Analysis Of The Lenses Of Gender

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Bem, S.L. (1993). The lenses of gender: Transforming the debate on sexual inequality. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press

In this book, leading theorist on sex and gender Sandra L. Bem discusses how hidden molds in our cultural discourse, social institution, and individual minds support male dominance while oppressing women and sexual minorities. She explains her lenses of gender, which shape perceptions of social reality and also more physical things – like unequal salary and insufficient daycase – that establish social reality itself before she presents her theory of how cultural gender lenses are shaped and influence either the adaptation of conventional gender identity or the resistance of conventional gender identity. She then presents evidence for reframing the discussion on sexual inequality so that it focuses not only on the variances between men and women, but on how androcentric dialogue and societies transform gender differences into female disadvantage.

Kindlon, D. & Thompson, M. (2000). Raising Cain: Protecting the emotional life of boys. New York, NY: The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

In Raising Cain, two of the country’s leading child psychologists Dr. Dan Kindlon and Dr. Michael Thompson share what they have learned in their years of experience working with boys and their families. They reveal an unaddressed culture of boys who are hurt by the expectations set for them because of their gender. They discuss the forces that threaten boys, teaching them that to be masculine means to be strong and stoic, dismiss outdated theories, and shed light on the destructive and inadequate emotional preparation that boys receive. Kindlon and Thompson urge parents to teach emotional literacy t...

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This article discusses three studies conducted by Moon and Hoffman that investigated others’ parenting expectations for mothers and father and parents’ reports of their parenting behaviors with their 3-to-6-year-old children and demonstrates that mothers rated higher for physical care and emotional support than fathers and that mothers reported engaging in the parenting behaviors assessed more than fathers across the subscales used. They discuss how, in each different study, they saught to observe parent and child gender interactions only for “personal-interaction parenting” (e.g., hugging their child) and found the lowest scores for fathers with daughters. They then present their findings and the relation between parents’ rating of suitability and their own behaviors that support the view that gender-based expectation shape gender differences in their parenting.

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