Gender Roles in our society are based on Prejudice
The hypothesis that I am trying to explain is gender roles in our society are based on prejudice this means that males and females are treated differently in society. Overall this is stating that females do not get the same treatment as males, they are treated un-equally. The hypothesis suggests that women are not happy how they are treated so differently to men, so they are trying to do something about it. Gender roles are a big factor in sexism as these are the main reason for it happening, gender roles are the behaviour of males and females this is normally affected by how they are brought up. Another way to describe how gender roles are portrayed is how people are prejudice; prejudice is an unreasonable judgement of something or someone. I am going to use primary and secondary evidence to explain the hypothesis. My primary evidence is going to be information that I have collected personally by surveys, interviews etc… The secondary evidence is going to be research I collect y using sociology books, newspapers, so things that already exist and that people have written.
There are lot of things that influence us about gender roles the first factor that has an influence on you is your family. This means that your parents set you in gender roles as soon as you are born, because the simplest things like toys will put you in gender roles. When you are younger what toys did your parents buy you if you are a boy, you had action men, cars and guns. If you are a girl you had Barbies, toy cookers, Hoovers etc. How many boys do you see opening Barbies at Christmas then going to play with it in their Wendy house, you don’t? This is because parents stick to the normal, they stay in the gender role boundaries, and because of this the children do as well. “Kuhn et al (1978) found that two and half – three and a half year olds categories certain behaviour as boy or girl behaviours” “Kolberg (1966) reported that toddlers know that crossing these gender roles lines, is to be avoided at all costs”. Both quotations are from (bibliography no.1). Your mum and dad are also your first role models if you are a girl then you tend to do what your mum does, like housework, washing up etc…. If you are brought up in this way of life then you will carry on doing it for the rest of your life because that is the normal to you. Your parents don’t just effect you in the way they act, but how they dress you when you are younger, so if they are a girl they are dressed in pink frilly dresses. In shops such as mother care they stick very much to gender colours, so all the girls clothes are pink and purple, boys clothes are blues and greens. So parents really have no option but to follow these colour traditions, so children will never break away from gender roles because these colours represent the gender roles. Childs games are also extremely gender orientated. Although fathers in particular react angrily to ‘gender – inappropriate’ behaviour, (i.e. Boys playing with dolls). This is stated in (bibliography no.1) on page 91 in the section titled children’s games. It states in this section “children’s games frequently involve practising adult gender roles”. Children also follow there parents in what jobs they do, this can also affect gender roles because if you are a girl and your mother is a house wife then you may wish to do that, this will carry on the tradition of gender roles. If you are a boy and want to follow what you father does he is the main breadwinner in the family so that is what you would want to do, so again this would carry on the tradition of gender roles. I feel that your family are a massive influence on you and your opinion in gender roles, although maybe young when a lot of the things i have mentioned it still sticks in your head even more so than things that happen later in your life. People never forget there child hood and the things they learn, a lot of the things they learn have gender roles involved in them so they grow up with these opinions that have been put into there head.
