The concept of masculinity has varied with time and place. In the West, the diversion between man and woman is thin line. On the contrary, considering the case of India the difference is wide. The crisis of masculinity is crawling into the society. In ancient times masculinity was
Cicero said, "Viri autem propria maxime est fortitudo." Wrote in Tusculanae Quaestiones, (the Tusculan Disputations) series of books written by Cicero –
In translation, Cicero states: "a man's chief quality is courage."
In modern times, the stereotypical thought has changed. Man considered being the breadwinner and woman as house-maker has taken another shape. Liberalization leads to development in the society. The restrictions among the female section have minimized. Now woman has more liberty to express thoughts and live independently. Family boundaries have broken.
Liberalization and globalization – From 1991 started the period of liberalization and globalization which refers to ongoing economic reforms. Globalization established growing number of global corporation in India. Consequently, the economic growth and reforms increased market efficiency. As a result new avenues for employment opened in the market.
In the period of early 1990’s companies like General Electric, British Airways and American Express relocated their operation back in India.
From the 19th century there has been two categories- participation of women and widows as labor force and upper class women in high status profession. ‘Man is powerful’ has been a cliché as because women were always considered inferior to the status of man.
The reluctant of male dominated domain to acknowledge the reality that woman were as good as men with respect to hard work, intelligence and le...
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...vernor of Rajasthan Margaret Alva, told the media that the political parties are not to named but the male parliamentarians within the various party are not keen on passing the Women’s reservation bill. Ms. Alva said this in an informal interaction with journalists at the Raj Bhavan on the occasion of International Women’s Day.
She also added that male parliamentarians are reluctant to leave their chairs. This is the reason for not passing the bill. (Hindu, 2014)
Decision of this sort illustrates the fear of crisis of masculinity. For a man holding a position is a matter of respect. If the same is expected to share with woman the ego of man hurts. Crisis is defined.
Holding position is not only restricted to sharing it with woman who are considered lower compared to the level of men. Man ego clashes with man also when comes to holding a rank/position.
Masculinity is described as possession of attributes considered typical of a man. Hegemonic masculinity is a form of masculine character with cultural idealism and emphasis that connects masculinity to competitiveness, toughness, and women subordination. Masculinity hegemonic is the enforcement of male dominion over a society. Masculine ideology dates back to the time of agrarian and the industrial revolution in Europe when survival compelled men to leave their homesteads to work in industries to earn a living for their families while women remained at home to take care of family affairs (Good and Sherrod 210). Women did not work in industries then because industrial labor was considered too physical beyond their capacity. This led to definition of roles which placated the position of men in a society while condemning women as mere subordinates who cannot do without men. The critics of gender stereotypes in America describe the following five hegemonic features of masculinity: frontiersman ship, heterosexuality, occupational achievement, familial patriarchy, and physical force and control (Trujillo 4). The advent of the 20th century led to sweeping changes in American masculinity.
The social normality of the world is that men are required to be strong, determined and career driven, but for women, they ought to be weak, acquiescent to their male counterpart, and domestic. As of late, women have been acting against this stereotype. Rather than being complacent, women are beginning to stand in solidarity and dismantle the patriarchy that reigns over the nation. With this new-found empowerment for women, countless obstacles in the form of other social groups, particularly men, face them, working against women from allowing true equality to be achieved. Women in literature and media are beginning to be portrayed as women in power, something that was a rarity to previous generations. Contrary to traditional feminine gender
In many cultures, patriarchy is embedded in customs. Head of state, head of the family, leading positions would usually fall on a man, and woman would have the privilege to support them as implied second-class citizen. As Walter Lee said to Beneatha: “Who the hell told you-you had to be a doctor? If you so crazy ‘bout messing ‘round with sick people then go be a
In the United States, there are many problems that stem from one seemingly small problem; masculinity. In our country, and many others, men are expected to behave a certain way or they are considered invalid to their gender. The reason masculinity is toxic is because it leads to higher levels of violence and sexual assault. As a society, we need to redefine what masculinity means and how we can change it so it will be a positive thing in our country opposed to a negative thing.
In the book Difference Matters, Brenda J Allen, begins writing about how gender matters in society. One of the main topics that she talks about is how in today’s society the male gender is the more predominate gender. As the reader, she has brought to mind many new ways to view how males earn more money then females, how we classify jobs as masculine or feminine, and also how society excepts males’ vs females to act and preform in the work force.
Women have historically been submissive to men and with this, it may also be recalled that the perception of one also plays a major role in how that individual is treated by society. The inequalities present between men and women will be further discussed in this essay in respects to the gender discrimination which exist in the workforce.
Society has females and males alike typecasted into roles which have basic characteristics that are the reverse of each other. Although this has begun to change over the past thirty years, typically the man was seen as superior to the female. This superior image is one that today, is slowly on its way to being reduced to one of complete equality between the two genders.
According to our main source of Gender in Cross Cultural Perspective the book along with lecture gave us many examples of barriers and preconditioned notions of man’s work or woman’s work and how these barriers and outlines have been broken and rewritten over the course of time and throughout the years.
Sex and gender are attributes to our identity. Sex describes the physical and biological factors we are born with, for example male or female genitalia, as quoted from blackadder “A boy without a winkle is a girl” (Elton and Curtis 1998). Whether we have oestrogen or testosterone hormones also tells us if we are man or woman. Gender however is in relation to stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, and expectations of what characteristics men or women should portray. Anyone given the opportunity to describe men, they would say words like dominant, non emotional, macho, aggressive, and to be the provider and protector of his family. This essay sets out to examine if masculinity is socially constructed and to do this the theories of gender, media, historical societies and even sexuality will be analysed throughout.
A major way in which women have a lower status in society than men can be seen through women in politics. There are three major key areas of women in politics which focus of these points these consist of the attitudes towards women in politics, how women are represented thought the eyes of the law and through their occupational activity. It is not unknown that women are drastically misrepresented in Irish politics today. According to the Central Statistics Office (CSO, 2013) the amount of women TDs stand at 25 compared to 141 male TDs. That roughly estimates out that just 15 per cent of Dáil member are women. This major misrepresenta...
Gender stratification is the cuts across all aspects of social life and social classes. It refers to the inequality distribution of wealth, power and privilege between men and women at the basis of their sex. The world has been divided and organized by gender, which are the behavioural differences between men and women that are culturally learnt (Appelbaum & Chambliss, 1997:218). The society is in fact historically shaped by males and the issue regarding the fact has been publicly reverberating through society for decades and now is still a debatably hot topic. Men and women have different roles and these sex roles, defined to be the set of behaviour’s and characteristics that are standard for each gender in a society (Singleton, 1987) are deemed to be proper in the eyes of the society. They are as a matter of fact proper but as time move on, the mind-set of women changes as well, women also want to move on. However the institutional stratification by the society has become more insidious that the stereotypical roles have created a huge barrier between men and women. These barriers has affected women in many aspects such as minimizing their access on a more superior position in workforce organization, limits their ownership of property and discriminates them from receiving better attention and care.
Masculinity and femininity are two terms, which have been interpreted differently throughout history. Both the males and the females have responsibilities and duties but these duties differ based on one’s gender. Gender has played a prodigious role in the economy, politics, and the society. Everyone starts making interpretations of the strengths and weaknesses based on one’s gender. These interpretations are not always based on his or her ability but is usually based on his or her gender. Males tend to be judged as extremely strong and unfashionable in terms of appearance. Whereas, females are judged as expensive and very fashionable. Males and females both differ in their abilities and their enjoyments. Fashion, entertainment, and strength are three topics, which are used to define masculinity and femininity in the 21st century.
This becomes a major problem when it comes to occupation. Theres is a phenomenon around the world known as occupational isolation, which is the segregation of jobs due to gender. Often, there are occupation which are target the male gender and others the female gender. Female are not considered for male jobs, such as prosecutors or front-line police officer. Women compete for jobs that pay less than their male counterparts. The perception is that a woman’s best occupation is being a housewife, and there is a generalization that her attitude at home will transfer to her work place. This is why women are being paid lower rates while men fight over high income jobs. When such segregation maintains itself, it leads to women becoming less progressive, while male continue to develop and acquire new skills, which leads to higher social life status and position. A consensus has been created by society and globalization policies in most countries where a woman’s work has been devalued, which removes women from the contention of new job’s available. It is also well known the the female wage and development projects do not receive the same fund compared to women, which leaves women in the
In this era of modernization with the advancement of technology, there are some countries which are still in the stage of developing country trying to improve the status by offering more jobs to the society like Malaysia, India and Korea. As we know, a country needs the excellent people who can work and sacrifice for the country to improve the economics and lifestyle. But, there is some Asian culture which seriously appears in Malaysia. Generally in the corporate sectors, our government have found out that the women are still being left out decision-making due to relunctance and stereotyping of gender roles. Let’s see the phenomenon of gender inequalities. For example, in Japan, many women move into part-time work upon having children. In United States of America, women held only 16% of board seats of large companies. A study shows that women in senior management positions were three times more likely to lose other jobs than men in similar positions. Let’s move on to see the occurrence of gender inequality in our country, Malaysia. Recently, the minister Datuk Seri Sharizat A.J. stated that the women are still being left out of decision-making due to the gender inequality.Nowadays, gender inequality is being practiced widely in corporate sectors. So, what do you know actually about gender inequality? Gender Inequalities refers to the obvious or ...
According to Vera Nazarian, “A woman is human. She is not better, wiser, stronger, more intelligent, more creative, or more responsible than a man. Likewise, she is never less. Equality is a given.” For centuries, gender discrimination and inequality issues concerning employment and wages, has been a serious problem that still is in the midst of being solved. Women excel in all fields and play a vital role in economic development of the country, and their contribution is nothing short of their male counterparts. However, there are still several issues and problems that women face today. Sometimes, they are not treated equally in their workplace and are considered as inferior to their male co-workers. Gender discrimination and inequality issues has been a reoccurring issue for years and because of this, it impedes single and/or married women from acquiring certain occupations or levels of occupations as males, receiving equal wages as males, and therefore affects women’s economic class placement in society.