Analysis Of Learning To Be Gendered By Penelope Eckert

Quite frequently, gender is confused with sex. Considering these terms are often confused, what is the explicit distinction between the two? Our sex has to do with the psychological and biological characteristics; Gender on the other hand, has to do with the characteristics a society profiles as either masculine or feminine. Sex remains the same throughout the world but what delineates gender varies depending on what society/culture you are from. With that being said, it can be deduced that gender is socially constructed and not formed by natural means.

As human beings, our perception and viewpoints of the world are inclined to change as we develop as a society.We are easily influenced by each other, and learn to adapt to our surroundings

It is not the child who chooses how they would like to develop as they grow but the society who instills these gender norms upon the child. Eckert claims “In the beginning, adults will do the child’s gender work, treating it as a boy or of a girl” (737). Since society urges different gender actions from the children, they learn this is the correct way of life and oblige without knowing any better different. They are taught that girls should prefer flowers over cars and boys should like the color blue rather than pink. “You are unlikely to buy overalls with vehicles printed on them for a girl, and even more reluctant to buy a frilly dress with puffed sleeves or pink flowers overalls for a boy,” (738) But these facets are just the negligible symbolic resources that attribute to gender

As kids play with toys, they watch other kids and examine which toys others begin to play with. If the girls are playing with dolls, other girls will participate with the act of playing with dolls because it’s what they think is appropriate. Same goes for the boys, if one boy is playing with trucks, they will all begin to play with trucks for the very same reason. Later on as they begin to flourish into grown-ups, it becomes coherent that growing up will be very much different for the two genders and involves gender differentiation that they pick up on their own and from society. They begin to change for the good of themselves, such as the young ladies will begin to speak in a higher voice only to acquire a quality that is itself gendered (cuteness) and the young men will begin to speak in a tougher voices to obtain authority. All these actions and behaviors that young boys and girls contribute, is solely done by the two genders in order to participate and function in the real