Males are expected to be strong or masculine, confident and competitive; where females are expected to be more sensitive, supportive and submissive. Over the years’ worldviews and gender roles have changed and viewed differently from how it was then and now. Worldviews are constantly changing and so does the role of different genders. Society has an acceptable attribute for different genders and the role they play in the society. A lot of these roles or characteristics do not agree with the acceptance of worldviews and therefore gender roles does have a big influence on worldviews.
And vice versa. Gender is not specific your interest, likes, dislikes, goals, and ambitions" - Connor Franta author of "A Work in Progress" Gender roles are a set of ideas societies assigns to certain genders, such as boys must be strong and girls must be able to clean and cook for the family. These stereotypes dictate what is "normal" for a male or female to do While gender roles are found all throughout the world, the ideas are very different in one country to the next. I have read multiple sources and done research on gender roles and how they vary around the world. The 3 points I will cover today are gender roles in the United States, the Middle East, and how gender roles are changing in these countries.
In Stephen Mays article “ What About Gender Roles In Same Sex Relationships” he talks about how the traditional gender roles of a relationship do apply in a small way to same sex couples but he also says “Imposing gender roles on on gay couples is even more ridiculous than doing so with straight couples”. The whole purpose of a gay relationship is that there is no “woman” and in a lesbian relationship there is no “man”. People are so accustomed to the traditional relationship of a man and a woman that they try to push those gender roles onto single gender relationships. When a man shows personality traits that we would normally associate with a woman, that does not make him the woman in the gay relationship because he is biologically a man. I couldn 't agree more with Mays in this article, a women can be more masculine and that does not make her a man, so why does society feel the need to force strict gender roles on everyone.
2 What are gender roles? 2.1 Gender roles in general Every society and culture is structured around patterns that initiate how we interact with each other. There are different categories of these patterns such as gender (sex), ethnicity and social class. These categories combined can be called a status. (cf.
Being pressured into conventional roles today is less common than back in the 40’s and 50’s when society had nothing but conforming roles for men and women in society. examples of this come from how men and women were brought up, culture and media. If it were not for these three factors gender roles would be farfetched. But unfortunately, there is still this pressure of gender roles and one way or another everyone has to make the decision of whoever they want to be and live with those roles. In this essay culture, media and how both men and women being raised affect gender roles and socialization.
GENDER AND THE MEDIA The media has a very powerful effect on culture, shaping societal structures and operations. Dominant media forms have heavily assisted in constructing gender and genderalized norms. Advertising and mass media forms display codes that are associated with representing male and female attributes. These gender codes shape the way in which society views gender and assists in determining what is acceptable gender performance. It is through media’s reinforcement of gender stereotypes, codes and gender displays that shape the way in which society perceives and constructs genders.
Gender roles are an important part of the culture and social structure of every society. Their power to influence behavior derives from their essential quality, appearing to reflect inherent attributes of women and men and from the related tendency to be relatively consensual and for people to be aware of this consensus. Femininity and masculinity are gender roles that are routinely conceptualized with regard to the totality of gender traits or characteristics that one possesses regardless of gender (Bem, 1974). Because gender roles are shared, people correctly believe that others are likely to react more approvingly to behavior that is consistent rather than inconsistent with these roles. Therefore, the most likely route to a smoothly functioning social interaction is to behave consistently with one’s gender role or at least to avoid strongly deviating from it (Wood and Eagly, 2010).
To put it simply, gender is the identification of male or female due to their ability to perform as male or female (reproductive roles). it could also be seen as a range of characteristics pertaining to and differentiating between masculinity and femininity. Gender plays a very significant role in the society. The gender of a person could determine how well they fit in the society as some societies tend to favor the males better than the females as they believe that males are superior to female. This in some societies is a problem as women are trying to fight for their right to be able to do things that the males do.
Sexuality comes from within a person, while gender roles are imposed on a person from childhood, through adolescence until adulthood. Rules, regulations, norms and conventions have been pre-set for both the male and the female for centuries. Women are expected to behave in a certain way which for men, would be absolutely unacceptable and would attract ridicule, and vice-versa. Formed during the socialization phases of a child, gender role issues influence people throughout their lives; conflict can arise when someone does not feel at ease with his or her gender role Parents, being the first teachers and role models that a child encounters, play an important part in imposing the idea of gender roles in their child. They help in shaping their attitudes, behavior and basic skills such as walking, sitting, talking and other gestures.
Throughout the course of history, society uses gender as an organizational tool to classify humans into two basic categories: male and female. This creates a gender binary with socially constructed norms that design a rigid guide as to how each gender must act and perform in their daily lives. Gender is a social construct and not inherent in our genes. As gender theorist Judith Butler claims, “Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance.” In other words, society is performing a role of gender every day that gives off an impression of male or female through our own repetitive performance of gender. Gender performance roles create and uphold societal norms, discourse, and the foundation upon which children are being raised in the patriarchy.