How is gender identity influenced by social structures? In what ways can occupation and employment affect identity?

The first 200 words of this essay...

Question Part (a)

How is gender identity influenced by social structures?

In this paper will be looking at identity. In particular what identity is how it is formed and what the main points of gender identity are. This will be done with the aim of finding out which social structures have an influence on gender identity.

When we think about identity we think often relate it to many things. Usually we would think about how we see ourselves - black, white, mother, student etc. Secondly we would think about how others view us - teacher, athlete. These characteristics form an identity for us making us similar to some people and at the same time different from others. It connects us to the world around us in some way. Elements of ones view of self and the society's view of us, combines to produce identity. Simply put by Louis Althusser (1974) "identity is the one that fits us".

We know what identities are but how to we construct them? The 3 notable arguments on this are from George Herbert Mead (1934), Erving Goffman (1959) & Sigmund Freud. Firstly, looking at Mead who used the concept of symbolising.