Gender Stereotypes: The Concept Of Gender Identity

Recently, there has been quite a bit of media attention surrounding the concept of gender identities. What is a gender identity? What does it mean to identify as neither male nor female? Do differences really exist between males and females, and if so, what are they? The concept of gender and how individuals determine what gender they identify as is quite interesting, which is why many studies exist with the intention of determining differences between America’s two main genders (male and female). Gender can be defined as the “ways men and women socialize into the male and female roles that are commonly attributed to them” (Gupta & Gentry, 2016, p. 251). Many of the differences documented between males and females are due to their differing roles in society. The “typical” American family consists of a wife who cooks, cleans, and does other household chores while the husband goes to work and makes the family’s

It is not uncommon to hear jokes about how a woman has to dress her husband in the morning or buy him clothing for holidays since he will not choose out nice apparel unprompted. One study suggests that, once again, this stereotype is true: females are more likely to be fashion leaders (Shephard, Kinley, & Josiam, 2014, p. 280). This implies that women are more willing to try out new styles available in stores, which logically leads to the idea that women go shopping more frequently than men. In order to buy the new, fashionable items, females must spend more of their time looking for them. A very closely related stereotype to the one above is that girls spend more money on clothing. Unsurprisingly, this actually seems to be the case, with one study’s results showing that females, in fact, did use their credit cards to purchase more clothing than males (Hayhoe, Leach, Turner, Bruin, & Lawrence, 2000, p.