A distinction is sometimes made between gender and sex, such that gender refers to socially conditioned characteristics or typical behaviour, and sex to the physical characteristics of men and women. The definition of gender is sociological concerns of sexual difference and human behaviours or a set of classes, such as masculine, feminine and neuter, which together include all nouns. The discussion of how the differences of gender are maintained in society today covers many different areas, such as growing into gender roles, sources of gender socialization, masculinity and femininity and expectations that humans live with daily. These will all be discussed and analysed in the following argument.
We are born either male or female. Depending on the sex that you are, your parents, family and friends try and teach you certain stereotypical ideals. For instance, a little girl may have a pink coloured nursery and clothes. She may be given dolls and tea sets to play with. Whereas a boy may have a blue nursery and toys, and be given trucks and train sets to play with. This is encouraging the child to have feminine or masculine personal qualities, depending on their sex. When these adults are choosing gifts, it immediately comes to mind that a doll for a baby boy is not an appropriate gift. It has been shown that these actions by adults have been taught to them by culture and their surroundings as they themselves were growing up. These children do not have the ability to choose their own gender pathway, and therefore have to rely on their parents to lead them in the correct direction and trust their selection of gender roles. Once a child has become old enough to be able to choose for itself, they develop a more individual personality and variance of gender. Researchers have been debating whether or not males who have been raised as females develop features of masculinity once they reach puberty, and whether the biological sex will prevail. There is still much debate about this issue, but if this were to happen, the male would have to be taught acts of masculinity. The child would have to see what masculinity is to be able to act in this manner. Phrases such as “tomboy” have been used to describe females who act with some masculinity, and the opposite characteristics may be found in males that decide that they prefer to play with dolls than trucks. Different levels of masculinity and femininity can be found across the wide stretch of humanity.
The Essay on Children’s Play and Their Physical Health
Play among children is a vital essentiality as it leads to social, cognitive and physical development among them during their childhood development. Therefore play among children is a normal routine that emerges during this period of growth. They get to involve themselves in humorous activities i. e. various games like hide and seek hide, foot ball, computer games, and several others which seem to ...
‘Women produce children; women are mothers and wives; women do the cooking, cleaning, sewing and washing; they take care of men and are subordinate to male authority; they are largely excluded from high-status occupations and from positions of power.’ (Haralambous and Holborn 1995, Sociology Themes and Perspectives, HarperCollins Publishers) These generalisations have come from our past and have now become quite commonly used. Women have been seen as the maintainers of the household while the men go out to work and earn a living. “When our ancient ancestors switched to hunting as a way of life, the relationship between males and females was dramatically altered. Females with their heavy reproductive burden were unable to play a major role in this new feeding pattern, which had become so vital for survival. A much greater division of labour between the sexes arose.” (Tiger 1969) This quote shows the view that males have become the more successful sex, as they managed to maintain survival and keep their family alive. With this image in mind, it is quite easy to see how gender differences have been initialised and maintained. Young girls have grown up seeing their mother cooking and performing “women duties”, whereas young boys are able to see their father going out to work for the day and then coming home and being able to sit down and put his feet up. From these roles being passed on through generation-to-generation, people in contemporary Australian society have fell into their gender roles in life. In a way, it can be seen that gender roles in contemporary society, and like “social clothing”. Men and women are seen to be wearing clothes that indicate their position in society.
The Dissertation on Gender Traditional Media Role
... women. This possibility represents an especially important avenue for future research. The overall implication of this study is that male gender role ... be discussed further. 6 A regression analysis that maintained participants' original gender role attitudes as a continuous variable supported the ... continuing to invade more and more facets of our lives. Televisions now play in airports and in schools, ...
Sources of gender socialization are varied and influence humans at every stage of life. The six main sources of gender socialization identified by Wearing (1996) are; family, education, peers, media, leisure and work place. Through these six foundations of socialization and the effects that they have in individuals, we can see how gender differences are maintained in contemporary Australian society.
Families are the basis of our learning and the backbone of our lives. They are the ones who teach us how to talk, walk, and complete everyday tasks. They provide an idea of how life works and which roles we are supposed to take up. As we see our parents doing household tasks, such as cleaning, cooking, yard maintenance etc, we learn how we are supposed to live day to day. Through our parents having main beliefs and principles, which they teach their children, they maintain the expectancies of genders.
Education can take on many different and varied forms. These vary from primary school and high school to higher education such as university, TAFE or other adult learning courses. This source of gender socialisation can also be included with peers and workplace. Friends are a very influential aspect of our lives and can make a person feel excluded because they act differently. For example, people, who discover that they are transsexuals, usually realise once they reach adulthood. This has been shown to occur because of the stronger influence peers have on children than adults. As children, anyone who seems “different” to everyone else is ostracised and mocked. These standards that friends and peers have, influence people to act the way their sex is “supposed” to act. Through different influences and demands on a person, they are forced to conform to the majority and hence, maintain gender differences in contemporary society.
The Essay on Suffering of Woman Protagonist in Male Hegemony Society Within The Yellow Wallpaper
Women role in a society has always been changing since prehistoric times so it could not be difined accuratly. However there always has been a stereotype male figure in the society which nearly has not altered since the very first. Besides the women role also differed between religions and civilisations. For instance in early Native American Tribes women were something deified , this however ...
Leisure and extra curricular activities are also important in the social construction of masculinity and femininity. Males use sport as a way of enforcing their gender, whereas women may prefer socialising or more relaxing forms of leisure. For males, competitive outdoor pursuits, like organised sport activities, seem to prove to other males that they have the competence, strength and aggressiveness to be successful. Wearing (1996 Gender; the Pain and Pleasure of Difference, pg 110) has said that gender division strengthens men’s level of ‘competence, strength, (and) aggressiveness’. These traits have become “social requirements” of the male sex. These requirements for women are often quite different. Women may prefer to socialise and entertain and may use that as their way of showing how “good” a female they are. All of these ideas of gender roles have once again been learned from our culture and our history.
Although contemporary Australian society has become a lot more relaxed about gender roles, there are still stereotypes that people maintain. It feels natural for females to sit around and talk while the men are out showing how tough they are. And while ever it feels natural, it can be seen that these above mentioned gender roles have been maintained through culture, into today’s society.
Bibliography
Barrett, M. & McIntosh, M. 1991 ‘The Anti-Social Family’ 2nd Edition, Verso, London
Dempsey, K. 1988 ‘The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology’ No. 24 pp 420 – 36
Haralambos, M. & Holborn, M. 1995, ‘Sociology: Themes and Perspectives’ 4th Edition, Collins Educational, London.
Wearing, B. 1996 ‘Gender: The Pain and Pleasure of Difference’, Longman, Melbourne.
The Learning Centre, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/onlib/print/essay_p.html (9th April 2001)[/b]
