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Gender role by society
Gender role by society
Gender role by society
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There has been much discussion about gender and the many different identities linked to it. Gender is the term used to describe the type of sex that a particular person identifies them self with. This sex can either be male or female. However, we live in a society with people having multiple identities. Therefore, I agree with the statement which states that gender identities are in transition in South Africa today. Many South Africans are identifying themselves to a particular gender identity. This essay will clearly show how gender identity is in transition in South Africa.
Many gender identities of South Africans are being formed by the influence of the society taking form as socialisation. According to Hacking (1999) gender is socially constructed whereas it motivates visions in which women are held to be essentially subjective to male domination. This emphasises the fact that women are fighting against patriarchy. According to Coetzee (2001) patriarchy refers to the dominance of male roles, whereas men are to take charge and are seen as the breadwinner of the family. However this is in the process of change, many women are fighting against patriarchy and demanding equal standards and rights for both men and women. These women are known as feminists. No longer are women restricted into which career path they wish to follow; however, in the past there was a separation of men and women career paths whereas women had to study for careers such as nursing. Today women are climbing the corporate ladder and finding themselves having and practicing roles of men. Society is forming the gender roles of both men and women whereas men are seen to be the breadwinner for his family and women are seen as the nurturing and caring person in t...
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...t they are also human just with a different gender identity then the usual. This essay has argued for the statement and I have provided clear examples.
Word count (1207)
Works Cited
• Coetzee, Daniella.( 2001). “South African education and the ideology of patriarchy,” in South African Journal of Education, 21(4), pp.300-304.
• Dube, Beverly. 2004. “Shall the lamb feed together with the fox?: Destroying Race and Gender Stereotypes in Zimbabwean Children’s Readers” in Journal of African and Youth Literature, vol 15-16.
• Greenberg, David, F.1990. The construction of homosexuality. Chicago, University of Chicago.
• Gurling, Deon.2010. Cape Town Gay Pride Parade 2010.pp 2
• Hacking, Ian. 1999. The Social construction of what? Harvard University Press.
• Kent, Laura. 1983. “Gender roles in transition,” The Journal Of Higher Education. 54(3), pp 309-324.
In the book Difference Matters, Brenda J Allen, begins writing about how gender matters in society. One of the main topics that she talks about is how in today’s society the male gender is the more predominate gender. As the reader, she has brought to mind many new ways to view how males earn more money then females, how we classify jobs as masculine or feminine, and also how society excepts males’ vs females to act and preform in the work force.
Academic Search Premier. Web. 21 Oct. 2013. Rebel Without a Cause. Dir.
The South African constitution demands that we have a non-sexist society. We would, therefore, only understand the concept of what non-sexism is if we saw it in action.
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).
Kathryn M. Moore, Women and Minorities. Leaders in Transition: A National Study of Higher Education Administrators. ERIC TITLE No. ED 225459.
What is within the boundaries of the feminine is always considered to have less status and power and is always subordinate and marginal—women always remain ‘other’. I perceive feminism as a part of the process of challenging the boundaries of the socially constructed role for women in our society—a process which through struggle will create for women a different notion of the normal and natural and a different tradition of being female. (Goodman, Harrop 4)
Feminist sociology focuses on examining and understanding gender in its relation to power within society as well as individuals. The fundamental principle of feminist sociology is the idea that in most societies, women have been oppressed and that men have been more dominant throughout history. Feminist theory directly relates to feminist sociology. According to the Introduction to Sociology 2e textbook, “feminist theory is a type of conflict theory that examines inequalities in gender-related issues. It uses the conflict approach to examine the maintenance of gender roles and inequalities” (Openstax 261). This paper aims to analyze feminist theory, discuss its history, as well as emphasizing a current social
Acker, S. (1987). Feminist theory and the study of gender and education. International Review of Education, 33, 419-435.
In just a few decades The Women’s Liberation Movement has changed typical gender roles that once were never challenged or questioned. As women, those of us who identified as feminist have rebelled against the status quo and redefined what it means to be a strong and powerful woman. But at...
For this essay I will be discussing the effects of changing gender roles within families today. The purpose of this paper is to gain a greater understanding to the every changing roles within gender roles in today’s world.
Reda (2015) states “If we want to see the world as a just and fair place where everyone is given equal opportunities, education is what we require. Education is a must if we want to do away with the existing differences between different social classes and genders. It opens a whole world of opportunities for the poor so that they may have an equal shot at well-paying jobs.” Creating education in a democratic state has been aimed by many states, theorists, philosophers and so on. Countries in this era have succeeded is aiming for a democratic education, some are getting there and other countries fail in creating a democratic education. The manner in which manner is received plays a crucial role in the life of everyone but as much as that is important to the human existence, the manner in which education is given is just as vital. The below will discuss Amy Gutmann’s theory of democratic education briefly, the South African education system and the extent to
West, Candace, and Sarah Fenstermaker. Doing Gender, Doing Difference: Social Inequality, Power and Resistance. New York; London: Routledge, 2002.
Gender stratification is the cuts across all aspects of social life and social classes. It refers to the inequality distribution of wealth, power and privilege between men and women at the basis of their sex. The world has been divided and organized by gender, which are the behavioural differences between men and women that are culturally learnt (Appelbaum & Chambliss, 1997:218). The society is in fact historically shaped by males and the issue regarding the fact has been publicly reverberating through society for decades and now is still a debatably hot topic. Men and women have different roles and these sex roles, defined to be the set of behaviour’s and characteristics that are standard for each gender in a society (Singleton, 1987) are deemed to be proper in the eyes of the society. They are as a matter of fact proper but as time move on, the mind-set of women changes as well, women also want to move on. However the institutional stratification by the society has become more insidious that the stereotypical roles have created a huge barrier between men and women. These barriers has affected women in many aspects such as minimizing their access on a more superior position in workforce organization, limits their ownership of property and discriminates them from receiving better attention and care.
Society has planted a representation into people’s minds on how each gender is supposed to be constructed. When one thinks of the word gender, the initial responses are male and female but gender may be represented in many additional terms. As defined, “Gender refers to the social expectations that surround these biological categories.” (Steckley, 2017, pg.256) Gender is something that is ascribed,
Holmarsdottir B. Et al, Gendered Voices: Reflections on Gender and Education in South Africa and Sudan. Rotterdam: Springer. 2013. Print.