Historically throughout the earliest centuries, the term gender and sex has been a vital focus in distinguishing the overlap between gender differences. Matlin’s book, Psychology of women, explains that gender similarities of females are at most similar to men, however, considering that culture influences individual’s beliefs; women are expected to behave the way culture entitles us to (Matlin, 2008, p.8). In contrast, the book also reveals that women and men are different from one another in terms of social and intellectual skills according to biological inheritance (Matlin, 2008, p.9). These two perspectives expose valid reasons in terms of the roles that men and women play in society. Even though feminists and female psychologists imply that both men and women are exactly the same, there is however, a strong statistical correlation related to the comparison of men and women according to different brain wiring, strength and endurance (York, n.d., para.10).
Effects of Brain Wiring on Sex
Sex differentiation often characterizes males and females behaviour according to sex hormones, mainly estrogen and testosterone that takes place within the womb. This explains why boys play with cars, and girls play with dolls. Feminists tend to argue that this a result of social stereotypes, but alarming scientific results have shown that this is perhaps due to hormones(York, n.d., para.18). In fact, studies have revealed that problem-solving tasks are different in women and men. Females use problem-solving tasks in both of their hemispheres, whereas, males use only one hemisphere. There is also frequent evidence illustrating that males are better in spatial and math skills. On the other hand, females are considered to be better in vocabular...
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...stics of males and females. For this reason, women and men are greatly influenced by difference perspective.
References
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Men do not have the benefits of equality either, they are also limited by societal expectations and having to fulfill the requirements of what it means to “be a man”. Gender roles shape the fabric of our society. In the documentary Tough Guise, Katz chronicles the socialization of boys from the moment they are born and as they grow up. Tough guise explains how the entertainment industry feeds messages about masculinity which exclude basic human qualities such as compassion, and vulnerability. These are portrayed as feminine with a negative connotation implied (Earp, Katz, Young and Rabinovitz 2013). In American modern culture children of both sexes are consuming large amounts of media on a daily basis. The documentary MissRepresentation explores the media’s role in the shaping of our society; specifically the media’s treatment of women. When it comes to girls and women, marketers have made substantial profits from objectifying women and setting an unattainable standard of what it means to be beautiful. Hyper-feminized women are all over the covers of magazines, hypersexualized in advertisements, and in movies. Women have to walk a very thin tightrope and the expectations for a good woman are contradicting (Newsom, Scully, Dreyfous, Redlich, Congdon, and Holland
Introduction The topic of gender differences must understandably be approached with caution in our modern world. Emotionally charged and fraught with ideas about political correctness, gender can be a difficult subject to address, particularly when discussed in correlation to behavior and social behavior. Throughout history, many people have strove to understand what makes men and women different. Until the modern era, this topic was generally left up to religious leaders and philosophers to discuss. However, with the acquisition of more specialized medical knowledge of human physiology and the advent of anthropology, we now know a great deal more about gender differences than at any other point in history.
Gender is a broad, multicultural issue (Hooks, 2000). The term has traditionally been used to understand the differences between men and women. Scharf (1995) indicated that gender should also be used to identify individual differences among men and women (as cited in Stewart and McDermott, 2004, p. 436). Benjamin (1995) however, feels that there
Sex relates to the biology of a person, as opposed to their sociology and psychology. The sex/gender argument is one that can be talked about for a life time, and researchers may never get to a direct answer. Carpenter wants the two to be differenti...
This article was written to bring attention to the way men and women act because of how they were thought to think of themselves. Shaw and Lee explain how biology determines what sex a person is but a persons cultures determines how that person should act according to their gender(Shaw, Lee 124). The article brings up the point that, “a persons gender is something that a person performs daily, it is what we do rather than what we have” (Shaw, Lee 126). They ...
In “The Gender Blur: Where Does Biology End and Society Take Over?” Deborah Blum states that “gender roles of our culture reflect an underlying biology” (Blum 679). Maasik and Solomon argue that gender codes and behavior “are not the result of some sort of natural or biological destiny, but are instead politically motivated cultural constructions,” (620) raising the question whether gender behavior begins in culture or genetics. Although one may argue that gender roles begin in either nature or nurture, many believe that both culture and biology have an influence on the behavior.
The same concept was expressed by Edward O. Wilson (1992), father of sociobiology at Harvard University. According to him, females tend to be better equipped in characteristics like verbal and social skills, security needs and empathy than their counterpart. In the other, Males tend to be better in spatial ...
In the beginning, individuals used the role of women and men in religion to determine how men and women should treat one another and their roles in society. In the late 1800s, scientific advancements began causing individuals to rely more on science to understand the different behaviors between men and women. Since then there has been a significant increase of individuals wanting to know if the differences in the brains of men and women were the reason for behavioral differences throughout the sex. Today there are many different outlooks on what causes the differences in behavior between the sexes. The socialization theory states that an individual’s gender behavior is based on their interactions with the environment
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Gender is such a ubiquitous notion that humans assume gender is biological. However, gender is a notion that is made up in order to organize human life. It is created and recreated giving power to the dominant gender, creating an inferior gender and producing gender roles. There are many questionable perspectives such as how two genders are learned, how humans learn their own gender and others genders, how they learn to appropriately perform their gender and how gender roles are produced. In order to understand these perspectives, we must view gender as a social institution. Society bases gender on sex and applies a sex category to people in daily life by recognizing gender markers. Sex is the foundation to which gender is created. We must understand the difference between anatomical sex and gender in order to grasp the development of gender. First, I will be assessing existing perspectives on the social construction of gender. Next, I will analyze three case studies and explain how gender construction is applied in order to provide a clearer understanding of gender construction. Lastly, I will develop my own case study by analyzing the movie Mrs. Doubtfire and apply gender construction.
Schaefer, R.T. (2009). Sociology: a brief introduction, 8th edition. New York, New York, USA: McGraw-Hill.
[10] Kendall, Diana, et al. Sociology in Our Times. ITP Nelson and Co. Toronto, 1997. 126.
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