Gender Roles and Prejudice

Gender Roles and Prejudice

"Gender roles in our society are based on prejudice" is an essay about

the ways in which we stereotype each gender. These stereotypes lead

the children, through socialisation, to conform to the way in which

both male and females are supposed to act in society. For example, the

male stereotype in supposed to have physical strength, be aggressive

and competitive characteristics, whereas female characteristics are

supposed to be sensitive, caring and compassionate. If men act in the

female characteristics they are regarded as "wimps", and if women act

like men then they are called "tomboys". This view is bombarded at us

as children should affect us when we enter working life causing men to

have better jobs than those of women. This is prejudice.

I aim to find out whether these views are correct. I want to find out

are women biologically less abled than men and that's why we socialise

them differently, or do we think there is a biological difference and

that's why we socialise then differently.

In theory if there are biological differences between the two sexes

then once they are born their futures are pre-determined regardless of

the socialisation by their guardians through their comformative

period. I watched this programme called "freaks" on BBC1 and it showed

a boy in Germany who was abandoned in a house with a dog. Now the

boy's only agent of socialisation was the dog. He was found 10 years

later wondering the streets, naked and crawling on all fours and

barking at passer by. Now surely if nurture (socialisation) was less

effective than nature this would not have happened. We simply nurture

childr...

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...s can conform to new stereotypes to achieve

true equality. This is mainly because of "old school" views from other

cultures of our society who still strongly insist on male dominance.

Many things affect this like media, who portray women into 2 roles,

sex symbols and mothers. This is a main issue for women to overcome

for them to achieve equality.

I feel that gender roles in our society were based on prejudice.

However, prejudice towards women does still exist.

Bibliography

· Student Socialisation Booklet - Raunds Manor and Sports College

· Sociology - Ken Browne

· House Jobs Survey - My Investigation.

· Work Experience Chart - My Investigation

· Around The Horn - ESPN.com

· Pardon the Interruption - ESPN.com

· FREAKS - BBC1

· GCSE ATTAINMENT - Raunds Manor and Sports College