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Short essay on gender biases
Short essay on gender biases
How culture affects gender identity construction
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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.
Penelope and Sally introduced this
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.
Betsy Lucal, "What it means to be gendered me: Life on the Boundaries of a Dichotomous Gender System."
In contrast, there is an alternative perspective (i.e. nurture) that has been gaining popularity. This
Social norms and traditional conduct, if care isn’t taken, might affect a child. One should be able to express one’s self, by not being judged by the society. Whether one acts a certain way, the society doesn’t except one to act, one should have the freedom to express his or her gender roles in the way one wants it to be.
“It’s a girl!” or “It’s a boy!” is typically the first thing parents hear after the birth of a child. This simple statement of fact sets the groundwork for every interaction they will have with their daughter or son, and for every experience that child will have throughout her or his life. Gender identity—the private experience of being female or male—forms a core part of one’s sense of self (Welker). The nature of this private experience is enormously influenced by what we are taught it means to be a girl or a boy, and these lessons are typically fraught with instances of gender bias—what Beverly Stitt, author of Building Gender Fairness in Schools, defines as “a set of beliefs or attitudes that indicates a primary view or set of expectations about peoples’ abilities and interests according to their sex” (Stitt 3). We are educated in this way first by our family members and then, beginning at a very tender age, by the mass media.
For instance if one was born a boy then they should act like a boy and want to do boy-oriented things for that matter. “Like most children, I once thought it possible to divide the world into male and female columns. Blue/Pink. Roosters/Hens. Trousers/Skirts” (Cooper 135). In this quote when Cooper says “like most children” is an important part because he is right, most children do not know that males can do female things and vice versa. They also do not yet know about the mysteries of the world or things that shouldn’t be but are like transvestites for instance. And it’s like that because their parents and society made it that way. Instead of parents encouraging their son to wear dresses or cheerlead those parents would encourage him to dress like a male and play a male sport like football or basketball, because most of society doesn’t agree with things not easily explainable. So when Cooper’s parent saw him acting like one of the girls from his class, they immediately took him to an athletic club with other boys. “Shortly after the Injijikian incident, my parents decided to send me to a gymnastics class at the Downtown Athletic Club” (Cooper 136). Here his parents were thinking about what society would have thought and wanted him to perform and act masculine, so therefore sent him to a boys
A child is born physically assigned either male or female, but biologically, the child may be different in terms of gender identity. A child’s gender identity doesn’t always match the expected gender role causing confusion. As a child ...
Gender is socio-psychological characterizing of being male or female. Gender identity is the sense of being identified as one of these genders, and it is usually established before three years of age. Gender role describes the expectations of the society as how a male or female should behave according to their sex. Biology is the natural factor for differential gender development, and biologically a person with 46 XY chromosomes in their cells and gonads of testes would be a male, and a person with 46 XX chromosomes in their cells and gonads of ovaries would be a female. Also, hormones such as testosterone and estrogen, and evolution offer some insight in to the psychological differences in the genders (Santrock, 2009). However, there is mounting evidence that the gender roles and stereotypes are being taught from childhood, and studies point out that the teaching of gender roles at an early age greatly affects a child’s identity of their gender and the opposite sex.
With this week’s readings, many interesting articles were discussed but the one that struck me the most would be Christine Delphy’s article, “Rethinking sex and gender.” This specific article brought about points and perspectives that I had never experienced before prior to the reading. What was even more shocking, however, was when I discovered that some of the fallacies that Delphy had mentioned in the article were already ingrained in myself. For example, within Delphy’s first examination she points out that there is a hidden assumption that sex precedes gender since it is a biologically derived characteristic and this was an assumption that I found to make myself. Even though I thought that this article would just be another simple read for me, it turned out that it was quite the enlightening experience as it provided insight into how gender roles and classification developed as well as providing a lot of interesting arguments. However, what I connected with most would be the later part of the article that specifically focuses on the topics of hierarchy and division.
Having a family and raising children to be acceptant to the changing genders identities in their peers can cause parents and children confusion. There are aspects that parents need to identify in order to teach the children the acceptance. Parents need to understand that they are the first humans that children identify with and that they are being watched and studied to learn the social norms that are expected of them. When children enter school they demonstrate the learned behaviors that they witnessed from their families. Children are drawn to their peers that demonstrate the same behaviors and beliefs that they have
The development of gender awareness is fundamental for our sense of self and is also predominant in any assessment made of another person as from birth on people respond differently to males and females. Gender identity can be seen as one of the earliest social categories that children learn to apply to both themselves and other people. This is suggested in Schaffer’s (1996) definition where gender identity is the correct labelling of self and others as male or female. There are three main theories that have been explored which all suggest multiple ways in which gender awareness is developed: Bandura, Kohlburg and the Gender Scheme Theory. Firstly, Bandura (1977) notes that the idea that social influences clearly plays a very significant role in the development of gender identity. Socialization makes children aware that there are differences between male and female, and that these sex differences matter. These social pressures also suggest there are specific gender stereotypes that they are expected to conform to. Nevertheless, it can also be seen that biological and cultural changes interact with these social factors, thus defining how an individual eventually develops the gender identity of a man or a woman. An alternative theory, expressed by Kohlburg (1966), suggests that children are not the recipients of any physical information from social experiences and therefore they search for specific regulations which will explain the way in which males and females are expected to behave. In addition, gender tends to be the first thing a parent wishes to find about their child. It can be suggested that from then on the child will be treated depending on the fact that they are male or female. This is shown in research attempting to cla...
Children do not necessarily have the chance to decide their living style since their environments are organized by adults and they would not be able to fully behave based on their preferences since some of the behaviors violate social norms toward gender and are forbidden by their parents. Having considered this, social construction of gender starts during the earliest of ages where children are passive members in a society and they gain perception of the world in relation to the adults. They adopt what is told to be appropriate and what is not from the adults through a range of social relationship and their behaviours are governed by such perception instead of instincts. As a result, the most intense phase of gender socialization occurs during childhood, when adults who belong to certain cultural group impose their beliefs and knowledge on young children in order to comply with social
In “ Learning to be Gendered” authors Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet both argue that being a man or a women is more than a sexual organ it's the way society and parents have taught you what male and female should be.This is shown when the authors state “thus the dichotomy of male and female is ground upon which we build shelves from the moment of birth.(737)”In this quote the authors urge whether the separation or contrast between men and women dependent on the way they are taught to be from birth.The authors insist that society begins to gender you from birth.According to the authors society does this when as soon as the child is born in the “hospital nurseries provide pink caps for girls and blue caps for boys.(737)”In other words
When a person is really young, he or she is follow their parents’ will, because they are not yet develop their brain. Mainwell a person’s gender is determined by its primary sexual characteristic, it written on their birth certificate, licence, passport, and it is part of their identity . It all written down before their understanding of thierself. But what if we feel our primary sexual characteristic did not represent us the right way?
“Our gender are determined by biological, psychological and sociological factors”( Kenyon,2006), right from young age, children learn what is masculine or feminine by observing and imitating their parents, guardian’s and