How Gender Roles Are Predetermined by the Environment Essay Example

roles are based on how people have been treated in the past and the actions in history it has taken toward gender equality.Katha Pollitt expresses her view in her article “Why boys don’t play with dolls”.

“Instead of looking at kids to prove that differences in behaviour by sex are innate, we can look at the ways we raise kids as an index to how unfinished the feminist revolution really is, and how tentatively it is embraced even by adults who fully expect their daughters to enter previously male-dominated professions and their sons to change diapers”(Katha Pollitt, “Why Don’t Boys Play With Dolls”).Pollitt expresses the notion that the “Barbie doll” represents how society characterized the ideal woman, this social gender stereotype has an extreme influence on the way parents raise their kids. This is due to the fact that gender roles are highly defined by parents and teachers as well as societal influences when children are growing up. Boys were taught to do “boy” things and girl were taught to do “girl” activities, like for instance, playing trucks and do sports for boys and playing dolls, or dressing up for girls.The activities that are encouraged by adults demonstrate the influence of gender roles on today’s society. Pollitt also suggests that parents may accept the theory that boys and girls are born with different wants and feelings just to ease their own troubles with parenthood.

Pollitt believes that men are "naturally" different than women and that this alleviates pressure from the mothers and fathers for having to work against the society's accepted stereotypes.She gives examples like the rise in women doctors and male nurses as a

tendency that suggests that female and male accepted roles are merging. All that is needed is the support given by parents to encourage their children's efforts to break society's gender about restricted roles. Another argument that gender roles are not biologically determined but influenced by the context in which one grows up, is that children are strongly affected by and related to their parents’ attitudes and roles within the family.For example, a girl will grow up thinking that playing sports is normal if her mother has taken part in physical activities.

At the same time, one could take the example of a father who is very implicated in the evolution of his son, as this will result in him growing up and keeping in mind the image of “daddy as care giver. ” He will integer the fact that this is a part of the masculine role and will probably act in the same way in his future family life. This relation between parents’ attitudes and the future behaviour of their children leads also to negative role models.For example, in a family context of abusive parents’ relationship, children are predetermined to repeat the same model as their parents.

Male children will grow up with an abusive attitude toward their wife and daughters will think that it is normal to be victims of domestic violence in a couple context. (http://www. faqs. org/health/topics/8/Gender-roles. html) The traditional belief that the masculine gender is superior to women dominates modern culture and has repercussions on the family norms and values.In “A Doll’s House,” Lorrie Moore relates behaviours regarding genders and how genders are expected from the social context.

“A Doll’s

House” was a play which forced its audience to question the gender roles constructed by society. Torvald is a typical husband of the story time period. He tries to control his wife and expects her to submit to him. He manipulates her through many different ways.

He calls her inferior names as “little lark”( Norton ,1516) and “squirrel”(Norton,1519) and speaks to her in a condescending tone, as if she were a child. Nora is also financially dependent on her husband.In this historical context, women like Nora are expected to fulfil the role of the woman who stays at home and who has a submissive role by standing by her husband. Moreover, in this kind of situation men are the dominant figures in any male-female relationship in accordance to the social position.

So in this time period, relationships between genders are largely influenced by the social norms and stereotypes and also related to the mal gender position in the society. Contrary, in “How” written by Lorrie Moore, the role of women in the relationship is illustrated.The female character is a modern women from the twenty-first century who likes to be independent, meet new people, travel, and to have new experiences rather than to get married to her partner and have kids. “Back at home, days later, feel cranky and tired. Sit on the couch and tell him he is stupid.

That you bet he doesn’t know who Coriolanus is. That since you moved in you’ve noticed he rarely reads” (Norton, 133). In the beginning of the story the female character really likes her partner and she only sees the positive sides of his character but by

the time she moved in with him, she noticed that she rarely reads.That is how she noticed his negative sides such as the fact that he rarely reads, that he does not know how to communicate and that he is impolite. Through this, it is affirmed that women’s attitudes and roles are strongly affected by the societal environment.

The really interesting aspect will be to see in what extension the different gender role influence work behaviour as we know individuals impact group behaviour and groups, impact organisations. Therefore, individual behaviour nd in this precise case, gender role can very well shape work behaviour. Works cited Book: Henrik Ibsen, “A Doll House” The Norton introduction to literature, shorter ninth edition Lorrie Moore, “How” The Norton introduction to literature, shorter ninth edition Web: Katha Pollitt, “Why Boys Don’t Play With Dolls” The Seagull Reader, New York W. W.

Norton and Company, 2002 “Gender roles, Information about Gender roles” (http://www. faqs. org/health/topics/8/Gender-roles. html)