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The Importance of Peer Groups in the Process of Socialization and Learning Gender Roles This essay is about the process of socialisation, which takes place in everyone's lives. I am trying to find out whether peer groups are important in the process of socialisation. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Socialisation means learning your culture, norms, beliefs, and values. ====================================================================== Peer groups are people that are your age and they can influence you. ==================================================================== Gender roles are things that influence people in different ways, depending on how that person takes it. ================================================================ We become socialised by our parents who we see from birth and copy what they do. We also become socialised by our peer groups i.e. we copy the clothes they buy, Media plays quite a important role to i.e. we watch T.V which shows us loads of things we don't know and how we can approach those things and do them. The latest theory that we know of is that peer groups are more important in socialisation than parents. Its been said that, to ask a child to be like there parents is like asking a chicken to be like a cow. Peer groups can influence us by the clothes they wear, the way they speak, the way they treat other people. You can get different peer groups like the popular who know all the latest gossip like whose going out with who, they also very laid back and cool, they are all leaders not followers, they all hang around in large groups. ===================================================================== The next group is the jocks, they care about their grades, they are also people who are a little less known, and they are not bothered about what people think of them. =================================================================== The normals are people who are not that well known, they have about 5-6 very good friends, and they don't want to be popular. Loners are people who don't have any friends, they don't dress right to join other groups, and they sit by themselves and tend to get bullied.
In “Gender as a Social Structure: Theory Wrestling with Activism”, the author Barbara Risman explains her theory to readers about how gender should be thought of as a social structure. Thinking of it as such would allow people to examine how gender is ingrained in almost every part of society, thus putting gender on an equal level of importance with economics and politics. In society, gender dictates many of the opportunities and limitations that an individual may face in his or her lifetime. Barbara Risman points out the three aspects of the gender structure that happen at an individual, interactional, and institutional level (Risman, pg. 446). First, gender contributes to how a person will develop themselves in life. This is the “individual level”. At an interactional level, men and women face different expectations that are set by society. The individual and interactional level are linked because sometimes, changes to one level can affect the other. The third level, the institutional level, notes that gender is affected by laws, rules, and organizational practices that dictate what
Gender socialization, the process by which one is taught the expected behavior assigned to them because of their sex, despite being critiqued as ‘natural’, are influenced through many different agents. Parents, the first and most prominent agents in this process, began this socialization from birth. Everything from the color choices of clothes, toys, and even level of intimacy displayed for girls over boys, all attest to these notions. Emma Jean Peace, rebels against these ‘normality’s’ after the birth of her seventh child Perfect, who Emma Jean decides to secretly raise as a girl despite being born a boy. If parents have the right to instill, teach and raise their child based on their own personal convictions
In this article, Shaw and Lee describe how the action of labels on being “feminine” or “masculine” affect society. Shaw and Lee describe how gender is, “the social organization of sexual difference” (124). In biology gender is what sex a person is and in culture gender is how a person should act and portray themselves. They mention how gender is what we were taught to do in our daily lives from a young age so that it can become natural(Shaw, Lee 126). They speak on the process of gender socialization that teaches us how to act and think in accordance to what sex a person is. Shaw and Lee state that many people identify themselves as being transgendered, which involves a person, “resisting the social construction of gender into two distinct, categories, masculinity and femininity and working to break down these constraining and polarized categories” ( 129). They write about how in mainstream America masculinity and femininity are described with the masculine trait being the more dominant of the two. They define how this contributes to putting a higher value of one gender over the other gender called gender ranking (Shaw, Lee 137). They also speak about how in order for femininity to be viewed that other systems of inequality also need to be looked at first(Shaw,Lee 139).
Gender may be a universal concept, but the meaning of gender differs between societies. The way humans behave, speak, experience, think, and view the world is the final product of socialization. From the moment the sex of a fetus is known, humans are being molded into the person society wants them to be. Different parts of society have different functions in the gender-socialization process. The familial relationships and interactions one has with their immediate surroundings—peers, school, religion, and neighborhood—are the most influential aspects of gender development. Loosely connected societal influences like mass media, politics, and culture are influential as well. Throughout childhood, one’s family and interactions with their immediate surroundings teach and reinforce gender, while the rest of society acts as a reinforcer. During adolescence, the broader society begins to take on a minor instructor role in relation to the family in the further development of gender. Essentially, family always acts as the main gender instructor and reinforcer, while society acts as the secondary gender instructor and reinforcer.
In our current culture, there is a huge difference between what is considered to be for girls or boys. From birth, children are told what colors and styles of clothing they wear, what toys they should play with, and how they should act. Often, girls are told they cannot play with toys considered to be for boys and boys are told they are not allowed to play with toys considered to be for girls. Children who do decide they want to play with the toys not traditionally for their gender are often scolded by family members, pushing the children back to their gender-specific toys. Gender socialization starts at birth and continues from adolescence, to adulthood, causing specific and detrimental differences
Since the beginning of time women and men have had their own set of duties. Society has this chart of what a woman is supposed to do, along with what men are supposed to do. As new eras emerge not only does technology, cultures, ethics, but also the duties of each gender role. I will be explaining the effect of men doing work that is deemed to be a woman’s job. There are a few key terms to understand first in order to comprehend the effect this has on society. The key terms are as follows; Gender roles, gender role socialization, and men gender role.
How do we define gender? Gender identity is a person's private sense and subjective experience of their own gender. All societies have gender categories usually falling under male or female. Gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to change after that. Gender identity is formed as society teaches you how your gender should act or look. Before a child is born their gender is socialized. When the doctors tells you if you are carrying a boy or girl it all starts. For girls you smother them in pink! Pink clothes, pick room, pink everything. For boys they get blue thrown at them. Who is to say they would even like those colors. These colors are used to help the child be identified by others. Blue and pink distinguish the child putting them either in the category male or female. Everything in the baby’s life is distinguished upon by they binary view of male or female. The baby girl’s nursery usually consist of flowers or princesses. The baby boy’s room is usually sports or animals themed. I conducted an experiment to test the sociological claim that gender is largely learned through socialization.
The female gender role in society has created a torturous fate for those who have failed in their role as a woman, whether as a mother, a daughter, or a wife. The restrictive nature of the role that society imposes on women causes extreme repercussions for those women who cannot fulfill their purpose as designated by society. These repercussions can be as common as being reprimanded or as severe as being berated or beaten by a husband or father. The role that women were given by society entails being a submissive homemaker who dotes on her husband and many children. The wife keeps the home impeccably neat, tends to the children and ensures their education and well-being, and acts obsequiously to do everything possible to please her husband. She must be cheerful and sweet and pretty, like a dainty little doll. The perfect woman in the eyes of society is exactly like a doll: she always smiles, always looks her best and has no feelings or opinions that she can truly call her own. She responds only to the demands of her husband and does not act or speak out of turn. A woman who speaks her mind or challenges the word of any man, especially her husband, is undesirable because she is not the obedient little doll that men cherish. Women who do not conform to the rules that society has set for them are downgraded to the only feature that differentiates them from men; their sex. Society’s women do not speak or think of sex unless their husband requires it of them. But when a woman fails to be the doll that a man desires, she is worth nothing more than a cheap sex object and she is disposed of by society.
The idea of gender roles stems from gender identity and gender norms; meaning that gender roles were created because a concept of society claims different genders act and look in different ways from another and the idea that certain things that one gender does is acceptable for one but not for the other. In american culture and multiple others male gender receives the role of masculinity which is associated by strength level, dominance, and aggression. Although males receive the masculinity role, females take on the role of feminism associated with neutering, submissive, and lower ranking behaviors. Gender roles have been enforced since the beginning of the 1900s, at a very young age gender roles are introduced to individuals by guardians. Each gender falls completely accepting to the assigned roles and over time roles began to evolve due to each gender creating different norms and transforming old ones (Dictionary of American History). Gender roles and stereotypes are linked to race, class status and obviously gender. These roles and stereotypes create
Gender Socialization Part II: Annotated Bibliography on Annotated Bibliography on Masculinity, LBGT as other, and Rape Culture
When thinking about the colors blue and pink, the very first connotation for many people that arises is the sex of a child. The tradition of wrapping a baby boy with a blue towel and wrapping a baby girl with a pink towel has been carried on from generations to generations to the point that society has failed to recognize its arbitrary societal norm. Today’s feminists believe that the term gender and the act of gendering are nurtured from birth until societal norms and expectations are indoctrinated into the brains of individuals. Parents and society categorizing humans based on their sex do not end with colors nor does it end at childhood. The idea of gender being the result of social construction can be portrayed immensely in various forms such as language, media and education as they all provide many evidences to illustrate the overt distinction of the roles of male and female. The concept of masculinity and femininity are taught to children by parents, which ultimately sculpts physical and emotional behaviors of individuals. Modern day feminists have shed light to how humans has been oblivious towards the sexist and stereotypical gendering that is constantly executed by today’s culture and have taken extensive measure to make amends. Whether it is explicit or heedlessly, gendered society cannot be avoided due to constant exposure from the cultural customs. It is naïve to ignore the consequences of social construction in gender roles, as it is society that dictates the ideal concept of what it means to be a certain gender.
The terms sex, gender and sexuality relate with one another, however, sociologists had to distinguish these terms because it has it’s own individual meaning. Sex is the biological identity of a person when they are first born, like being a male or female. Gender is the socially learned behaviors and expectations associated with men and women like being masculine or feminine. Gender can differentiate like being a man, woman, transgender, intersex, etcetera. Sexuality refers to desire, sexual preference, and sexual identity and behavior (1). Sexuality can differentiate as well like being homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, etcetera. Like all social identities, gender is socially constructed. In the Social Construction of Gender, this theory shows
There are many ways in which society can influence an individual. An individual can be influenced by the news, family, and friends. However an individual does not think much about how their gender has influenced their life. Gender socialization can be defined as the “process by which individuals are taught how to socially behave in accordance with their assigned gender, which is assigned at birth based on their biological sex” (Boundless, 2015). This is a process that begins from the moment that an individual’s life starts. As a child, each gender is treated differently. Girls are given dolls and are expected to stay clean when playing outside. Boys are given toy cars and are allowed to get dirty when playing outside (Sanderson, 2008). Gender
Socialization is the process of passing down norms, customs, and ideologies that are important to the society by the previous generations to the younger generations. The school system is a social agency that was created to enhance the processes of socialization through education. The importance of school as an agent of socialization can be best explained by the amount of time students spend in school and in activities happen around school. The manifest functions of school are to educate students the social norms, and the knowledge and skills that help them become economically productive in order to benefit the society. But students not only learn from the academic curriculum but they also benefit from socialize with their teachers and peers.