Examples Of Gender Socialization

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Socializing humans into the two accepted categories of gender is the foundation of our society. Humans are taught from an early age how to act and speak according to their gender, but people often do not realize the extent this socialization goes. In our society, people use greeting cards for every occasion and every gift, thus cards can be used to create assumptions a person’s perception of who the receiver of the card as well as the effect of society on the creation of cards. To explore gender socialization throughout life, I analyzed cards for the congratulations on a birth of a baby, children’s birthdays, and anniversary congratulations. My data comes from the examination of cards created and distributed by Hallmark, and it primarily …show more content…

An observation of the cards easily showed that they were segregated by color. According to the cards, our society denotes blue to boys and pink to girls. Gender neutral cards can be any other color, mainly green or yellow, but blue and pink are extremely segregated into their associated genders. The only time they are put into a design together is when there is no gender specified or it is a gender neutral card. The separation of the genders by color was extremely prevalent in the way that many cards had a counterpart of the different gender. Even if the words within the card were gender neutral, the difference of color would delineate whether the card is meant for a baby girl or baby boy. For example, the difference between the “blue lamb new baby boy” card and the “pink lamb new baby girl” card was the color of the lamb and nothing else. Other cards changed colors and also designs, such as changing overalls to a dress when you change the ‘gender’ of the card. However, there seemed to be an almost equal amount of cards amongst baby girls, baby boys, and gender neutral. The gender neutral cards steered away from the colors of blue and pink, probably due to their connotations, and they often featured animals and a variety of

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