over? and Aaron Devor’s “Gender Role Behaviors and Attitudes” challenges the concept of how gender behavior is socially constructed. Blum resides on the idea that gender behavior is developed mainly through adolescence and societal expectations of a gender. Based on reference from personal experiences to back her argument up, Blum explains that each individual develops their expected traits as they grow up, while she also claims that genes and testosterones also play a role into establishing the differentiation of gender behavior. Whereas, Devor focuses mainly on the idea that gender behavior is portrayed mainly among two different categories: masculinity and

For thousands of years, established gender roles have been a part of our society. Women are commonly known as sensitive, emotional, or passive. On the contrary, men are described as rational, competitive, independent, or aggressive. Believing women are more emotional than men is stereotyping. However, the stereotype is not entirely untrue. Development of gender roles is often conditioned more by environmental or cultural factors than by hereditary or biological factors. The development of gender roles between men and women involves the inference of peer community of each gender, the communication style of male and female and the intimacy or connection level of men and women.

In her article “Sex Differences Are Not Hardwired,” Lesley Rogers claims that although genes do play a role when it comes to sex differences it is not the only factor that effects gender and it is impossible to not include interactive explanations when describing sex differences. The first topic is genetic determinist explanations for sex differences. In this section, Rogers discusses how popular media sources have now become involved in the conversation of genetic explanations for sex differences in behavior. The main message being spread throughout media is “genes cause behavior” and that it is “hardwired” in our brains at birth to be a certain way (28). Rogers emphasizes that this is not the case and that it’s more complexed, but this information

Think a little harder into how male and females differ; there are the obvious examples, starting

I cannot argue the fact that men and women are physically different. The physical differences are rather obvious and most of these can be seen and easily measure. I believe nature has created differences between the genders and some of these are hard wired and instinctive; however there comes a time when it gets “tricky to untangle biological from cultural factors.” (Bennhold, 1), and more often than not our society, our culture, as well as our own family are the ones pushing us into accepting today’s gender role

The differences between the sexes emerge very early in the life course. Over the first three months of life, baby girls’ skills in eye contact and gaze will increase by four hundred percent, while boys’ does not increase. From the very beginning of life, females are more inherently social than males. Girls are wired from the start for socialization and can hear a broader range of sound frequency in the human voice, while boys are more likely to explore their environment (Wright, 2015).

These differences are commonly discussed, “The general statement that men and women respond and behave differently under the same circumstances is true; demonstrable differences in behavior and in general brain operations have been carefully documented and described”(McGraw-Hill,1998). For example, male babies are commonly more aggressive than females; this tendency often continues throughout life. As a child, females often learn to read earlier than males and use this skill to better tasks involving the alphabet. Although there are some women who can break the stereotype, the generality that men are better at spatial operations still holds true. Men tend to be better at finding their way through a maze or using a map. Researchers, from Norwegian University of Science and Technology, decided to test these generalities by administering testosterone to women in the test group. FMRI imaging was used to test the subjects. The results showed that “ men in the study took several shortcuts, oriented themselves more using cardinal directions and used a different part of the brain than the women in the study”(NTNU,2017). Women without the testosterone supplement tended to solve the maze using complex routes, instead of following a path directly to the destination. Once the women received a drop of testosterone, they suddenly began to use cardinal directions and use a more

Firstly, it must be made clear that gender and sex are not the same thing. Sex is a biological term and is assigned at birth based on the body’s physical aspects whereas gender is more complicated than this.

Evolutionary psychology proposes that there are more similarities between the sexes than there are differences, seeing as both sexes evolved and adapted to similar survival problems. According to David Buss in his paper ‘Psychological Sex Differences’ the evolutionary theory dictates that neither men or women are superior or inferior to each other since “each sex possesses mechanisms designed to deal with its own adaptive challenges—some similar and some different—and so notions of superiority or inferiority are logically incoherent from the vantage point of evolutionary psychology” (Buss, 1995). The only variances according to evolutionary psychology that occur between the sexes is in the area of reproduction, while men and women both have

These social constructions may be very difficult to separate from the biological realities of maleness and femaleness. For example a cross-cultural study done by anthropologists recorded that boys within many societies tend to be more aggressive than the females within that same culture. Females in turn tend to be more nurturing in those cultures. Since these differences are universal, are they a product of biological differences? Or do all societies need men and women for different roles and so they socialize their children appropriately? A study on Australian aborigines has shown a high level of female aggression, leading many researchers to speculate that behavioral differences are cultural in origin.

There are a number of ways in which males and females differ from one another. One of the major differences between the sexes is the male’s need for both dominance and aggression. From an evolutionary perspective, aggression provides an advantage since it helps to protect individuals from being attacked. Likewise, those who are able to defend themselves are perceived as being more dominant and, consequently, have a higher ranking within the group. The hierarchy system for males ultimately determines their overall chances of survival. As Cloninger (2013) explains, “in many species, low-status males are less likely to mate, as high-status ones fight them off, and as females choose higher-status reproductive partners (who presumably care more

Males and females are not exactly the same. Not only in the sense of genitalia and reproductive differences, but men and women have many differences. Men and women are different in the sense of their genetic make up also. Our chromosomes are different. Men are XY, while women are XX. The sex of a fetus is not decided in the womb until 6 weeks have passed. Once this time has passed, if male hormones are present, then the baby will become a boy. If the male hormone is absent, then the baby will become a female. After the sex of the baby is decided, the sexual identity of the brain will begin to develop. Another instance of how men and women are different is the testosterone levels that are in men. Testosterone is reason for many things that

Still, anatomical biology cannot full explain the differences between masculinity and femininity, which also seem to involve mental aspects. For example, regardless of a person’s gender, we tend to judge their behavior as masculine or feminine. Freud then associates masculinity with active traits, and femininity with passive ones.