Sociology Gender Roles

Abstract

Gender gives meaning to the socially constructed roles and responsibilities of men and women. It helps address the issues and provides understanding to the biases and challenges faced by the members of a particular gender. These gender roles are developed over the course of human living experience and there are many theories that help to provide an understanding of this process. The sociological and socio-biological approach have led to traditional gender roles which are now put to the test due to the emergence of new genders like transsexuals, cross-dressers etc. This research paper aims to study if an androgynous approach to sex roles can help answer the problems arising due to inflexibility of traditional gender roles.

Table of Contents

Abstractii

Introduction1

Discussion2

Gender and Sex2

Sociobiology Theory2

Social Learning Theory3

Benefits of Traditional Gender Roles3

Benefits to Males4

Benefits to Females4

Drawbacks of Traditional Gender Roles4

Changing Gender Roles4

Transsexuals4

Cross-Dressers and Transvestites5

Androgynous5

Conclusions6

End Notes7

Gender Roles and Sociology

Introduction

The lifelong process which enables people to learn and appreciate their culture, develop as a human being and serve as a useful contributor to the society is called socialization. Socialization has critical importance in human existence and requires social interaction with other humans. When a person engages with the society, he starts to develop a personality. Though, this effort to define socialization might not be able to show the profound effect that socialization has on humans. We need to develop an understanding of how this process works and recognize that our culture plays a vital role in determining our beliefs and responses towards gender differences.

Culture incorporates and presents a complete way of life maintained by a society. This can involve the material and non material aspects. Material aspects might include the type of architecture and art prevalent in that society and non material aspects can include religion and roles assigned to different genders. Culture encompasses the complete history of development achieved by a society and that is transmitted from one generation to another through the process of socialization. Culture makes use of social institutions like family, schools and other economic, religious, governmental institutions to make sure that the basic needs of the society are being met. These institutions also ensure that all necessary functions are being carried out by members of the society.

The social and cultural aspects associated with biological distinction between men and women are generally referred with the word gender. Gender is not an attribute that is coded into the genes of a human being but it is a learned attribute. A child may be born male or female; however, they have to learn to become a man or a woman. These gender roles are development internally due to the experiences learned during socializing usually by the age of five. Different factors like family, education, economic conditions, creed, demographics and ethnic background play an important role in socialization. The future development of a child is greatly affected by the gender roles that are assigned to them by the society. It determines their access to valuable resources like food, education, work, relationships and other factors ...