Psy 311 Week 2 Gender Roles Research Paper

Women have found themselves at the bottom of society’s hierarchal pyramid for eons. Even though females make contributions that prove vital to the world’s function, they are still regarded as the weaker link. The female plight of constantly facing debasement is a pawn used to ensure compliance. It is a common notion that if one is demeaned enough, he or she will conform to the suggested persona. Society tests this notion through its treatment of women.

The story picked is What Means Switch written by Gish Jen. It revolves around the life of Mona Chang, an 8th grade American-born Chinese girl in New York during the 1960s. She meets Sherman Matsumoto, a new Japanese student who becomes her boyfriend. She battles Japanese, traditional and modern Chinese influences, in a western environment. The concepts derived from this short story are as follows.

Power in House, M.D. House, M.D. is a very interesting show when it comes to power due to the many different character types and the hierarchy of workplace power. There’s many different layers going on and looking at where the power is and what types of powers there are is amusing. In terms of gender and power, I think that the writers and producers have stuck with the societal stereotype of men being the more powerful characters.

In recent years, gender has become a hot topic of discussion. Gender is defined as “the state of being male or female”, however, some gender theorists suggest that gender is a social construction that was not founded on sex. According to gender theory, the term gender is not expressing the state of being feminine or masculine. Many suggest that the separation between gender and sex has to deal with dominance being associated with gender as opposed to physical characteristics being associated with sex. Until the rise of industry in the West, the strong divide of gender was not prevalent.

Race and gender have a lot to do with the presidential elections. Depending on who is running for president has a lot to do with who will vote, and by what race will vote. Gender used to have a majority to do with who would get to vote. Men used to be the only ones who could vote in at their time. It was not until 1920 that women were eligible to vote.

In Nella Larsen’s novel, The Passing, Irene Redfield is an outgoing Harlem woman. She opens a letter from Clare Bellew, who is married to a white man who does not know that his wife is black. Clare insists that she is lonely, isolated as she is from her own people, and she asks Irene to meet her again. Irene recalls her encounter with Clare in Chicago two years prior, in Clare’s home, she and another light-skinned black woman had been forced to listen to attacks about black people delivered by Clare’s racist husband. Now, Irene understands that Clare wants to use her in order to enter the Harlem society, although still pretending to be white, she can be with her own race.

Society has socially constructed gender roles and norms for men and women to fulfill throughout their life time. Women are socialized to be less assertive than a man. Therefore, woman aren’t as upfront with their desires. In an effort to respect people’s feelings, women often bite their tongue and go with the flow. Therefore, women are less likely to express their opinions and ask for what they want.

Gender refers to the physically and socially constructed characteristics of women and men (World Health Organization), in which most people consider male and female as the only sex. Recent years has seen an increase in LGBTs, which stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. People are becoming more acceptable and open-minded to people who are not of either male or female. Gender fluidity are nowadays more widely accepted, with gender roles being as expectations rather than rules, and the general concept that your sex, gender, clothes, and hobby does not define you or limit your options, there is a less certain definition of ‘Man’ and ‘Woman’. For most people, we are taught to behave in a certain way according to our own gender, the

Gender is becoming a large word of conflict in society, and its use has increased in the past few years as the definition has been debated and discussed. Many people are trying to figure out what gender is, and if it is as simple as male and female, or if gender is different from sex and a much topic. I personally view it as a broad word that means more than it has in the past, but that is due to the environment I have grown up in and people that have been in my life as I have started learning new things about the world . The word gender has such conflict about its definition that I feel it should be open for more discussion, or have multiple definitions to make up for the variations in opinions.

It all started with a simple thought, one that lead to a wish and some hope, then to talking and writing about that thought. Finally, it became an action, an action that several, considered to be the minority, fought and protested for about one hundred years and would not back down until they obtained their goals. This is what we call the Women’s Rights Movement. The role of women and men are exceedingly different from each other and this is a major topic and theme most talked about during the Romantic Era. Men, with the exception of breaking the law, could do anything they wanted without being criticized for it by society.