How People Adaptation to Gender Roles

Introduction

In this project I will talk about the observations I made and how people seem to adapt to gender roles, how they get them, and what effect they seem to have on society. I hope to cover all these things.

My Observations

While I was observing Lego League I noticed that the girls and the boys seemed to be pretty different, the girls seemed to play with more of the Lego dolls and the pink things, also while wearing more pink and purple clothes, the way they were playing was very Let's brush this one's hair and things among that type, while the boys on the other hand seemed to like the blues, black, and reds. With the boys I saw a lot of helicopters and some planes, but they did seem to be pretty split on gender, but not very aware of it, I don't think I even heard the word boy or girl. Also while they did seem pretty split up they didn't really seem to think anything of it, they didn't tease each other. Behaviorally the girls seemed pretty chilled out and not very girly, some of the boys seemed to be trying to seem cool, but the others also seemed pretty chilled out in gender roles.

What Are Gender Roles?

Gender roles are ideas that people have in their mind that are things like girl colors or boy colors or women staying at home and men going out to get money. Some people have different gender roles in their family or their household, for example, if the woman is always taking care of the child all the time, that would be a gender role that someone might have in their head, but there are traditional gender roles, like girls wearing pink and staying home and boys wearing black and suits.

Gender Roles In Children

Studies have found that in children, by around age two children have recognized physical differences between males and females, by around age 3 they are able to easily label themselves as boy or girl, and by age 4 children have usually figured out their gender identity (Rafferty). However this can vary from society, if a society is very liberal or conservative could have effects, how work is split up in the household, or any small thing that mom or dad does can have an effect on a child and how they believe gender might be split up intentionally, for example, if the mother is always doing dishes, the child will subconsciously think that that's something that is very regular and if they aren't taught something else or exposed to other things they will carry that through on in life and if they get married they might institute that and then their kid might have the same impression but maybe flipped. When people are in a household with stricter gender roles and they tend to be pushed on the child, people call these gender straightjackets, because the child is sort of stuck in a house with gender roles until of course they are 18 and are able to make decisions for themselves how they'd like to interpret gender roles into their adult life (Luscombe).

Global Comparisons

Gender roles come from many different places depending on which region of the world you live in, Iceland, you have a very small chance of believing that men and women are entitled to different jobs (3.6%), however if you live in Egypt, that thought it quite common (94.9%), however different countries also have different reasons for believing this and many, many factors, including current leaders and their political views or views on the gender situation in particular, they might make or enforce previous laws that go against women in the workplace or what jobs women can choose to have, if any, or if it's a previous leader, they might have put in place laws that people agreed with but just never really thought about if it was discriminatory or, not so they just sort of kept that law (Weziak-Bialowolska). There are other factors though, all of country history can play into it, global politics, many, many things that you wouldn't think had things to do with it, it's kinda like if you were never born the world would be so much different, you might not think so, but there would be. In terms of which countries have more or less harsh gender roles in society, the U.S. is pretty good, and is about the 16th best country for full gender equality, while most of Scandinavia, France, Ireland Germany all rank higher than that, with Denmark being the top country in gender equality. Some worse countries for gender rights and equality would be India, Algeria, Jordan, South Korea, and Egypt, and perhaps the worst, Saudi Arabia, these countries are all ranked among the worst of gender equality in countries, these studies are based off laws about what jobs a woman can have and punishment sentences for sexual assault or misconduct.

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