The Importance Of Gender Identity

Gender performance roles create and uphold societal norms, discourse, and the foundation upon which children are being raised in the patriarchy. In Butler’s claim, gender

Culture: The social learning theory suggests that an individual figures out their gender identity by observing and imitating gender-like behaviors from others through a reward/punishment system as a child. Psychological: Gender schema 's are developed from an early age, placing male/female characteristic 's into groupings/concept categories. Knowing ones ' gender identity and what category 's of characteristics they should follow to fit that gender role is important psychologically because it helps an individual make sense of the world and their place in it. Gender V. Gender roles V. Gender identity Gender is a blanket concept in which the roles and identities of female/maleare sub-categorized. Gender roles define how females/males are expected to behave.

From birth, children learn gender stereotypes and roles from their parents and environment. In a traditional view, males learn to manipulate their physical and social environment through physical strength or dexterity, while girls learn to present themselves as objects to be viewed. Social constructionists claim for example that gender-segregated children 's activities create the appearance that gender differences in behavior reflect an essential nature of male and female behavior. Gender role theory “treats these differing distributions of women and men into roles as the primary origin of sex-differentiated social behavior, their impact on behavior is mediated by psychological and social processes” According to Gilbert, gender roles arose from correspondent inference, meaning that general labor division was extended to gender roles. Socially constructed gender roles are considered to be hierarchical and characterized as a male-advantaged gender hierarchy by social constructionists.

Some folks assume that girls and boys behave and like different things based on their distinctive innate nature and physical differences. While it might be true that they identify themselves based on biological traits like their gender/sex, Penelope Eckert, the author of Learning to be Gendered, argued that receiving different treatments and nurture can have influence on how girls and boys learn to identify themselves. Penelope suggest that there’s a social matter where an individual’s gender can be a heavy label on how he or she would be like, but part of the gender label is developed by parenting while growing up. Even at birth, gender roles are conditioned by their milieu. Baby girls are given flowery or pink gifts while boys are

Gender roles are built on gender norms, or standards, which are rooted in cultural perceptions or based on societal expectations. In many societies, masculine roles are associated with strength, aggression and dominance whilst female roles are associated with subordination, nurturing and passivity. Men and women are expected to adhere to these roles. Gender is a learned behavior. From infancy, children are encouraged to adopt behaviours associated with the gender they are “assigned” at birth (based on their physical sex).

Burak defines gender socialization as “the process of interaction through which we learn the gender norms of our culture and acquire a sense of ourselves as feminine, masculine, or even androgynous” (Burack, 1). According to Burack, people of different genders behave differently not due to biological factors, but due to socialization that teaches individuals to behave in a particular way in order to belong to a certain gender. For example, women may tend to be nurturing, not because they are biologically programed to be caretakers, but as a result of society teaching them through toys and media to act as mothers. In this way, gender becomes a performance based on expectations rather than natural behaviors or biology, a phenomenon called “doing

Throughout the ages, gender has been socially constructed in some way or another. Gender conditioning begins once the parents are aware of the sexual gender of the child. Society has spoken: Pink pacifiers for the girls, blue pacifiers for the boys. The expectations begin. This list of expectations is also very much dependent upon the influence of cultural conditioning and ethnic identity as evident in Sandra Cisnero's Only Daughter.

Themes in Literature - Gender roles Gender roles are norms created by society. Our gender is given to us when born, either you are a girl or a boy, decided by how our body looks like. A girl is given norms to follow by society at a young age. A girl should usually be passive, nurturing and subordination, while those born male are supposed to be strong, aggressive and dominant. This paper will discuss how the genders are viewed and perceived in different literary periods.

Member of society have a mindset that agent of socialization is one of the origin that influenced the reinforcement of gender inequality since childhood. What is socialization? In lexical definition, socialization, as a lifelong interactive process, contains individual’s culture learning that is in compliance with social norms and roles to integrate into community (Socialization, n.d.). Childhood is the most influential period of socialization which agents of socialization impact the way children behave that related with social norms. Gender can be effected social behavior of each individual.

This argument states that nature is only responsible for a person’s gender but not in the creation of gender roles. The nurture argument is one that views men and women as equally capable of performing certain tasks. Moreover, social norms such as gender specific colors or activities are due to the culture that a child is raised in. As children move through development they begin to develop different gender roles and gender stereotypes that are influenced by their peers and caregivers