In many prehistoric cultures, women assumed a particular cultural role. In hunter-gatherer societies, women were generally the gatherers of plant foods, while men hunted meat. Because of their intimate knowledge of plant life, most anthropologists argue that it was women who led the Neolithic Revolution and became history’s first pioneers of agriculture.
In more recent history, the gender roles of women have changed greatly. Traditional gender roles for middle-class women typically involved domestic tasks emphasizing child care, and did not involve entering employment for wages. For poorer women, especially among the working classes, this often remained an ideal, for economic necessity has long compelled them to seek employment outside the home, although the occupations traditionally open to working-class women were lower in prestige and pay than those open to men. Eventually, restricting women from wage labor came to be a mark of wealth and prestige in a family, while the presence of working women came to mark a household as being lower-class.
The women's movement is in part a struggle for the recognition of equality of opportunity with men, and for equal rights irrespective of sex, even if special relations and conditions are willingly incurred under the form of partnership involved in marriage. The difficulties of obtaining this recognition are due to historical factors combined with the habits and customs history has produced. Through a combination of economic changes and the efforts of the feminist movement in recent decades women in most societies now have access to careers beyond the traditional one of "homemaker". Despite these advances, modern women in Western society still face challenges in the workplace as well as with the topics of education, violence, health care, and motherhood to name a few. These changes and struggles are among the foci of the academic field of women’s studies.
Culture definitely aids the determination of gender roles. Socialization in all cultures is directly linked to the final product of a human being. Culture dictates, at a very young age, how boys and girls are supposed to act, feel and respond to certain situations. Boys and girls are separated by gender at birth. Boys are wrapped in blue blankets and girls in pink. Before a child is born, everyone close to the family wants to know what the child will be, so they will know what to purchase. This is very common practice throughout our society. Boys are taught to play with trucks, trains, male action figures, swords and guns. These items aid in defining masculinity. Girls, on the other hand, are taught to play with dolls, toy stoves or easy bake ovens, and other toys to aide them in identifying with nurturing. These factors lead to identifying gender roles by our society. Anything that deviates from this is considered somewhat abnormal. For instance, if a small male child wants to play with dolls, most fathers will immediately intervene and provide them with a more masculine toy. At the very least, he will show disapproval. Girls, on the other hand, may be labeled as a tom boy if they show interest in his truck.
These actions move through adolescence and well into adulthood. Certain items labeled as household chores are also fitted into this formula. Boys mow grass, take out the trash and do most of what is determined to be "men's work." Girls are expected to wash dishes, mop floors, wash laundry and other feminine chores. Our society has seen numerous changes in these roles, yet our culture has dictated these changes and made them acceptable.
A person's sexuality comes from within him or her, but unlike sexuality, however, gender roles are imposed from without, through a variety of social influences. Formed during the socialization phases of childhood and adolescence, gender role issues influence people throughout their lives; conflict can arise when someone does not feel at ease with his or her gender role. The first and one of the strongest influences on a person's perceived gender role is his or her parents. Parents are our first teachers not only of such basic skills as talking and walking, but also of attitudes and behavior. Some parents still hold traditional definitions of maleness and femaleness and what kind of activities are appropriate for each. Parents start early in treating their baby boys and baby girls differently. Although baby boys are more likely to die in infancy than girls, and are actually more fragile as infants than girls are, studies have shown that parents tend to respond more quickly to an infant daughter's cries than they are to those of an infant son. Parents also tend to cuddle girls more than they do boys. They are also more likely to allow boys to try new things and activities--such as learning to walk and explore than they are girls; parents tend to fear more for the safety of girls.
People are likely to appreciate girls' cuteness and boys' achievements. For example, a girl may receive the comment, "You look so pretty!" for the outfit she is wearing. While this compliment isn't harmful in itself, repeated over and over the message the girl gets is that she is most appreciated for her looks, not for what she can do. Boys, on the other hand, are praised for what they can do. "Aren't you a big boy, standing up by yourself!" Many parents encourage and expect boys to be more active, to be more rough-and-tumble in their play than girls. A boy who does not like rough play (and so goes against the gender role he has been assigned) may be labeled a "sissy." A girl who prefers active play to more passive pursuits may be called a "tomboy."
Children look to their parents for examples and role models. If a girl sees her mother taking part in physical activities, for example, she will grow up with the idea that it's okay for girls to play sports. If a boy sees his father helping to take care of the new baby, he will integrate this image of "daddy as care giver" into his developing definition of masculinity. But just as parents can provide positive role models, so too can they serve as negative role models. For example, children who grow up with parents who are in an abusive relationship have been found to repeat the same pattern as adults: male children of abusive husbands often grow up to abuse their own wives, and daughters of abused wives can grow up to be victims of domestic violence, because their parents have shown them that this is "normal."
Children develop their gender identity (knowing whether they are male or female) by the age of three. As preschoolers, they use some sexual stereotypes to help them differentiate between men and women for example, to a preschooler, long hair may mean "female" and short hair, "male."
Another influence and reinforcement of gender roles comes from the toys children play with. During their infancy and toddlerhood, children get most of their toys from parents and other family members; their choice of toys supports their own view of gender roles. For example, parents may give their little girl a doll to sleep with, while the boy gets a teddy bear. A grandparent may give a grandson a toy truck but never consider giving the same to a granddaughter. Such gifts set children up early on for the roles they are expected to play. As they get older, children are influenced in their choice of toys by television. Remote-controlled vehicles, although they can be equally enjoyed by males or females, are generally targeted at boys by advertisers. Girls are the advertising targets of the manufacturers of dolls, craft kits, and so on; advertisers are careful not to call boys' toys "dolls"--they're "action figures"!Again and again, we see toys and toy advertisement reinforcing the traditional gender roles: boys are active and adventurous, while girls are passive and mothering. Parents need to be aware of the messages TV advertisements and toys present to their children. They need to help them understand and reconcile the person they are with the sexual stereotypes they may see on TV and in other media.
Nevertheless, parents can and do reinforce sexual stereotypes, whether deliberately or unwittingly. Not wanting to see a daughter fall and get hurt, a mother may forbid her from climbing trees although her brother is allowed to do so with gleeful abandon, and his bumps and bruises are taken in stride. Clothing manufacturers produce (and parents buy) clothing in gender-neutral shades such as yellow and green, but the traditional blue for boys and pink for girls are still favorites. Even the cultural habit of assigning pink to girls and blue to boys raises a question what's to become of the boy who genuinely likes the color pink? This question leads us to another group that has strong influence over gender roles: peers.
Peer pressure is a means of reinforcing a culture's traditional gender roles. It can come in the form of taunting or teasing a child who does not fit the traditional gender roles that other children in the peer group have been exposed to, even to the point of excluding that child from group activities. Peers react more positively to children who fit traditional gender roles. For example, the Washington Post reported the case of a five-year-old boy whose favorite color was pink, and as a result, when the time came to buy him his first bicycle, he naturally wanted it to be pink. The parents had no problem with this, and the boy even told the salesman (who tried to tell him that boys should ride blue or red bikes) that colour was just colour. The ones who teased him about his bike were not the other boys, but the girls in the neighborhood. Not long after, the boy stopped telling other people that pink was his favorite colour. Resisting such teasing takes a strong ego, something that takes many people years to develop. In a study conducted at Suffolk University in Boston, researcher Krisanne Bursik studied the ego development of 209 undergraduates and compared the results to gender-related traits. She found that students who were more likely to express non-traditional gender role traits had higher levels of ego development. She found that among male students, those who had less-developed egos viewed high levels of traditional masculinity as the ideal. She noted that in these men, "gender role conflict may occur for men when rigid, sexist or restrictive gender roles, learned during socialization, result in personal restriction, devaluation, or violation of others or self." However, Bursik's research was unable to answer the chicken-or-the-egg question: which comes first? Do people who have strong, well-developed egos feel free to go against traditional gender roles? Or does early exposure to alternatives where gender roles are concerned lead people to develop strong egos?
Gender roles are also reinforced by school. Teachers and school administrators have great influence as they pass along cultural information and expectations. In school, children are expected to sit still, read, and be quiet. Such expectations may have been part of the gender role that a child has been learning from the parents, especially if the child is a girl. But for a boy who has been encouraged to be loud and boisterous prior to starting school, these expectations can lead to trouble. In fact, some researchers maintain that all boys face difficulty with expectations such as these because the structure of their brains makes them less able to meet these expectations than girls are. In single sex schools, boys who had been shy to speak in class do well in them, and girls develop leadership skills. Students at other single-sex schools have been found to be less susceptible to social pressure...
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