Gender Roles in Society

Gender Roles in Society

Suggested roles of all types set the stage for how human beings perceive their life should be. Gender roles are one of the most dangerous roles that society faces today. With all of the controversy applied to male vs. female dominance in households, and in the workplace, there seems to be an argument either way. In the essay, “Men as Success Objects”, the author Warren Farrell explains this threat of society as a whole. Farrell explains the difference of men and women growing up and how they believe their role in society to be. He justifies that it doesn’t just appear in marriage, but in the earliest stages of life. Similarly, in the essay “Roles of Sexes”, real life applications are explored in two different novels. The synthesis between these two essays proves how prevalent roles are in even the smallest part of a concept and how it is relatively an inevitable subject.

Warren Farrell is a well educated man who focuses his attention on gender. In his essay “Men as Success Objects,” he writes about gender roles in male-female relationships. He begins, “for thousands of years, marriages were about economic security and survival” (Farrell 185). The key word in that statement is were. This implies the fact that marriage has changed in the last century. He relates the fact that post 1950s, marriage was more about what the male and female were getting out of the relationship rather than just the security of being married. Divorce rates grew and added to the tension of which gender held the supremacy and which role the individuals were supposed to accept. “Inequality in the workplace” covered up all of the conflicts involved with the “inequality in the homeplace”(Farrell). Farrell brings to attention all ...

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...o accept. They help define male versus female.

Most of the time these issues are taken lightly, and go unnoticed until someone or some group pays attention to the inequality and typical roles. It becomes interesting when roles are reversed in society to see how others react to those situations. Society seems to be getting more comfortable with female success, and less obsessed with women staying home to do housework. No matter how successful, there is always a struggle for dominance. It also seems to depend on how children are brought up as to how strongly those individuals strive to achieve their specific role. It will be interesting to see as society changes over time how the defined gender roles will continue to change as well. Whether it is the conflict of success, supremacy, or need for perfection roles will sustain time just as they have from the beginning.