Their have been many gender roles over the years, varying and changing rapidly. Margaret Mead was one of the major researchers of gender roles from culture to culture. Most of these gender roles are basically stereotypes, physical differences, differences in cognitive ability, such as mathematics and visual ability. Also there are many personality and behavior differences.
Gender roles and what is considered to be appropriate masculine and feminine behaviors in a particular culture. The most well known roles are usually women being kind, emotional, dependent, submissive, gentle and indecisive those are only a few of the feminine stereotypes. Male stereotype are aggressive, independent, worldly, curl, blunt, tough and many more. Gender roles have been changing over the century and women are becoming more independent and in a sense more like males. Slowly women have been stepping up into the workforce, by doing so gender roles have become less rigid. Margaret Mead studied three different groups of people.
According to Mead one of the tribes she studied was more warlike and both men and woman were aggressive. This certain tribe also looked down on bearing children because it interfered with their ability to go to battle. The neighboring tribe however had a gentle peaceful culture. Men and women had equal responsibilities in caring for children and land maintaining.
The third tribe differed from both in gender roles. The men of this tribe spent most of their time caring for the children, gossiping and primping. The tribes women spent their time catching fish, which is the bulk of there diet. Women keep their heads shaved and dislike ornaments and are also more aggressive. Some say Margaret’s interpretation of gender roles is too subjective or based on personal beliefs of gender roles. However the data she collected does show that gender roles are different from culture to culture.
The Essay on Roles of Women in Myth and Society
Throughout history men have always been shown to be the dominate force in any one culture and are always the ones being praised for their great actions and accomplishments, but what we do not see is that women also played key roles in making a society function. In many cultures women were to stay at home, cook dinner, tend to the farms, etc. while the men went off to fight in wars or raid other ...
Her data supports that many gender differences are learned and not inborn.
