Culture and gender.

Apart from mono-sexual religious groups or cults, men and women live and work together in all cultures of the world. While physiological sexual differences between males and females are universal gender distinctions are the psychological outcomes of culturally determined sexual roles. The common activities of the two genders as related to their biological differences and the behavior related to reproduction and physiology are called sex roles. The division of labor between the sexes must have emerged out of the need for survival that produced reproductive success when women attended to the needs of children and men worked as providers of shelter and food. Recently men in the United States and Europe are taking on more child caring roles, however only women can breast feed their babies. On the other hand gender roles are rapidly evolving and perhaps some will think changing to the point of absurdity. For example ABC News in December 13^th, 2011 reported that 5 million men in the U.S. are now "stay at home Dads" who care for children and other house duties while the wives go to work (Elliot & Francis, 2011).

The rapid social changes in some parts of the world have profoundly affected gender roles in contemporary societies. Men and women have both had to adapt to gender changes as society has created new role expectations and therefore also stereotypes. Many of these changes have justly benefitted females whose lives have historically been blighted by discrimination. In their eagerness to convince society of the reality and permanence of these changes new stereotypes of the “aggressive female” have emerged that have become mildly laughable. In some television programs in the U.S. we often see physically small women pushing around much larger males showing a masculine toughness that is not emerging clearly from the obvious physical and corresponding psychological differences. In any event when speaking of gender differences we are not speaking of biological sex, but rather of the culturally based behaviors and feelings associated with the social perceptions of gender. While we have much in common as human beings males and females also differ. However, these differences are largely culturally based constructions that have evolved over the course of the history.

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 763