The Prism Of Gender, By Catherine G. Valentine

Gender is deeply embedded into our society. It is pretty much at every level; it is something complex that goes far beyond just being a male or female. Gender impacts what occupations individuals have access to do, what type of activities they can and can’t do and even what colors they can and cannot wear. As mentioned by Catherine G. Valentine, in The Prism of Gender, society has taught us that a real woman is feminine; a real man is masculine and heterosexual; and any deviation is unacceptable and unnatural (3). Therefore, we live in a society that is binary, and has taught us that there are only two acceptable genders, male and female, and as a result everything is shaped by that idea. Nonetheless, like stated by Kate Bornstein in Gender

Based on examination of the children’s’ books at Barnes and Nobles, the division between girl and boy remained visible. On the left side, there were dolls, arts and crafts and fairy tale books, and the toys around that area included bracelet maker kits, dolls, and painting. Nonetheless, to the right there was Lego, puzzles, Minecraft games, science and technology. Interesting enough, the science section, was located on the boy’s side. In that section the books were intended for boys, due to the fact that the covers were dark and they usually contained a boy doing the actual work, such as mixing chemicals. On a similar note, another area that also followed the same pattern was titled “Popular Picks in Picture Books,” there the majority of the books not only involved boys, but also adventures and animals. However, girls were not really in the pictures, out of 40 books, only 10 contained a female character. In “Gender in Twentieth-Century Children’s Books,” by Janice McCabe, Emily Fairchild, Liz Grauerholz, Bernice A. Pescosolido, and Daniel Tope, make the claim that most books in the twentieth-century had male defined titles and characters. With this we can see the gender disparities, we can see that the majority of the books have been targeted for boys, leaving girls out of the books. As the authors suggest, this helps reinforce that gender patterns of inequality, it is the absence of girls in books that devalues and shapes the ways girls think of themselves. It is this idea of underrepresentation that can suggest that women are not at level of men, and all of this can simply reproduce or contribute to the gender inequalities