Research has shown that our gender and race are two factors that heavily shape our lives. While many people in our society tend to ignore how these two factors play a role in their life, I will be further exploring how they have impacted my life personally. With that said I will incorporate how gender norms and gender socialization have shaped my life and identity as a woman, as well as how my race of being a white person has shaped my life chances and opportunities. Gender norms and socialization structured many aspects of my life and allowed myself to have the gender identity of a woman. Over the past 19 years, I have followed certain gender norms that are commonly associated with identifying as a woman. For instance, my appearance has …show more content…
For instance, whenever my mom would be getting ready to go out for the night I would sit in her room and rummage through all of her heels trying on each pair to see if I could walk in them. I was so fascinated at such a young age with watching my mom apply makeup, do her hair, and dress up to go out. This was the gender socialization that formed how I am today with my appearance and led me to follow the gender norms associated with being a woman. In the reading Gender as Structure by Barbara Risman she explains how once you categorize yourself as a woman you are expected to “do gender” and follow the gender norms that correspond to the gender you identify yourself as. By being presented with all of the gender norms at such a young age I carried those ideas with me as I grew older, which allowed myself to “do gender” by expressing my appearance as a typical woman such as by wearing makeup, doing my hair, and dressing …show more content…
She mentions in her article how whites are taught to not recognize themselves having white privilege, yet I believe this puts myself and others at a disadvantage because it seems as if we are ignoring the problems of racism in our country today. In the reading What Is Racial Domination? By Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer, they explain how the word whiteness is associated with all powerful and positive words while blackness is associated with weak and negative words. This right here is an example of how white people, including myself, don’t have to worry or think about certain things such as being questioned from a cop just because of our race, while this could be a daily obstacle for someone of a different race. Recently, I was driving around one night in Iowa City with one of my good friends who happens to be a black male. As soon as we stepped foot in his car he said to me “I have to be smart about my driving because I don’t want to get pulled over again”. After him stating this I started getting confused on why he would get so nervous driving at night, however, he went on to tell me how had recently been pulled over and gotten his car searched just based on the fact that the police officer viewed him as “sketchy”. This single story made me realize how white privilege does work because this is something I
The primary source being analyzed in this article is an article/excerpt posted in a 1988 book. It is called "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack". It was written by Peggy McIntosh. The author is a white female who has lived a fairly gifted and accomplished life. She wrote this article because of her realization that her skin color and gender have both played major roles in the way she's been brought up and treated by others.
She does a good job by saying that some people are born with privilege and some are given the privilege but overall that we don 't deserve that privilege because it ends up putting others at a disadvantage. McKintosh makes it very clear to us that white privilege is more of a dominance to another race than a privilege. She ends up saying that white privilege is very much misleading because it puts people of color at a disadvantage. The whole purpose of the article that McKintosh wrote was to open the minds of the white society and make them realize that they were at a advantage over colored people and that there are many examples of the dominance of white people over colored. Even though it is said that we are a free country, things have still not gotten to the point where everyone is free and equal.
Gender Socialization Part II: Annotated Bibliography on Parenting and Gender Roles, H0mosexuality, Feminist among African American Male. Loiacano, D. K. (1989). Gay identity issues among Black Americans: Racism, homophobia, and the need for validation. Journal of Counseling & Development, 68(1), 21-25. Loiacano, (1989) is a small glimpse into the homophobia identity issues that plagues the African American community.
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
From the readings and the NPR podcast it gave me a lot to think about how I view race and specifically white privilege and how it affects the social constructs of our society. I believe that in order to understand white privilege you must know the role that race plays. Race is a social construct that was developed by people in order to distinguish between different groups based on physical characteristics but, also to maintain exclusiveness and social superiority (Conley, 2015, p. 344). In the second reading “Defining Racism” it acknowledges that even if someone is aware of their white privilege why would they want it give up because it plays in their favor. In Peggy McIntosh’s “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” she argues that white people
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack While reading this piece by Peggy McIntosh, I found myself as a white woman thinking, 'yes I can do these things,' and realized right there what white privilege looks like. Looking at the fifty points McIntosh discusses, it is clear that the predominance of white privilege affects her daily life. These daily effects McIntosh discusses range from who she wants to surround herself with, knowing and feeling financially secure and feeling welcomed in public life. While only choosing fifty instances where McIntosh feels her white privilege comes into contact, it is apparent that the instances are common when discussing primarily skin color compared to race, class, and religion. Without argument,
From the moment of my birth, I was declared a girl and my parents immediately attempted to raise me to be every aspect of my gender, from behavior to beliefs. In sociology, this is known as gender role socialization, which is the process of socializing boys and girls to conform to their assigned genders’ attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, values, and norms. My parents taught me how think and behave like a girl through the way the way they dressed me, how they did my hair, and the toys they allowed me to play with. However, having been raised with a brother, I also picked up on some of his supposed gender roles. I am exactly who I am due to the way I was socialized by my parents and others around me.
The phrase gender role is concept of society that defines what behavior society expect form men and women and how they are suppose to act in society . While evolving, what kind of passive and active toys are allowed to play with? What kind of clothes and colors to wear? Unaware route of molding a person to fit in with society 's norms and values is called sociologists as "socialization." Many think that gender stereotyping in form of clothes, toys or books or along with other aspects, teach a children rising up to fit into conventional gender roles.
When I would ask why, I was told I needed to do something “girly,” like ballet lessons. So, I signed up for ballet lessons which continued until I graduated from high school. I look back at my childhood interests and activities and am amazed at the gender socialization that happened. I clearly believed my mental and physical limitations were a result of my gender. As Langer (2011) so clearly expresses: “it is an undeniable truth that one’s sex at birth – biology – begins a process of socialization resulting in one’s gender – the social role….
Gender is something that is brought to the attention of people well before people are even brought into the world. Take for instance, when a woman finds out that she is pregnant and is about to have a child. The first question that that women is asked is “What are you having?” In doing this we are automatically emphasizing the importance of being able to identify whether or not to buy “boy” things or “girl” things. As a society we deem it important for each sex to practice a set of “norms” of how to behave via that sex.
Cordelia Fine explains that even when women consciously tell themselves that they don’t want to be confined to gender roles or stereotypes, they are constantly surrounded by them and can subconsciously conform to these behaviours because of social environments and gender-relevant cues (Fine, 2011). Because women have always been surrounded by gender roles and stereotypes, it can be hard to break the pattern. The subconscious act of following these roles or stereotypes contributes to the male and female brain being ‘wired’ differently because of the history of expectations of
Gender roles are what society thinks is considered “normal” for a person based on whether they are male or female. These roles are programmed into our brains from the day we are born, and continue to develop throughout our entire lives. Gender Norms are what each gender is expected to act like. These norms are used to determine what each gender should be like mentally, physically, and emotionally. These norms were developed over time to ensure that each gender had some sort of “code” to live by.
How an individual is taught how to socially behave in accordance with their gender which is given at birth which is considered biological. Gender role socialization is done through communication. In the article dramatic fiction The Social Construction of reality, it stated that "gender distinctions are human creations and do not exist independently of cultural ideas about them." In the 19th century women in the U.S were ignored and suppressed. The government had laws that conflicts with true happiness for women.
Sexual Identity In “Gender Socialization and Identity Theory” by Michael J. Carter, he asserts gender identity originates with the family. The writer maintains that families are the agents of identity socialization. Carter argues that beginning with infancy children are taught how they are expected to socialize primarily by their families, simply due to the continuous contact with one another, boys are dressed in blue while girls are dressed in pink. The author plainly elucidates children gain knowledge of homophily through playmates by self-segregation into homogeneous groups.
Inequitable gender norms are anchored in all aspects of human life. Traditional views that consider the man as primary breadwinner and the women as homemaker continue to dominate in many regions all around the world. Indeed, the persistence of patriarchal norms have been put forward by several authors in the last years (e.g. Hoang 2011, Duflo 2012). For instance, even though the political representation of women improved in the last two decades, their power in terms of decision making is still limited at all levels (Lodigiani and Salomone 2015). Furthermore, the likelihood to work as well as the wage level both continue to be considerably lower for women than for men (Duflo 2012).