As a persons sex as male or female is a biological fact it is consistent throughout all cultures, however what that sex means in terms of your gender role as a 'man' or a 'woman' in society can be quite different cross culturally. 'Gender role' refers to certain characteristics and behaviours which are socially accepted in different cultures. What it thought of as being a “real man” in any culture requires the male sex plus what our cultures define as masculine traits. Similarly with a “real woman”
What Butler refers to are known as “gender roles”. The gender roles discussed in her book are very important in every person’s life, as all aspects of social life are gendered. These areas can include work, education and growing up. When a child is born into a family it is automatically given a gender. For example, when parents bring their baby home for the first time it will stay in a nursery. These nurseries are usually one of the primary introductions of gender in a child’s life. This is due to the decoration of such rooms, decorated in a colour supposedly appropriate to their gender. Pink is normally associated with girls, in comparison to blue for boys. Birthday and Christmas presents also show this. It is widely seen as socially acceptable for boys to play with cars, action figures, and guns, whereas for girls, it is socially recognised that they should play with Barbie’s, dolls and makeup. This is a typical example of the enforcement of our gender roles, as from a very young age we are shaped into a being suitable for release into society. These children go on to perform household chores as they grow up. Stereotypically, daughters are being taught household duties, such as washing dishes, hovering, and ironing. In the same way, sons are generally introduced and involved more active, hands on jobs such as washing the car, cutting the grass, or maintenance. This shows that both men and women are taught from a very young age to act and perform their gender in a specific way, differing in accordance to their sex. Recently, ideas of equality have been put into place; however there are still very evident divides in the occupational status of men and women. It is generally thought that women are involved in secretarial or office work, and often caring jobs such as nursing. Alternatively men are more active in more hands on labour work, or important jobs such as lawyers and doctors. During however, women filled job positions which probably would otherwise be male dominated. This can be seen throughout history where some jobs that have been typically male or female have switched genders. Clerical jobs was once considered a man's job, but when several women began filling men's job positions due to World War II, clerical jobs quickly became dominated by women. They became more feminized, and women workers became known as "typewriters" or "secretaries". This again shows a division of gender, and how men and women perform different roles in our society.
In 1955, developed a model of what he called the . The was considered to be the perfect family structure. It compared a strictly traditional view of gender roles to a more liberal one we see today. Parsons believed that the role of a woman was an expressive and submissive one, whereas the masculine role, in his view, was more important and active. He believed that expressive activities of the woman fulfill 'internal' functions, for example to strengthen bonds between members of the family. The man, on the other hand, performed the 'external' functions of a family, such as providing economical support. Parson’s idea is purely based on a persons sex. He takes females and puts them into a submissive role in society, encouraging the higher status of males by doing so. Therefore, we can see that although a person’s gender is developed by society, it is based purely on their sex, and therefore the two are connected.
In Western society, sexuality is an issue related both to a persons sex and their gender. Groups such as the transgendered, and those who like to dress up in drag, are often criticized and ridiculed for not adhering to the socially acceptable way in which people of their gender should dress, behave, or act. People whose gender appears masculine and whose external genitalia are male can often be criticized and ridiculed for exhibiting what the society regards as a woman's gender role. For example, if someone with a masculine voice, a , and wears a woman's dress and high heels, carrying a purse, etc., is likely to be made fun of in ordinary social contexts. This is because it is seen as socially unacceptable. Society imposes certain expectations on society’s behaviour, especially regarding gender. Homosexual men and women are thought by society to be breaking the social norms of sexuality and therefore receive a deviant identity.
The majority of will argue that gender roles set down by tradition are oppressive for women. They say that the female gender role was constructed to emphasise the ideal male role, and to continue the idea of patriarchy. For years women have been fighting the society surrounding them for equal treatment, rights and opportunities as men. Over time, these women have been able to make many changes to the traditionally accepted female gender role. Regardless of these changes and improvements, most feminists today say there is still work to be done. Statistics show that even though the situation for women has improved during the last century, there is still a lot of widespread. Generally women still earn lower incomes of pay than men, occupy lower-ranking job positions than men and are widely thought of as wives and housekeepers. This goes to show that gender is very important in our society, as groups such as feminists have been taking an interest over the past few decades. It is important to note that women are also discriminated against due to their sex. The idea of motherhood and childbirth induces an idea of weakness and unreliability to womanhood. This gives many male employers an escape route when recruiting for their business, as unreliability is not a desirable and wanted trait. Due to this, in recent Western culture two extreme ends of reality have been adopted. These extremes are the “stay at home mum” and the “single career woman”. However, in reality, it is women who often have to face a . Women who have children have to balance their job along with child care, which ultimately deprives women of spare time. Whereas the majority of men with university educations have a career as well as a family, it is estimated that only 50 percent of academic women have children. This double burden problem was introduced to scientific theory in 1956 by Myrdal and Klein in their work "Women's two roles: Home and work," published in London.
It is easy for society to assume that sex and gender both have the same definition, however due to scientific, sociological, and feminist outlooks and works, we can see that we are much more aware of gender in our society than we are of a persons sex. Although sex is our biological definition as a person, it generates perceptions which we call gender which is seen as more important in our society and culture. It is usually women who are degraded by society’s idea of gender, and who take actions t try and bridge the gender gap. Overall I would say that there is a great difference between a persons biological sex and their socially expected gender.
