Gender Role And Gender Roles

The statement that I believe to more of an assumption made by gender role researchers rather than an inference or an observation is the statement “Gender-role stereotypes are more harmful to females than to males”. The reason this is more of an assumption rather than an inference is because data shows that gender role stereotypes can be harmful to both boys and girls. For example, observers have noticed and expressed the ways schools and teacher have biases both against boys and girls such as boys being more likely to be criticized by their teachers than girls and school personnel stereotyping boy’s behavior as problematic (qtd. In Santrock 170). Some biases against girls include the fact that boys and girls enter the 1st grade with around

Of course as Santrock describes there will be people who have androgyny which is when there is a presence of both desirable feminine and masculine characteristics in the same individual. This was able to be discovered because the majority of men had masculine characteristics and the majority of women had feminine characteristics, so when an individual had both they had to discover what this meant. The third statement “Femininity and masculinity are separate aspects of personality that have their own unique characteristics” is also something that is backed up by research. Santrock gives some examples of these characteristics, for masculinity there are traits such as defending their own beliefs, being forceful, willing to take risks, being dominant and being aggressive, examples of characteristics associated with femininity include not using harsh language, being affectionate, loving children, being understanding, and being gentle (180). So this statement is also backed up by

It goes “Rather than merge gender roles, females and males should transcend gender-role characteristics”. This statement is speaking to a scientific reply to androgyny know as gender-role transcendence which is the view that when an individual’s competence is at issue, it should be conceptualized on a person-by-person basis rather than on the basis of masculinity, femininity, or androgyny (qtd. In Santrock 182-183). Santrock goes to explain the viewpoint of gender-role critics by saying that gender-role transcendence explores the idea that parents should raise their children to be a competent person rather than trying to get them to fit into any of the three roles, and that the gender role classification encourages stereotyping