Gender Roles In Society Essay

1098 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Gender roles present day

Are gender specific roles still core to modern society?
In the past twenty years the way society looks at the word “gender” is a totally different perception than what they did years ago, according to the Webster’s dictionary, the word “gender” is the state of being male or female. The word gender use to mean male or female, but now it has become this word that people are taking “offensive”. For example, at schools all around there having to make things gender neutral because a group of people are taking things and twisting them to where it can seem offensive. Society is accepting to anything that’s different and not “how it’s supposed to be” because that equals more publicity. Everyone wants to make everything equal to whatever you want to …show more content…

Society places males in one category and females in another category, although some say it could be detrimental to one if they are not sure what role to identify with or how to be accepted. An article stated by Sara Reese, “Making kids to stick to gender roles can actually be harmful to their health. States a researcher did a study that observed fourteen years old interactions over a three month period. “Usually we think of gender as a natural and biological, but it’s not... we actually construct it in ways that have problems and largely acknowledge health risks.” Several things Pereia found were aspects of what one would consider bullying today. For example, she observed girls who loved to play sports sometimes avoided them all together because it would be “the famine thing to do” Pereia said, “All of the girls were within very healthy weights, but they were all striking their intake of food in some way, so what we 're really talking about is fourteen year old girls who’s bodies are changing and developing, depriving themselves at every meal.” They boys in the study felt they had to prove themselves in some form or fashion. Pereia stated, “All faced intense pressure to demonstrate the extent of their manliness”. Today’s studies give one another a difficult time or poke fun for the smallest thing. Bullying is more prevalent today because of how society’s outlook. Girls and boys both struggle in middle school with their changing in their bodies. Their hormones change and they are changing into adolescents. Never the less the metamorphic change of their bodies is one thing, but being accepted is another aspect to take into

Show More
Related

  • The Prism Of Gender, By Catherine G. Valentine

    2064 Words  | 5 Pages

    Gender is deeply embedded into our society. It is pretty much at every level; it is something complex that goes far beyond just being a male or female. Gender impacts what occupations individuals have access to do, what type of activities they can and can’t do and even what colors they can and cannot wear. As mentioned by Catherine G. Valentine, in The Prism of Gender, society has taught us that a real woman is feminine; a real man is masculine and heterosexual; and any deviation is unacceptable and unnatural (3). Therefore, we live in a society that is binary, and has taught us that there are only two acceptable genders, male and female, and as a result everything is shaped by that idea. Nonetheless, like stated by Kate Bornstein in Gender

    Read More

  • Gender Roles in Society

    2016 Words  | 5 Pages

    “Boys will be boys, and girls will be girls”: few of our cultural mythologies seem as natural as this one. But in this exploration of the gender signals that traditionally tell what a “boy” or “girl” is supposed to look and act like, Aaron Devor shows how these signals are not “natural” at all but instead are cultural constructs. While the classic cues of masculinity—aggressive posture, self-confidence, a tough appearance—and the traditional signs of femininity—gentleness, passivity, strong nurturing instincts—are often considered “normal,” Devor explains that they are by no means biological or psychological necessities. Indeed, he suggests, they can be richly mixed and varied, or to paraphrase the old Kinks song “Lola,” “Boys can be girls and girls can be boys.” Devor is dean of social sciences at the University of Victoria and author of Gender Blending: Confronting the Limits of Duality (1989), from which this selection is excerpted, and FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society (1997).

    Read More

  • Challenging Gender Stereotypes in The Hunger Games

    2237 Words  | 5 Pages

    Well what is gender and what do we mean by gender roles? “Gender describes the socially-constructed roles and responsibilities that societies consider appropriate for men and women” (World Health Organization). All people on earth are affected by gender and the stereotypes that surround it. A person should be able to choose who they want to be and not be scared. Things are changing. According to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, “same-sex sexual harassment extends to where the victim is singled out due to failure to conform to accepted gender stereotypes” (Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP). This is very important for everyone to know and understand. It allows people the ability to express themselves in any way they choose, without the anxiety or fear of being harassed for their decisions because they are a certain gender. This has only o...

    Read More

  • Gender Roles in Society

    1030 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Schools Are Unfair to Boys

    1271 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many people have different ideas on what factors that really form how boys and girls are. Some people believe that boys’ and girls’ genders are defined by social construction. Social construction of gender means boys and girls are indifferent: boys will like dolls and girls will like trucks if they are instilled that way. On the other hand, some people believe that boys and girls are naturally different since they were born: they prefer to different things like boys like truck and girls like dolls. However, the idea about social construction is untrue. According to Chistina Hoff Sommers, author of “From The War Against Boys”, “But researchers have confirmed what parents experience all the time: even without conditioning (indeed, even with counter-condition), boys and girls show different preferences and gravitate toward different toys” (par 8). In other words, girls and boys like different toys even though they are not told or taught to like a specific toy. Boys and girls are different. Boys are naturally a few years slower than girls in education; moreover, they are always active: they like to move around. Therefore boys often have difficulty in schools because many schools think that boys’ and girls’ behavior can be formed by social rules. Schools use the same educational standard and regulation to control boys and girls. The social constructing idea that is used by school is hurting boys’ academic lives.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles in Society

    379 Words  | 1 Pages

    Society places ideas concerning proper behaviors regarding gender roles. Over the years, I noticed that society's rules and expectations for men and women are very different. Men have standards and specific career goals that we must live up to according to how others judge.

    Read More

  • The Psychological Effects of Gender Roles

    2072 Words  | 5 Pages

    “Let the boys be boys.” You’ve heard this phrase before. Often repeated by parents regarding their little boys. So what makes a boy, a boy? Rambo like characteristics? Muscles? Short hair? Wearing blue? Wearing T-shirts and jeans or playing with sporting equipment? Well last I remember, the main characteristics boys shared were penises. The role gender association play in the lives of our children can sometimes affect them negatively. The messages that gender roles send, is that in order to be part of society, you must fit into the norm or the status quo or most importantly what society

    Read More

  • Sociology Essay On Gender Norms

    544 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sexual violence is sometimes thought of as a natural part of life. That men have an inherit biological trait that predisposes them to violence and that it cannot be helped. The famous quote is “boys will be boys” meaning that men have no control over their actions and that if they sexual assault someone, that it is just human nature. This is in fact false. There is nothing in the biological makeup of males that can explain away sexual violence. It is a learned cultural behavior generated by gender norms and the medias perpetuation of sexual violence.

    Read More

  • Learning Gender In a Diverse Society

    999 Words  | 2 Pages

    In this article, Shaw and Lee describe how the action of labels on being “feminine” or “masculine” affect society. Shaw and Lee describe how gender is, “the social organization of sexual difference” (124). In biology gender is what sex a person is and in culture gender is how a person should act and portray themselves. They mention how gender is what we were taught to do in our daily lives from a young age so that it can become natural(Shaw, Lee 126). They speak on the process of gender socialization that teaches us how to act and think in accordance to what sex a person is. Shaw and Lee state that many people identify themselves as being transgendered, which involves a person, “resisting the social construction of gender into two distinct, categories, masculinity and femininity and working to break down these constraining and polarized categories” ( 129). They write about how in mainstream America masculinity and femininity are described with the masculine trait being the more dominant of the two. They define how this contributes to putting a higher value of one gender over the other gender called gender ranking (Shaw, Lee 137). They also speak about how in order for femininity to be viewed that other systems of inequality also need to be looked at first(Shaw,Lee 139).

    Read More

  • Argumentatice Essay Gender Roles

    1266 Words  | 3 Pages

    ‘Boys will be boys’, a phrase coined to exonerate the entire male sex of loathsome acts past, present, and potential. But what about the female sex, if females act out of turn they are deemed ‘unladylike’ or something of the sort and scolded. This double standard for men and women dates back as far as the first civilizations and exists only because it is allowed to, because it is taught. Gender roles and cues are instilled in children far prior to any knowledge of the anatomy of the sexes. This knowledge is learned socially, culturally, it is not innate. And these characteristics can vary when the environment one is raised in differs from the norm. Child rearing and cultural factors play a large role in how individuals act and see themselves.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles in Society

    1583 Words  | 4 Pages

    Since the beginning of time men have played the dominant role in nearly every culture around the world. If the men were not dominant, then the women and men in the culture were equal. Never has a culture been found where women have dominated. In “Society and Sex Roles” by Ernestine Friedl, Friedl supports the previous statement and suggests that “although the degree of masculine authority may vary from one group to the next, males always have more power” (261). Friedl discusses a variety of diverse conditions that determine different degrees of male dominance focusing mainly on the distribution of resources. In The Forest People by Colin Turnbull, Turnbull describes the culture of the BaMbuti while incorporating the evident sex roles among these “people of the forest”. I believe that the sex roles of the BaMbuti depicted by Turnbull definitely follow the pattern that is the basis of Freidl’s arguments about the conditions that determine variations of male dominance. Through examples of different accounts of sex roles of the BaMbuti and by direct quotations made by Turnbull as well as members of the BaMbuti tribe, I intend on describing exactly how the sex roles of the BaMbuti follow the patterns discussed by Freidl. I also aim to depict how although women are a vital part of the BaMbuti culture and attain equality in many areas of the culture, men still obtain a certain degree of dominance.

    Read More

  • The Social Construction of Gender

    1508 Words  | 4 Pages

    Gender is a very strange topic in today's society. Many people don't know what to do with people who are transvestites or transsexuals and they often times hate them because they are different. People always think that there can only be two types of gender: masculine and feminine. People also feel that these genders most always correspond to a person's sex. So if the person is a male, then most people wouldn't accept that person into society if they acted feminine. 'For human beings there is no essential femaleness and maleness, femininity or masculinity, womanhood, or manhood, but once gender is ascribed, the social order constructs and holds individuals to strongly gendered norms and expectations. Individuals may vary on many of the components of gender any may shift genders temporarily or permanently, but they must fit into the limited number of gender statuses their society recognizes.? (Lorber, Night To His Day: The Social Construction of Gender, For Individuals, Gender Means Sameness, Page 463) ??a defining feature of reality construction is to see our world as being the only possible one.? (Kessler & McKenna, Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach, The Primacy of Gender Attribution, Page 475) Many people don?t realize that gender is a socially constructed accomplishment. People make up methods in their heads about ways that people should be and if one doesn?t act they way the other person deems that one should, then they do not fit into that person?s reality. ?Every society classifies people as ?girl and boy children??? (Lorber, Night To His Day: The Social Construction of Gender, Page 460) People always try to guess what gender a person is. If one doesn?t know and is unsure of another?s gender than they keep on looking at them trying to find clues on about that person?s gender. I often times see people, usually children, and I can?t decide whether they or male or female, or should I say masculine or feminine. ?Then we are uncomfortable until we have successfully placed the other person in a gender status; otherwise, we feel socially dislocated.? (Lorber, Night To His Day: The Social Construction of Gender, Page 460) In other countries this might not even be the case, some countries have more than two genders. These other genders are often called berdaches, hijras, or xaniths. ?Some societies have three genders-men, women, and berdaches, or hijras, a...

    Read More

  • Gender Role Socialization Study

    1511 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the society we live in today there is a strong difference between what is considered “boy” and what is considered “girl”. This is because from the time we are born; to the time we die we are expected to conform to a gender role. A gender role is a set of behaviors, attitudes, and personality characteristics expected of a person based on their sex. This process of getting people to conform to their gender roles is called socialization, and it affects children very drastically. There are many different places that gender socialization comes from. It comes mainly from family, peers, and the media. Girls are made to believe that they are supposed to be gentle and nurturing, whereas boys are taught to be tough and even aggressive. Personally, as a child, I learned and have kept to the idea that I’m a girl, and I find that I identify with the things that would make someone a “girl”. These past few chapters have really made me really look into how much of the “girly” things I really like, and how much of it is socialized behavior- where I say that I like something because it’s what I grew up knowing I was supposed to like. Today it’s nearly impossible to go a day without seeing some kind of these gender stereotypes. We socialize our children in a constant cycle of what’s “boy” and what is “girl”.

    Read More

  • Argumentative Essay On Gender Roles

    1340 Words  | 3 Pages

    Everybody is born and made differently, but one thing is similar, our gender. We are born either male or female, and in society everybody judges us for our gender. This is called gender roles; societies expecting you to act like a male or female (Rathus, 2010). Some people say, “act like a lady,” or “be a man,” these are examples of how gender roles work in our everyday lives. In society when we think stereotypes, what do we think? Many think of jocks, nerds, or popular kids; gender stereotyping is very similar. Gender stereotypes are thoughts of what the gender is supposed to behave like (Rathus, 2010). One example of a gender stereotype for a man would be a worker for the family, and a women stereotype would be a stay at home mom. Though in todays age we don’t see this as much, but it is still around us. In different situations both gender roles and stereotypes are said and done on a daily basis and we can’t avoid them because everyone is different.

    Read More

  • Gender And Gender Roles In Society Essay

    700 Words  | 2 Pages

    In society there are gender roles, men and women have basic guidelines on how they should dress, behave, and work. For centuries, men and women have followed these guidelines (maybe unconsciously.) Robert Atwan, proposes the questions, “Do your beliefs ever conflict with the dominant views of gender and gender roles? Have your views changed in anyway? What caused them to change?” I personally think that gender roles are good to have. Not to the extreme but I believe that men and woman should have things each should do. I agree with societies typical gender roles. Man and woman should be viewed as equal but there are just somethings that are easier for each gender to do. Moving heavy objects should be a job for a man, while doing laundry should

    Read More

More about Gender Roles In Society Essay

Open Document