Before the day a baby is born in society it is subjected to being policed and “doing gender.” Whether it’s painting a room blue when parents find out that their child is male or buying dolls and kitchen utensils for their future girl, “doing gender” and gender policing is a norm in most societies. Most of these norms are based off institutions that create social structures in society, for example “back to school shopping” is considered a norm because it affirms the institution of education. However, because gender and “doing gender” is important in, there has been a creation of gendered institutions, which channels boys/men and girls/women into separate and often differently valued activities (Wade & Ferree, p. 167).
One of the gendered institutions is marriage. The institution of marriage has been around for a long time and has changed over time. However, the theme of marriage has remained the same that women were to marry men and wives are to help and serve their husbands, and anything else was a deviation from the norm.
When the colonist arrived the patriarch structure was enacted through land ownership, which was passed down from generation to generation. However it was only passed down through men, as women were not given rights and mainly viewed as property as well. Thus for women to secure a decent life, they needed a husband establishing a patriarch marriage (Wade & Ferree, p. 191-199).
Industrialization however destroyed what was then considered traditional marriage, as there was less property to own when living in the city. However instead of completely abandoning the idea of patriarch marriage, a new adaption of it was formed creating the idea of separate spheres. Thus creating the breadwinner/ housewife marriage w...
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...nce in the relationship. Trainer also states for him to “Know a few things to be her one and only in her life”. The problem with this statement is that she is saying that her husband cannot have any expectations of her, but she expects him to still carry out the same traditional role and be what she considers a gentleman, worthy of her love.
The song is also problematic because it adheres to idea of compulsory heterosexuality, which is the ideal that everyone is heterosexual and anyone else is rendered invisible. By the title being called “Dear Future Husband”, Trainer alienates anyone else who does not intend to be married or does not identify as heterosexual.
Trainer’s song “Dear Future Husband” is an example how institutions can influence the way people perpetuate stereotypes and sexist ideologies, which then starts the cycle of reinforcing gendered institutions
Aaron H. Devor argues in his essay “Becoming Members of Society: Learning the Social Meanings of Gender” the gender roles casted by society help shape the definition of gender and that society’s norms aren’t necessarily correct. In America, the two traditional categories for gender are male and female (109). He claims that gender is taught through their culture’s social definitions of gender; children see themselves in terms they have learned from the people around them (110). To support this claim, he introduces the “I”, “me” and “self”; the “I” forms a self-image to oneself as distinctive while the “me” allows one to fit into social norms (111). Together, they form the “self” that allows one to oversee and remove any behavior that is unacceptable
Before the introduction of industrialization, the family and the household was the basic unit of manufacturing in Western Europe. The family members would work together in commerce, and agricultural...
As production of goods began to move outside the home in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the family and community lost some of their power over the increasingly private lives of individuals. Divorce became more acceptable, socially and legally, and consequently more common. As families moved awa...
The existence of a patriarchal system has been one of the corner stones of gender studies since the first application of feminist methodology to historical thought. However, the definition and meaning of patriarchy have significantly altered since Max Weber sought to clarify term. Weber stated that “Patriarchalism means the authority of the father, the husband, the senior of the house, the sib elder over the members of the household and sib; the rule of the master and patron over bondsman, serfs, freed men…of the patrimonial lord and sovereign prince over the subjects.” While statement and others like it served for many years as a starting point, the definition has begun to disintegrate under a flurry of activity by historians of early America.
Gender may be a universal concept, but the meaning of gender differs between societies. The way humans behave, speak, experience, think, and view the world is the final product of socialization. From the moment the sex of a fetus is known, humans are being molded into the person society wants them to be. Different parts of society have different functions in the gender-socialization process. The familial relationships and interactions one has with their immediate surroundings—peers, school, religion, and neighborhood—are the most influential aspects of gender development. Loosely connected societal influences like mass media, politics, and culture are influential as well. Throughout childhood, one’s family and interactions with their immediate surroundings teach and reinforce gender, while the rest of society acts as a reinforcer. During adolescence, the broader society begins to take on a minor instructor role in relation to the family in the further development of gender. Essentially, family always acts as the main gender instructor and reinforcer, while society acts as the secondary gender instructor and reinforcer.
Many of people today feel trapped inside their homes, just how the women of Pre-Industrial Europe felt. Working day in and day out inside the homes, just to keep the family together, and make a little money on the side, these women were an integral part of Pre-Industrial families. Not only were the women important to Pre-Industrial European families, but so were the households. Much of the money was made in the households, and this is where families either succeeded or failed. The household and women of Pre-Industrial Europe played an integral role in the economy of the families, and more importantly, the women of these households kept them running smoothly. Without either of these important aspects of life in Pre-Industrial Europe, it is safe to say that the families would have collapsed, due to a lack of organization and structures. Pre-Industrial Europe, in which the women and the household were “the factories” per se, due to the income they generated, was much different from the Europe we know today. Leading into the Industrialization of Europe beginning in the late 1700's and lasting through the early 1800's, the household played an integral role in the family’s income. Without the household, the families would literally collapse, due to a lack of organization and stability. Within these important family sub-units, there was one married couple, their children, the family’s servants, and in some cases, depending upon the region of Europe, there were grandparents, aunts and uncles. Not only did the father and servants of the house work, but also the women and children. Also, in the case of there being more than one generation of family in a single household, depending upon the region of Europe, the grandparents, aunts, and uncles would also work within the house. Once the children of these households reached a certain age, usually the early teens, they were sent off to work in a house as a servant. These servants were different then the servants of today, as they worked for room, board, and food, not waiting on the family. Once they started to generate income, the teens would save up the money necessary to begin their own family. However, there were the few exceptions; teens that did not work as servants, and ended up marrying into an existing household. This however,...
Gender role conflicts constantly place a role in our everyday life. For many years we have been living in a society where depending on our sexuality, we are judged and expected to behave and act certain way to fulfill the society’s gender stereotypes. The day we are born we are labeled as either a girl or boy and society identifies kids by what color they wear, pink is for girls and blue is for boys. Frequently, we heard the nurses in the Maternity facility saying things like, “Oh is a strong boy or is beautiful fragile princess.” Yet, not only in hospitals we heard this types of comments but we also see it on the media…
Norms in society do not just come about randomly in one’s life, they start once a child is born. To emphasize, directly from infancy, children are being guided to norms due to their parents’ preferences and choices they create for them, whether it is playing with legos, or a doll house; gender classification begins in the womb. A prime example comes from a female author, Ev’Yan, of the book “Sex, love,Liberation,” who strongly expresses her feelings for feminism and the constant pressure to conform to gender. She stated that “From a very young age, I was taught consistently & subliminally about what it means to be a girl, to the point where it became second nature. The Disney films, fairy tales, & depictions of women in the media gave me a good definition of what femininity was. It also showed me what femininity wasn’t (Ev’Yan).She felt that society puts so much pressure on ourselves to be as close to our gender identities as possible, with no confusion; to prevent confusion, her mother always forced her to wear dresses. In her book, she expressed her opinion that her parents already knew her gender before she was born, allowing them t...
In “Gender as a Social Structure: Theory Wrestling with Activism”, the author Barbara Risman explains her theory to readers about how gender should be thought of as a social structure. Thinking of it as such would allow people to examine how gender is ingrained in almost every part of society, thus putting gender on an equal level of importance with economics and politics. In society, gender dictates many of the opportunities and limitations that an individual may face in his or her lifetime. Barbara Risman points out the three aspects of the gender structure that happen at an individual, interactional, and institutional level (Risman, pg. 446). First, gender contributes to how a person will develop themselves in life. This is the “individual level”. At an interactional level, men and women face different expectations that are set by society. The individual and interactional level are linked because sometimes, changes to one level can affect the other. The third level, the institutional level, notes that gender is affected by laws, rules, and organizational practices that dictate what
This has heavy ramifications on women as a class because women come from such vast backgrounds—race, social class, financial background, sexual orientation, gender expression, cis/transgender backgrounds, age, ability, and any other backgrounds imaginable—women have to reconcile all of these backgrounds together as fellow women. Bennett would argue that the lack of knowledge of the past of women as a class “hinders our ability to trace continuities in women’s history,” specifically because women’s history is different with every separate tie to other backgrounds (Bennett 79). One might argue that the only thing that ties women together as a class in modern society is the ability to make patriarchal bargains. Even though not every woman is able to assimilate into the patriarchy as easily as white, cis, straight women, in modern society, more women than ever before have been able to make patriarchal
In Meghan Trainor’s “Dear Future Husband” video, she is singing an anthem to her potential “future husband.” She describes different scenarios and expectations set for him as her potential husband. She repeats the line if you want to be my one and all my life. She is possessive when she says this line and is emphasizing her choice for a man in her life. Bell Hooks in her article, Romance: Sweet Love, writes that love is a deliberate decision and an act of will.
A great place to begin is by investigating when and where or even how did our society, the United States, become socialized to the point where roles and expectations are defined by gender. How have theorists or researchers expla...
Activities, interactions, and responsibilities are assigned to classes, such as Wife, Handmaid, Martha, or Angel, and there is little to no overlap between the classes. Gender roles are much less specific in today’s society, but gender roles do exist. West and Zimmerman’s “Doing Gender” explains what some of these gender roles are. People assume facts about people to be true based on the gender that they are; a man is automatically assumed to be a good leader while a woman is usually considered bossy when they work together. A baby dressed in pink is always a girl and is a “sweet princess” but a baby dressed in blue is obviously a boy and is told that he is “strong” and “a fighter”.
Over the decades, a significant mark of the evolution of gender is the increasing social phenomenon in how society conceptualizes gender. Gender is a system of social practices for characterizing people as two different categories, femininity and masculinity and arranging social relations of inequality on the basis of that difference (Ridgeway & Correll 2004). Gender-neutral parenting (GNP) refers to raising children outside of the traditional stereotypes of girls and boys. It involves allowing children to explore their innate personalities and abilities rather than confining them into rigid gender roles that society has shaped. It can be argued that it is through socialization children discover how to operate in gendered structures, learn
According to Kate Bornstein and their work Gender Outlaw, “the first question we usually ask new parents is: Is it a boy or a girl?” (46). This question creates a sense of a rigid dichotomy, by which individuals must outwardly conform to either being male or female. Individuals who do not prescribe to this binary concept of gender identity find themselves ostracized from much of society – ignored, ridiculed, and laughed at as an insignificant minority. For this group of people, “either/or is used as a control mechanism,” creating a normative group by which power can be derived from (102). According to Bornstein, the concept of the gender binary being the “natural state of affairs” is one of the most dangerous thoughts proliferated about gender within modern society (105). For individuals who do not conform to this socially created structure, they are seen as opposing the natural order of things, and subsequently, their power is stripped by society, and they are deemed as unnatural and inhuman. These oppressive labels create intense feelings of gender dissonance, and the pressure to conform can often overwhelm the individual, directly resulting in often horrific