The Negative Effects Of Gender Stereotyping

Stereotyping is a generalized view or preconception of attributes or characteristics possessed by, or the roles that are or should be performed by, members of a particular group (Cook & Cusack, 2011). This paper will go over the ways that stereotyping effects people in a negative way and how stereotypes is common. This paper will explain this through subsections that include gender, image, culture, and place of origin. I will focus on how one can simply look at someone and already have a certain image portrayed about that person without actually knowing him or her. It’s very common to stereotype because people associate a particular social group with certain attributes, characteristics, and roles (Cooks & Cusack, 2011, p.15)

This paragraph talks about gender stereotyping.

Gender stereotyping is when beliefs concerning the characteristics of both women and men that contain both good and bad traits. Gender stereotyping affects both men and women but usually targets the woman more harshly (Cooks & Cusack, 2011, p.1). Gender is something that is very unique and a very interesting topic. “It has obvious links to the real world, first in the connection between many grammatical gender systems and biological size, which underpin particular gender systems and also have external correlates”(Corbett, 2013). For an example gender-based violence against women is widely recognized as a critical concern for women in all part of the world (Cooks & Cusack, 2011, p.28). Now day’s women are underrepresented in the business world today, 16 percent of corporate officers in the U.S are women and 1 percent of all of the CEO positions in the Fortune 500 companies (Baron & Branscombe, 2012). In the workplace there are glass ceilings that are barriers based off of attitudinal and organizational bias that prevent qualified women from making it to the supervisory positions. As time elapsed that generation of women like that no longer existed. Women starting taking job positions and having supervisory positions in the workplace. It was no longer the thing that women would not work when they got older. Males also have a stereotype of being strong and being the head of the household in a family. “Masculine gender markers

are used for all male persons and certain animals whose gender is salient, such as bulls and roosters” (Corbett, 2013, p.133). They could actually go to college and get a real education to make something out of their lives. As my mother owns her own business and my father stayed home growing up, there was a huge gender role change in the family. Women and men are now equal in the workforce and have the same chance of landing a job compared to 50 years ago. By 2006, dual- sources couples were more numerous than male- breadwinner households had been in 1970, based on this statement it shows that women in America plays a role that is more than just a stay at home mother with no income (Gerson, 2010, p. 152). In schools, females have the stereotype that women are smarter than makes in school. According to a research study at Cal State Long Beach done with 38 undergraduates participated in a gender stereotype activity. What was discovered from the research about women was that 79 stereotypes responses were retained, with 39 consensually were judged positive. 16 people were Negative and 24 were found as neutral. For the research found by men were 84 responses were retained and 23 were positive with 48 negative and 13 neutral (Meyer, 1997). For the last study that was researched by Ryan and Haslam in 2005 & and 2007 showed that “women are indeed more likely to gain admittance to valued leadership positions when a crisis has occurred, the leadership position is more precarious, and there is greater risk of failure- what they refer to as the glass cliff effect(Baron & Bransombe, 2012, p.184).
Second type of stereotypes that will be discusses is racial stereotypes. Race is explained by three characteristics, which is ease of identification, relative immutability, and social signification. Social psychologists have seen stereotyping as a cognitive structure and expectations of knowledge, beliefs, and some expectations of social groups that result in positive and negative aspects. Even young children have the capacity to understand racial knowledge at such a young age. “Three- month old infants can discriminate perceptually between different racial groups preferring to look at faces that belong to a familiar racial group” (Pauker, Apfelbaum, & Ambady, 2010). Children are able to demonstrate the difference in ethic and racial awareness as young as three and four years old, which allows people to develop cognitive skills and such a young age. Even in our own government such as the U.S. Supreme Court recognizes whether or not if racial classification should constitute one of the tests to determine if it passes muster in constitutional terms (Loury, 2002). Every race has been stereotyped for certain things due to where they come from and people have a certain outlook on people’s perspectives. For an example of racial stereotyping, Asians are perceived as high intelligence, African Americans excels at recreation activities, and white people have white privilege because we get everything handed to us. Minimal groups are used to categorize different groups based on criteria based on those who tend to favor others and categories in the same group as ourselves compared to different groups (Baron & Baronscombe, 2012, p. 196). When people look at these certain races, they automatically with judgment because of social media, news, and incidents that have shaped our way of thinking. (Loury, 2002, p.59). “Social psychologists term such as frameworks schemas, and define them as a mental framework that helps us to organize social information, and that guide our actions and the processing of information relevant to those contexts”(Baron & Branscombe, 2012, p. 184). In education races are perceived to have certain stereotypes such as some races are smarter than other ones. “Stereotypes like blacks are lazy, girls are bad at math, and others can cause underachievement for adults as well as children. When a stereotype threat is high, women are more likely to lose their problem solving skills as opposed to when a stereotype threat is low. In addition, minority groups tend to suffer from a deficit performance while performing a difficult task in which their identified racial group is considered weak.”(Smith, 2008).”
Another stereotype that will be discussed is religious stereotyping.

As research shows some people believe that religion is vital and some people do not think religion is important. This research shows that, “75% of theologically conservative individuals agreed with the belief that religion is necessary for morality, whereas only 54%of theologically moderate, 33% of theologically liberal, and 12% of nonreligious shared this view (Fublic Religion Research Institute, 2013)” (Galen, &Williams, & Wey, 2014). Religious stereotyping is when prejudice towards some people is rooted in their own beliefs for people who don’t have the same moral principles as them. The poor and the obese people are judges due to what they look like and how they present themselves. Homosexual people are also judged because of how they are perceived and the moral principles that they break (Blaine, 2007). There has been some research to show two different kinds of ways of being religious. The first way is intrinsic religiousness, which involves internalizing, and living in ones faith and that is very important to people’s faith. The second way is extrinsic religiousness, which involves internalizing a pragmatic way of religion, and these people are very social and have personal goals such as having friends with similar interests as you. The vast majority of suicide bombers have made Muslims a target for stereotyping due to Muslims killing in the name of their religion. The Western media has targeted

fundamentalists as the voice of Islam who warped a bad image for Muslims (Sharpe, 2008). Homosexuality is not accepted in the Christian doctrine and is looked down upon. In the bible it talks about how being with the same sex is a sin. Research conducted shows us that fundamentalists believe hold negative and discriminatory attitudes toward gay and lesbians (Blaine, 2007, p. 151). From a Christian perspective, the stereotype is that every Christian hates homosexual people. Christians have a bad image portrayed in the media for having hatred towards gay people. Negative attitudes towards homosexual people have been observed in such religions such as Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Hindus. Gay people are portrayed in a negative way all the time regardless of all of the good attributes to the world that they have done. They are looked at with shame and disrespect because of the decision they have made to date the same gender.
The last stereotype, which will be covered in class stereotyping which is when you perceive a person, based off of their economics (Blaine, 2007, p.138). The first thought what comes to a persons head when you see a man or woman on the side of the road begging for money is what? Often times we either think to ourselves that that person should get a job, why are they lazy? Or what made this person become homeless? These thoughts are in everyone’s head because society looks down upon the poor and uneducated people. In a rare occasion the poor people have a stereotype that thet are often friendly, nice, and loving people. Research has shown that people view poor women more positively than poor men because we feel sorry for women more than men (Blaine, 2007,p.140).
In conclusion stereotyping is a common occurrence and has been since the day of time. It seems like every person stereotypes without notion, most of the time stereotyping is bad but than there are times when stereotyping can be good in certain situations such as looking for a criminal on the run. Throughout history research has shown us that many different types of people have endured stereotyping. The three main reasons due to this are because of gender, race, class, and religion. Most of them get stereotyped in different angles such as origin, gender, religion, etc. During the course of doing research, there have been enough evidence to conclude that all different types of stereotyping is intertwined and all can categorize together. Stereotyping is very broad and includes physical appearance, abilities, and behaviors are all common components (Baron & Branscombe, 2012, p.183). Nowadays, most people try not to stereotype as much due to the rise of diversity and understanding that stereotyping is wrong. However, stereotyping is inevitable and it is something that will continue to be in our society.