Understanding Gender Roles in Today's Society

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.

According to the Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences of Monash University, “Gender describes the characteristics that a society or culture delineates as masculine or feminine.” (Nobelius, Ann-Marrie, med.monash.edu.au). Sex, says Ann-Maree,“ refers to biological differences; chromosomes, hormonal profiles, internal and external sex organs” (med.monash.edu.au). Sometimes people use these terms interchangeably. Sex has to do with you being biologically male or female, and gender has to do with being masculine, or feminine and is determined by society depending in the culture. The reason these terms are often mistaken is because, usually, if one is born male they are assigned a masculine role in society, and there is a difference in expectations with the masculine and feminine roles. These genders were created by society. There are cases where neither roles apply for a group of people or individuals. These ideals of gender roles being assigned are being challenged by individuals. For example a family member of mine is one of the individuals whom the

A gender role is a social role that shows the acceptable behaviors and attitudes based on a person's sexuality. Gender roles and stereotypes are centered on the concepts of femininity and masculinity. Gender roles differ with each culture in the way that they are accepted. Gender roles date all the way back to the Industrial Revolution, which took place around the 19th century. Men did all the hard labor while the women looked after the cottages and cared for the children during this time, that was the gender norms back then.

According to the articles, sex is assigned at birth and refers to the biological status of a person such as male or female. Gender refers to the socially constructed roles such as behaviors, activities, and attributes that a society considers appropriate for boys, men, girls, and women.

Sex and gender are words that we interchange, but they mean completely different things. Sex refers to the biological characteristics that a person receives while they are developing, like their primary and secondary sex characteristics. Gender is the cultural or social norms that society places on a given

2. Gender can be described as the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity. Gender roles on the other hand are a set of norms, or culturally defined expectations, that define how people of one gender ought to behave. For example the ideal male some people might say would be muscular and more dominate as women can be seen as more passive. An example of gender roles could as men being seen as the providers and having to be successful and the breadwinners as women are seen as society as supposed to stay home.

There was a time in history when men played the roles of women in plays and theatre. This was due to males being the dominant gender throughout most of history. However, just because men have played the roles of women before that doesn’t mean that they truly understand women. It’s easy to act and to play a part but to actually feel and understand women takes more than just good acting skills. This can apply to any media through which a woman is interpreted by a man. To truly understand someone, you have to physically be them and go through the situation they go through. What most do is infer and predict what the response of a woman will be, many of the times it can be correct but it won’t always be. To say that men understand women is an is wrong, not all women are the same. When you say women, you’re talking of half of the world’s population.

Gender roles are basically “society norms” It tells types of behaviors that are considered acceptable for a person based on their sex. The expectations include of how a person should act, dress, and talk.

Gender or sex roles are the expected patterns of behavior assumed to follow from a person's sex. Gender roles are not natural. They are formed by and vary within society, culture, geographic location, politics and time. There is a strong relationship between the social construction of gender and compulsory heterosexuality. People are programmed into certain gender roles and social categories through socialization and interaction with others.

Gender roles govern the way that most of the world’s population interact with one another. Many African cultures uphold deeply patriarchal gender roles which dictate how women and men interact with one another. Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie, a staunch feminist, gives readers a look into Nigerian gender roles in her short story Birdsong. Her writing in Birdsong and her TEDtalks explore and expose how these gender roles are harmful and how important it is for many stories of young women of color to be heard.

The most controversial social dynamic I see in contemporary society is the idea of gender roles. I believe this is so controversial because it is a problem globally, yet it also causes problems in personal relationships. I think that it is the reason women are more sexualized by men, which is sometimes a smaller problem, but is also the reason for human trafficking and larger problems. Although that is extreme, the problem of gender roles is probably more familiar to us in our personal relationships. Traditional gender roles cause a lot of expectations in relationships and marriages and those unmet expectations are often the cause of divorce.

Gender roles are the standards set by a society for each of the genders. Most people will not have a problem with the gender roles established but they can be very harmful to some people. Basic gender roles consist of women being associated with the color pink and men being associated with blue. Roles like these set the norms for our society and determine in the long run what is acceptable and not.

Society today places many ideals when it comes to proper behaviours regarding gender roles. These are considered societal norms that are widely debated and controversial. Society has created a norm, which encompasses specific expectations and rules that change the daily lives of men and women, giving them specific tasks and behaviours to abide by. These standards are known as gender roles, which are defined as distinguishing actions, thoughts, and feelings of males and females. Gender roles are said to be a result of nature, which is a natural process, every male or female is to follow. On the other hand it can be a result of nurture, which changes ones way of thinking and adapting their lifestyle to fit their environment. Either way gender roles are a part of someone’s life from the moment of their birth, as they develop, and long after that, this proves that gender roles are influential to a person’s life and development. This essay examines how media such as music, family life, and different parenting styles encompass gender roles and teaches behaviours regarding them. Therefore, gender roles define males and females are a result of nurture and not nature.

Today we live in a world that continually stresses to us that, "All men are created equal." While this sounds great at face value, further inspection tells us that this is far from realistic and sadly may never be. One can examine any aspect of society whether it be race, religion, language, level of education, sexual orientation or economic status and notice that there are numerous characteristics and factors of identity that enable others to treat others differently. This truth may not be pleasant or make one feel all warm and fuzzy inside, however it is our society’s reality, however dismal it may be. Even if the statement above as to the equality of all men were true, how about women? Clearly women have made tremendous strides towards