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Gender Roles In Western Culture

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This essay focuses on the extent to which men and women conform to their gender roles in the western culture. Generally, we see people swapping the words ‘gender’ and ‘sex’, which is wrong. We are born with a sex allotted to us. Both ‘biological sex’ and ‘gender’ are distinctive. Gender is not associated with one’s physical constructive, then again, it is far more confounding. It is characterised as “the complex interrelationship between an individual’s sex (gender biology) and one’s internal sense of self as male, female, both or neither (gender identity) as well as one’s outward presentations and behaviour (gender expression), related to that perception, including their gender roles.” Freud pointed out that when we meet a person, the first thing that we notice and establish is that person’s gender. Most of the times, if we are not able to place or establish a person’s gender, it will cause inconvenience to us. Perhaps, this ‘establishment’ is interlinked with the way we behave with the person, which is explained by the gender system, predominant in one’s culture. A gender system incorporates “processes that define males and females as different in socially significant ways and justify inequality on the basis of that difference.” This gender system lays down the guidelines about what behaviour a particular society expects of males and females. This way, the gender system of a society enforces the gender roles for both males and females, in a culture.

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