gender

Examples of gender in the following topics:

• Gender Identity in Everyday Life

  • Gender identity is one's sense of one's own gender.
  • Gender identity is one's sense of being male, female, or a third gender.
  • Gender identity is not only about how one perceives one's own gender, but also about how one presents one's gender to the public.
  • What causes individuals to sense a sort of confusion between their biological gender and their gender identity?
  • Gender identities, and the malleability of the gender binary, vary across cultures.

• Gender Messages from Peers

  • Peer groups can serve as a venue for teaching gender roles, especially if conventional gender social norms are strongly held.
  • Division of labor creates gender roles, which in turn lead to gendered social behavior.
  • Peer groups can serve as a venue for teaching members gender roles.
  • If a peer group strongly holds to a conventional gender social norm, members will behave in ways predicted by their gender roles, but if there is not a unanimous peer agreement, gender roles do not correlate with behavior.
  • These gender differences are also representative of many stereotypical gender roles within these same-gendered groups.

• Gender Socialization

  • Gender is included in this process; individuals are taught how to socially behave in accordance with their assigned gender, which is assigned at birth based on their biological sex (for instance, male babies are given the gender of "boy", while female babies are given the gender of "girl").
  • Preparations for gender socialization begin even before the birth of the child.
  • Gender stereotypes can be a result of gender socialization.
  • Gender fluidity also shows how gender norms are learned and either accepted or rejected by the socialized individual.
  • Explain the influence of socialization on gender roles and their impact

• Gender

  • In a given society, sexual beliefs, values, and attitudes reflect the accepted norms of that society, and individual feelings and opinions are largely bypassed in the assignment of gender and gender roles.
  • Gender-related intersections and the crossing of defined gender boundaries are generally unaccounted for in socially constructed notions of gender.
  • Gender, and especially the role of women, is generally regarded as critical to international development.
  • Development efforts therefore address issues of gender equality and emphasize the participation of women; they also incorporate an understanding of the different gender-based roles and expectations within a particular community.
  • Examine the role gender plays in health care and healthy lifestyles, especially for women

• Additional Reading

  • "The End of Gender?
  • " - This is an article that discusses some recent attempts to illustrate how gender is at least partially socially constructed.

• The Social Construction of Gender

  • Social constructivists propose that there is no inherent truth to gender; it is constructed by social expectations and gender performance.
  • Who benefits from the way that gender is constructed?
  • Gender is never a stable descriptor of an individual, but an individual is always "doing" gender, performing or deviating from the socially accepted performance of gender stereotypes.
  • In other words, by doing gender, we reinforce the notion that there are only two mutually exclusive categories of gender.
  • Gender is maintained as a category through socially constructed displays of gender.

• Gender Roles in the U.S.

  • There has been significant variation in gender roles over cultural and historical spans, and all gender roles are culturally and historically contingent.
  • Much scholarly work on gender roles addresses the debate over the environmental or biological causes for the development of gender roles.
  • Gender role theory posits that boys and girls learn to perform one's biologically assigned gender through particular behaviors and attitudes.
  • The division of labor creates gender roles, which in turn, lead to gendered social behavior.
  • Describe how gender roles in the U.S. have changed since the 1950's

• Gender Bias in the Classroom

  • Gender-based achievement gaps suggest the existence of gender bias in the classroom.
  • Gender-based achievement gaps (especially in math and science) suggest the existence of gender bias in the classroom.
  • If test score gaps are evidence of gender bias, where does that gender bias come from?
  • Teachers may interact with boys and girls in ways that reinforce gender roles and gender inequality.
  • The gendering of school subjects may, in itself, lead to gender bias in the classroom, and, further down the line, gender inequality in the workforce.

• Gender Socialization

  • Gender socialization is the process of teaching people how to behave as men or women.
  • In regards to gender socialization, the most common groups people join are the gender categories male and female.
  • Even the categorical options of gender an individual may choose is socialized; social norms act against selecting a gender that is neither male or female.
  • Preparations for gender socialization begin even before the birth of the child.
  • This clearly demonstrates the influence of socialization on the development of gender roles; subtle cues that surround us in our everyday lives strongly influence gender socialization.

• Childhood Socialization

  • Gender roles are taught from infancy through primary socialization, or the type of socialization that occurs in childhood and adolescence.
  • Gender is instilled through socialization immediately from birth.
  • When a boy gets a football for his birthday and a girl receives a doll, this also socializes children to accept gender norms.
  • Because gender norms are perpetuated immediately upon birth, many sociologists study what happens when children fail to adopt the expected gender norms rather than the norms themselves.
  • Children can resist gender norms by insisting on dressing in clothing more typically associated with the other gender, playing with toys more typically associated with the other gender, or having opposite-sex playmates .