Gender role

A gender role, also known as a sex role, is a social role encompassing a range of behaviors and attitudes that are generally considered acceptable, appropriate, or desirable for people based on their actual or perceived sex. Gender roles are usually centered on conceptions of masculinity and femininity , although there are exceptions and variations. The specifics regarding these gendered expectations may vary substantially among cultures, while other characteristics may be common throughout a range of cultures. There is ongoing debate as to what extent gender roles and their variations are biologically determined, and to what extent they are socially constructed.Masculine cultures expect men to be assertive, ambitious and competitive, to strive for material success, and to respect whatever is big, strong, and fast. Masculine cultures expect women to serve and care for the non-material quality of life, for children and for the weak. Feminine cultures, on the other hand, define relatively overlapping social roles for the sexes, in which, in particular, men need not be ambitious or competitive but may go for a different quality of life than material success; men may respect whatever is small, weak, and slow.There are cultures where it has been normal, not exceptional, for men to have homosexual relations. There have been periods in 'Western' history when the modern convention that men suppress displays of emotion did not apply at all, when men were demonstrative about their feeling for their friends. Mateship in the Australian outback last century is a case in point.'A man asked the Prophet: 'Whom should I honor most?' The Prophet replied: 'Your mother'. 'And who comes next?' asked the man. The Prophet replied: 'Your mother'. 'And who comes next?' asked the man. The Prophet replied: 'Your mother!'. 'And who comes next?' asked the man. The Prophet replied: 'Your father'' A gender role, also known as a sex role, is a social role encompassing a range of behaviors and attitudes that are generally considered acceptable, appropriate, or desirable for people based on their actual or perceived sex. Gender roles are usually centered on conceptions of masculinity and femininity , although there are exceptions and variations. The specifics regarding these gendered expectations may vary substantially among cultures, while other characteristics may be common throughout a range of cultures. There is ongoing debate as to what extent gender roles and their variations are biologically determined, and to what extent they are socially constructed. Various groups, most notably the masculist and feminist movements, have led efforts to change aspects of prevailing gender roles that they believe are oppressive or inaccurate. The term gender role was first used by John Money and colleagues in 1954, during the course of his study of intersex individuals, to describe the manners in which these individuals expressed their status as a male or female in a situation where no clear biological assignment existed. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines gender roles as 'socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women'. Debate continues as to what extent gender and gender roles are socially constructed (i.e. non-biologically influenced), and to what extent 'socially constructed' may be considered synonymous with 'arbitrary' or 'malleable'. Therefore, a concise authoritative definition of gender roles or gender itself is elusive. In the sociology of gender, the process whereby an individual learns and acquires a gender role in society is termed gender socialization. Gender roles are culturally specific, and while most cultures distinguish only two (boy and girl or man and woman), others recognize more. Androgyny, for example, has been proposed as a third gender. Androgynous is simply a person with qualities pertaining to both the male and female gender. Other societies have claimed to identify more than five genders, and some non-Western societies have three genders – man, woman, and third gender. Some individuals (not necessarily being from such a culture) identify with no gender at all. Many transgender people reject the idea that they are a separate third gender, and identify simply as men or women. However, biological differences between (some) trans women and cisgender women have historically been treated as relevant in certain contexts, especially those where biological traits may yield an unfair advantage such as sport. Gender role, which refers to the cultural expectations as understood by gender classification, is not the same thing as gender identity, which refers to the internal sense of one's own gender, whether or not it aligns with categories offered by societal norms. The point at which these internalized gender identities become externalized into a set of expectations is the genesis of a gender role. Some theories – which are collectively termed social construction theories – claim that gender behavior is mostly due to social conventions, although opposing theories disagree, such as theories in evolutionary psychology.