Question 1
How do people become gendered and in what ways does gender shape people’s identity?
People from birth, are born as a boy or a girl, (Bradley 2013, p. 5). Their parents provide a blueprint for individuals to become gendered. (Marsh et al. 2009, p. 222)
Aside from biological differences between genders, a child’s parents shape whichever gender they are born into, through the clothes that they wear and the toys they are given to play with. (Connell 2002, p. 3)
From an early age, children observe other adults at school, study their peers and mirror them; children also absorb what their peers have been taught. The way the media report and portray girls and women it’s fundamentally all about appearance, how they should behave, act,
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Give examples.
Discrimination can present in the lives of older people for various reasons. Living in an ageing population, (Marsh et al. 2009, cited by Wilson 2000, p. 304) with people living longer and requiring additional and more complex health care needs, can be viewed as older people becoming a burden to society. (Marsh et al. 2009, p. 321)
In terms of employment opportunities older people face increased difficulties at the recruitment stage due to employers preconceived notions of social and cultural barriers along with increased healthcare issues. (Vincent et al. 2009, p. 125) It is this image of failing health in later years, which can influence employers, and their view of older people as a financial and organisational burden, as well as a risk for their business.
Older adults while in employment can also feel discriminated against and devalued, due to this some seek early retirement, which has a detrimental effect on their financial long-term stability. (Cann and Dean 2009, p. 73) It is these social constructs that are shaping the way the workforce feels about older people.
Reference
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and Dean, M. (2009) Unequal Ageing. Bristol: The Policy Press, p. 73.
Connell, R.W. (2002) Gender: The question of gender. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp.1-11.
Hamnett, C., McDowell, L. and Sarre, P. (1989) The Changing Social Structure: Gender Divisions. London: Sage, pp. 158-198
Jones, C. (2012) The Married Woman’s Property Acts (UK, 1870, 1882 and 1893). HerStoria, 7th July 2012. Available: https://herstoria.com/the-married-womens-property-acts-uk-1870-1882-and-1893/ [Accessed: 16th October 2017].
Marsh, I., Keating, M., Punch, S. and Harden, J. eds. (2009) Sociology. 4th ed. London: Pearson Education Limited.
Ridgeway, C.L. (2009). Framed Before We Know It: How Gender Shapes Social Relations. ResearchGate, 4th February 2009. Available: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241647834_Framed_Before_We_Know_ItHow_Gender_Shapes_Social_Relations [Accessed: 16th October 2017].
Snowdon, G. (2011). Women still face a glass ceiling. The Guardian, 21st February 2011. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/feb/21/women-glass-ceiling-still-exists-top-jobs [Accessed: 16th October 2017].
Vincent, J.A., Phillipson, C. and Downs, M. (2009) The Futures of Old Age. London:
In today’s society, it can be argued that the choice of being male or female is up to others more than you. A child’s appearance, beliefs and emotions are controlled until they have completely understood what they were “born to be.” In the article Learning to Be Gendered, Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell- Ginet speaks out on how we are influenced to differentiate ourselves through gender. It starts with our parents, creating our appearances, names and behaviors and distinguishing them into a male or female thing. Eventually, we grow to continue this action on our own by watching our peers. From personal experience, a child cannot freely choose the gender that suits them best unless our society approves.
" Gender and Society 17.5 (2003): 711-266. JSTOR.com - "The New York Times" Web. The Web. The Web.
In Devor’s article, “Becoming Members of Society: Learning the social Meanings of Gender” one can better understand how society has a big impact on how gender is perceived. Understanding
Elderly folks are eminently mature and have the finest instinct about what is right and wrong though It’s challenging to change someone’s point of view in a matter like this. When such injustice takes place, it de-motivates senior workers from their work. In an article over Ageists by Vincent J Roscigno, he states facts about different views on older Americans in general and in workplaces such as, “most of the population consists of biases and preconceptions, and the accused are unashamed in their views of older Americans. Those who believe that younger employees have much more value than senior employees are inserting a strong assumption based on their age. “Ageist attitudes and discrimination is what results in lower levels of overall organizational commitment to older workers, and a “push” out of a particular workplace.” Just because of an older employee’s depiction, such unfairness circulates in workplaces which cause false impressions of older
But then you can’t just determine one’s gender because of that, there are lots of girls who loves boys clothe or rather who loves being boyish, but are not gay and there are boys who actually behave feminine, have a tiny voice, loves to wear tight pants and they are still straight. In the reading “‘No Way My Boys Are Going to Be Like That!’: Parents’ Responses to Children’s Gender Nonconformity” by Emily Kane, she talks about how parents determine their kids ' gender and sex, how parents are the major teacher when it comes to gender and of their children, through clothes, toys and other things they purchase for them. They teach the girls to behave like girls, wear them pink dresses and the boy dresses as heroes: superman, batman… in this reading, some parents talked about how they are ok with their daughters behaving boyish and not ok with the boys playing with Barbie dolls. I ask what is the difference between boys and girls, there are so many things boys do and girls do too, there is Bill Gate and there is Christy Walton, there is Michael Jackson and there is Beyoncé, Messi and Alex Morgan. All I am saying is that everyone, men or women, boy or girl can also be great in life not minding their
In this article, gender is identified as a social identity that is constructed and reformed throughout life in order to achieve a true sense of identity. It is not a term or label given from biological sex such as male or female that defines ones’ gender role. The writer claims gender is more than a social settlement, that it is not a binary construction of male or female and involves a matrix of genes, hormones, and social influence.
Norms in society do not just come about randomly in one’s life, they start once a child is born. To emphasize, directly from infancy, children are being guided to norms due to their parents’ preferences and choices they create for them, whether it is playing with legos, or a doll house; gender classification begins in the womb. A prime example comes from a female author, Ev’Yan, of the book “Sex, love,Liberation,” who strongly expresses her feelings for feminism and the constant pressure to conform to gender. She stated that “From a very young age, I was taught consistently & subliminally about what it means to be a girl, to the point where it became second nature. The Disney films, fairy tales, & depictions of women in the media gave me a good definition of what femininity was. It also showed me what femininity wasn’t (Ev’Yan).She felt that society puts so much pressure on ourselves to be as close to our gender identities as possible, with no confusion; to prevent confusion, her mother always forced her to wear dresses. In her book, she expressed her opinion that her parents already knew her gender before she was born, allowing them t...
In “Gender as a Social Structure: Theory Wrestling with Activism”, the author Barbara Risman explains her theory to readers about how gender should be thought of as a social structure. Thinking of it as such would allow people to examine how gender is ingrained in almost every part of society, thus putting gender on an equal level of importance with economics and politics. In society, gender dictates many of the opportunities and limitations that an individual may face in his or her lifetime. Barbara Risman points out the three aspects of the gender structure that happen at an individual, interactional, and institutional level (Risman, pg. 446). First, gender contributes to how a person will develop themselves in life. This is the “individual level”. At an interactional level, men and women face different expectations that are set by society. The individual and interactional level are linked because sometimes, changes to one level can affect the other. The third level, the institutional level, notes that gender is affected by laws, rules, and organizational practices that dictate what
In the book Difference Matters, Brenda J Allen, begins writing about how gender matters in society. One of the main topics that she talks about is how in today’s society the male gender is the more predominate gender. As the reader, she has brought to mind many new ways to view how males earn more money then females, how we classify jobs as masculine or feminine, and also how society excepts males’ vs females to act and preform in the work force.
Through investigations of writers as diverse as Silvia Federici, and Angela Davis, Maria Mies, and Sharon Hays, Judith Butler, and Steven Gregory we have come to understand that confronting the categorization of gender differences is a complex and nuanced project. Whether one is an ontologist, exploring the metaphysical nature of gender differences (that may or may not lead down the road of essentialism) or a phenomenologist exploring how exactly it is that one “does” gender—to the extent that there even exists a concept called gender—one must employ a varied and multipartite approach. Writers such as Federici, Mies, and Davis sketched out a framework of the history of gender roles for us. From what Federici calls a time of primitive consumption through feudalism, to the time of slavery and rapid industrialization and, indeed, through our current technological revolution, we have seen the basic gender differences between the sexes evolve over time. To be sure, our notions of what is expected from both women and men have changed since prehistoric times, and they continue to evolve. Sharon Hays in the chapter “Pyramids of Innequality” of her book Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform shows us how, in the United States, poverty and access to the social safety net have been raced and gendered. She provides a springboard for further investigation.
The focus of this paper is to elaborate on the changing landscape of work in America during the twenty-first century. According to the researchers, as the economy continues to slowly recover from the recession and economic crisis, more of our baby boomers are reentering the workforce. In addition to the introduction of automation and computer technologies into the workplace, this has dramatically changed the nature of jobs for the older workers (Czaja and Sharit 2009). As stated in the Government Accountability Office in 2006, the number of workers over age 55 is projected to increase significantly over the next 20 years. Evidence shows that ageism, stereotypes, and misinformation about our older population continue to be major issues across
Gender stratification is the cuts across all aspects of social life and social classes. It refers to the inequality distribution of wealth, power and privilege between men and women at the basis of their sex. The world has been divided and organized by gender, which are the behavioural differences between men and women that are culturally learnt (Appelbaum & Chambliss, 1997:218). The society is in fact historically shaped by males and the issue regarding the fact has been publicly reverberating through society for decades and now is still a debatably hot topic. Men and women have different roles and these sex roles, defined to be the set of behaviour’s and characteristics that are standard for each gender in a society (Singleton, 1987) are deemed to be proper in the eyes of the society. They are as a matter of fact proper but as time move on, the mind-set of women changes as well, women also want to move on. However the institutional stratification by the society has become more insidious that the stereotypical roles have created a huge barrier between men and women. These barriers has affected women in many aspects such as minimizing their access on a more superior position in workforce organization, limits their ownership of property and discriminates them from receiving better attention and care.
The conclusion of this essay is that there are four prime factors that construct gender role in today’s society. They include our family, society, educational systems and self conscious. There are other cultural products that affect the gender within these four. category. The.
Gender is an important aspect of our social life; it comprises of power relations, the division of labour, symbolic forms and emotional relations (Connel, 2000).
Rhode, D. (2000). Culture Establishes Gender Roles.Male/female roles: opposing viewpoints (pp. 22-24). San Diego, Calif.: Greenhaven Press