The Social Construction of Gender Roles
The meanings, consequences, and conceptions that are attached to things and events—including how people interact with them—are described using social constructs. Gender roles are created by societal and cultural standards and are outlined as the acceptable behaviors for a member of a particular sex. Some sociologists contend that the differences in behavior between men and women are solely social conventions, while others believe that behavior is influenced to variable degrees by universal hereditary causes, with societal norms having a significant impact on gendered acts (Henneberg 84). A knowledge theory called social constructionism focuses on how meaning is formed for a particular topic. Gender is described as an emergent feature of social situations which differentiate between the biological sex and the masculine and feminine socialized concepts.
Evidence of Social Construction of Gender Roles
There are various evidences used by sociologists to demonstrate the social construction of gender roles. Gender represents efforts by the society to construct masculine or feminine identities and consequent the roles for a child based on corporal appearance during the socialization process. Social class is also another entity which is socially constructed since class fluctuates from one society to another. It may also be as a result of human choices rather than the unassailable laws of nature. Sociologists believe that knowledge extent is usually allied with the reality since it estimates the objective thus anything less symbolize a social construct(Hottinger 29). Some scholars claim that social constructions are based on social conventions and surrounding facts that are ontologically reliant on the society's social structures and principles.
Technology as a Social Construct
The radical constructionist claim that technology is a social contrast since the domain is usually affected by the social process. The knowledge construction process regulates itself due to the self-structured cognitive procedure of the brain(Grusky and Weisshaar 53). For instance, games are considered socially constructed entities which exist due to a certain caucus of rules thus the meaning accorded to games is socially constructed. Social constructionists attempt to sort out their beliefs and ideas using standards of their own assurances and culture through opposing the scientific arguments that the world discoveries exist independently out of consciousness.
Gender Expectations and Societal Influence
Gender expectations manipulate how boys and girls are handled as early as their moment of birth where boys are treated roughly and expected to survive independently while girls are cuddled and handled in a sweet manner. As children grow they tend to influence the identities of their peers and the younger children due to the gender stereotyping. Across diverse cultures, gender roles vary considerably with the western industrialized communities’ viewing masculinity and femininity as dichotomous terms through perceiving men and women as different entities(Hottinger 127). However different cultures confront this conjecture through their views and roles assigned to either males or females in the society. In some cases, contextual construction of gender roles offers a license to investigate substantive topics where gender roles might differ by showing why and how particular issues occur including the location. People can also opt to be gender queer by not identifying themselves with a specific gender. Therefore, it is evident that sexuality and gender are social entities which arise from relationships with people and depend on recognition and interaction. Gender experiences evolve throughout someone’s lifetime due to intergenerational changes, technological and legal advances which manipulate the social values(Chou 231).Gender roles are therefore formulated by the society and they influence the tasks to be undertaken by either male or female members of the society.
Work Cited
Chou, Rosalind S. Asian American Sexual Politics: The Construction of Race, Gender, and Sexuality. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Print.
Grusky, David B, and Katherine R Weisshaar. Social Stratification: Class, Race, and Gender in Sociological Perspective. Boulder,: Westview Press, 2014. Print.
Henneberg, Susan. Gender Politics. New York, NY: Greenhaven Publishing LLC, 2017. Print.
Hottinger, Sara N. Inventing the Mathematician: Gender, Race, and Our Cultural Understanding of Mathematics. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2016. Print.
