The Research Paper

Gender Roles: Life’s Way of Defining Someone?

Everywhere someone goes, they see and experience different types of gender roles. Most don’t think twice about it, since they are so used to seeing them in their own everyday lives. There are many varieties of gender roles that exist today, and they can vary based on age, culture, and location. Socialization plays a big part in why gender roles are so strong and relevant to a society. Most can be seen universally throughout the world, yet some are unique to where they come from. Some may ask why gender roles exist if they can be detrimental to society our hurtful to someone who experiences them. So why do gender roles exist? Is it because people are born with them? Is it because they are raised with them? Or is it society  telling us about them? Since gender roles have an impact on how people live today, a further look will be taken in where the roots of these stereotypes live. No matter how degrading they are to a society, gender roles will never go away because they are developed through genetics, childhood and upbringing, and what is experienced in later life.

Gender roles live in genetics and nature, and that is part of why they will never cease to exist. These gender stereotypes are something that people cannot help because they will always be embedded into their brains. Some people see gender roles as inevitable because “you can’t deny biology; it’s only natural that men and women have different roles” (Lindsey 14). It is in one’s biological makeup and hormones that they experience gender roles. Men and women gender roles are seen as crucial to a society because without them there would be barely any distinction between the sexes.  The development of gender roles is greatly impacted by psychology and biology.  In an article pertaining to a presentation that she had seen, Cristina Hoff Summers looks more into gender role. As said by author Christina Hoff Summers “Mother Nature tends to get the final word”(1).  Although people would like to, there are many things in life that cannot be controlled at all. What someone looks like, their genetic makeup, and who their family is are all things that one cannot control, they are simply born into them.  At the end of the day, Mother Nature is the one that most shapes who someone is. After an examination of how certain theories influenced men and women’s perception,  it was found that “the more the participants believed in biological factors, the more they perceived differences between the sexes, and the more they believed that gender differences were immutable and thereby difficult to eliminate”(2). Sometimes all it takes for gender roles to never go away is the fact that someone thinks they exist and are part of them.  This biological gender theory states that thinking gender roles are a biological factor can emphasize them and make them stronger and worse. Although this is their belief, it is thought that awareness of the biological impact on gender can help to eliminate them.  These studies for the two theories were “conducted to investigate how lay gender theories influence individuals’ tendencies to self-stereotype or to attribute gender stereotypic traits to themselves”(3).  This emphasis and a biological theory of gender roles can cause people to self-stereotype, which means that they are giving themselves the stereotypes that are unwanted, because they can’t help it.  The experimenters wanted to see how these people would react to knowing that gender roles are biologically developed, and it had a negative impact on how they saw themselves.  One could see how someone could argue against this and say that the fact people know that gender roles exist can help society rid themselves of it.  But the thing is, a problem won’t go away as long as people know it exists. It’s the same with racism, which unfortunately will never go away because people are aware of it and will never stop talking about it. All in all, these sources believe that genetics are the root of gender roles.

Another aspect of why gender roles will never go away is because they are emphasized throughout childhood and upbringing. There is not one living person that can say that they haven’t experienced gender roles in some way. These experienced roles can lay somewhere between a woman being responsible for the housework or a man being the one that has to provide for a family. In an educational journal, the author looks into what gender roles are and how they impact juveniles and children. He wanted to see exactly what children would think when presented with certain gender stereotypes. Gender roles are sociological and psychological; they can be developed in many ways. They also have an impact on how juveniles and people act. Many writers “have maintained that delinquent behavior is directly related to a masculine gender role orientation”(Norland 546).  This means that the wrong and illegal behavior of children is most likely because they have experienced masculine gender roles and feel like they have to live up to them. If these roles didn’t exist, it would be safe to say that there would be less crime among younger people. These are the kind of negative impacts gender roles can have on children, they can make these children act unsafely and unnecessarily. In a study done to see how traditional gender roles are perceived by children, 368 students through 8-12 grade were given questionnaires where they would indicate how feminine or masculine something was.  It was shown that the actions that were seen as feminine were such as “I expect to get married and raise a family rather than to get a job in the business world”(Norland 548). Although the subjects of this study haven’t experienced anything like this in their lives, they think they know what to expect when they have to make decisions such as this. The girls think they have to take care of the family and men think they have to “provide most of the income for [their] family”(Norland 548). These students think that they have the world after school figured out, the men have to provide and the women have to take care of the children. Once they get out of school, they’re going to try their hardest to embody these masculine and feminine roles, which will just make gender roles keep going and never go away. In a source published by Ball State University, gender roles are looked at throughout our lifespan.  In a study to see if children could identify toys by gender, it was shown that “children who could label gender were more likely to classify objects according to cultural stereotypes”(Stevenson 21). Although these children think they are just playing with toys, they seem to already be separating them based on stereotypes.  This just comes more to show that one cannot help the stereotypes they face because they are all around them and inside of them.  This ties in with the study on the students that asked them questions about gender roles because it is done in a similar fashion.

            Adding on to gender roles in upbringing, gender roles are also experienced throughout someone’s entire life. Gender roles can be seen very clearly in the workplace. Sometimes, women are in positions of power and men get intimidated by this since a woman has power over them. Other times women are in the same exact position a male is in yet are making a fraction of the male’s salary. This just emphasizes that no matter how hard people try to get rid of them, gender roles and stereotypes affect people in everyday situations.  In a source that looked more into gender roles throughout the lifespan, their “data once again confirmed that female-dominated professions pay less than male-dominated professions, and that this effect is not attributable to differences in educations or job experience” (Stevenson 165). Even though women can be just as qualified and intelligent as men, they get less money for their hard work.  This just comes to show that people still believe and live stereotypes, sometimes without trying to. Even educated adults cannot help but be biased based on someone’s gender.  There is a bright side though, as women who are thirty have been seeing. In the book Gender Issues Across the Life Cycle, there is a section based on thirty something women and how they are developing family wise, career wise, and with a significant other. In this section it is stated that “a woman’s life is no longer predicted solely on the basis of her sex” (Wainrib 69). Gender roles will always be within a society, but at least they are starting to change not only because women are being seen more as equals but they realize they have the power to do what they want.  Women are starting to let gender roles go in one ear and out of the other, and they are empowered to change society’s norm even if it seems unchanging.  Although there is a positive outlook for women who are more grown and know how to handle gender roles, there are still some problems in midlife. Once someone is in midlife, they believe that they have to dramatically change their life in some way since they are nearing death in their eyes. Some people  find a new partner or job, and some people look towards a new personal identity. Sometimes as a part of this search for a new identity “gender issues become particularly raw and evocative for those enmeshed in the struggles of midlife. The grand questions of what it means to be a male or a female in our culture nag profoundly”(106).   People that are struggling to find themselves turn to and start to more embody previously uncovered gender roles in their lives.  They try to find out exactly what it means to be male or female, but in reality, there is no specific definition of male or female. Everyone is different in their own way and that may not be based on their sex.   All in all, gender roles, although developed at a young age, stay with someone their entire life and can sometimes become stronger with age. 

            In conclusion, there are many gender roles that exist and will never go away. They are learned at a young age and some of them are thanks to genetics. It seems like children and adolescents already know what gender roles are before they could even say the words or define them. Although gender roles can be harmful to a relationship, they can be beneficial in that “the concept of status and role are key components of the social structure and are necessary in helping us organize our lives in a consistent, predictable manner” (Lindsey 2). They are sometimes the reason we can distinguish things in our society. Gender roles never leave someone’s mind, and there is no point in trying to make them. They will always be in someone’s head, it is just their choice if they present them to others. Development and psychological factors are crucial in finding the root of gender roles. What is experienced in childhood and how someone is raised shapes who they are and how they act in a society. Some people can change who they are, but somehow who they used to be and what they believed tends to surface yet again. Gender roles are always going to be present in a society, people just have to realize where they are and to not let these roles or stereotypes control their lives.