Maintaining Gender Roles in Contemporary Australian Society
Maintaining Gender Roles in Contemporary Australian Society
A distinction is sometimes made between gender and sex, such that gender refers to socially conditioned characteristics or typical behaviour, and sex to the physical characteristics of men and women. The definition of gender is sociological concerns of sexual difference and human behaviours or a set of classes, such as masculine, feminine and neuter, which together include all nouns. The discussion of how the differences of gender are maintained in society today covers many different areas, such as growing into gender roles, sources of gender socialization, masculinity and femininity and expectations that humans live with daily. These will all be discussed and analysed in the following argument.
We are born either male or female. Depending on the sex that you are, your parents, family and friends try and teach you certain stereotypical ideals. For instance, a little girl may have a pink coloured nursery and clothes. She may be given dolls and tea sets to play with. Whereas a boy may have a blue nursery and toys, and be given trucks and train sets to play with. This is encouraging the child to have feminine or masculine personal qualities, depending on their sex. When these adults are choosing gifts, it immediately comes to mind that a doll for a baby boy is not an appropriate gift. It has been shown that these actions by adults have been taught to them by culture and their surroundings as they themselves were growing up. These children do not have the ability to choose their own gender pathway, and therefore have to rely on their parents to lead them in the correct direction and trust their selection of gender roles. Once a child has become old enough to be able to choose for itself, they develop a more individual personality and variance of gender. Researchers have been debating whether or not males who have been raised as females develop features of masculinity once they reach puberty, and whether the biological sex will prevail. There is still much debate about this issue, but if this were to happen, the male would have to be taught acts of masculinity. The child would have to see what masculinity is to be able to act in this manner. Phrases such as “tomboy” have been used to describe females who act with some masculinity, and the opposite characteristics may be found in males that...