Gender Roles.

Authors Avatar
Angela Chatman

Dr. Carrell

Advanced Comp

04-16-04

Gender Roles

Women and men have extremely different roles in society. These gender roles are very evident in the way we see ourselves as women, which is based on how we have been treated in the past and the actions in history we have taken toward gender equality. Katha Pollitt expresses her feminist view in her work "Why boys don't play with dolls."

"Instead of looking at kids to "prove" that differences in behavior by sex are innate, we can look at the ways we raise kids as an index to how unfinished the feminist revolution really is, and how tentatively it is embraced even by adults who fully expect their daughters to enter previously male-dominated professions and their sons to change diapers."

If progression is to be the main objective towards equality for the modern woman, it is necessary that we examine the process by which we are raising our children. In her article Pollitt expresses the notion that she believes that the "barbie doll" represents what society labels as the ideal woman, this social gender-based stereotype has an extreme influence on the way we raise our kids.
Join now!


The fact that we raise our little girls to play with dolls instead of toy trucks and we teach our girls home economics and our boys sports because it is what is "expected" and it is what is traditional shows that women have not yet fully broken from the bondage of gender stereotyping. The traditional belief, that men are superior to women dominates modern culture. The results that it has on the development and ultimate formation of the woman's sense of self and identity are obvious. Identity equals esteem. Esteem is part of the equation, and is part ...

This is a preview of the whole essay