Gender As A Socio-Cultural Construction Of Gender And Socio-Cultural Construction

Judith Butler, a gender theorist, once said “We act as if that being of a man or that being of a woman is actually an internal reality or something that is simply true about us, a fact about us, but actually it 's a phenomenon that is being produced all the time and reproduced all the time, so to say gender is performative is to say that nobody really is a gender from the start.” Gender is a part of our daily lives. As we go about living, we perform our gender as a way of identification. We see and experience it even when we don’t realize it. Over time, several societies have defined what gender is. To define gender in the simplest way is to describe it as “a socio-cultural construction that makes biological and physical differences between

We must take note that gender is a socio-cultural construction. This means that gender is what we make of it. Since there is not a definitive answer for what gender is outside of the physiology, we must turn to each other to define what it is. It becomes a construction as the individual adapts their gender to what society claims are standard for your sex. When referring to sex and gender we need to remember that they “are two different concepts” (Giraudo, 2016a). As Giraudo (2016a) mentions, “all cultures recognize at least two genders and two sexes, but define them differently.” Over time, these two genders have developed a noticeable set of actions and behaviors that can be seen throughout multiple cultures. The roles that males and females have established can contribute to how gender is constructed. In an article by Sherry B. Ortner (1974), the roles men and women have had over history has attributed to gender performance and the stereotypes that come with being masculine or feminine. Ortner strips what it means to be a man and a woman by analyzing what the importance of male and female is in nature. She finds that there is a “universal fact of a culturally attributed second-class status of woman in every society” as women are responsible for the birth and nurturing of children (Ortner 1974). She claims that with this responsibility, women are not able to develop their own ideas and their

While it shouldn’t affect the way people act or think, gender has become a significant part of our daily lives. It can dictate what we assume about others, how we identify ourselves and set boundaries of what a person can do. With genders come stereotypes that can range from the color coordination of boys and girls to the belief that women are weak housewives. We know these stereotypes as gender roles. We set these roles so that we as a society can know what to expect from one another. These cultural expectations allow society to divide responsibilities and labor in whichever way the society deems acceptable (Giraudo 2016b). In addition to gender roles, there are several rites of passage and initiations that are within communities that contribute to what gender is. A clear example of this is the initiation of womanhood through coming-of-age birthday parties. On certain years, depending on the family’s culture, girls are granted a special celebration that marks their new age as a woman. For Latino and Hispanic families, there are Quinceañeras celebrated at the age 15, Filipino families celebrate what is known as Debuts at age 18, and “Sweet Sixteens” are celebrated in North America. As we can see, the age varies across different cultures. Despite the nuanced differences of the activities that are performed within the celebration, the overall concept of these coming-of-age parties