Gender is defined as the socially constructed roles and behaviors that a society typically associates with males and females. An example of gender is referring to someone who wears a dress as a female. According to the World Health Organization, gender refers to the socially defined roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women.
Gender is a socially constructed definition of women and men. It is not the same as sex (biological characteristics of women and men) and it is not the same as women. Gender is determined by the conception of tasks, functions and roles attributed to women and men in society and in public and private life.
Gender roles are social roles encompassing a range of behaviors and attitudes that are generally considered acceptable, appropriate, or desirable for people based on their actual or perceived sex or sexuality. Gender roles are usually centered on conceptions of femininity and masculinity, although there are exceptions and variations depending on the society’s norms. The specifics regarding these gendered expectations may vary substantially among cultures, while other characteristics may be common throughout a range of cultures.
Gender roles determine how males and females should think, speak, dress and interact within the context of the society. They are adopted during childhood and normally continue into adulthood. At home, people have certain presumptions about decision making, child-rearing practices, financial responsibilities, and so forth. At work, the presumptions are about power, labour, position and organizational structures.
Gender roles influence men and women in almost every aspect of life. The differences between the sexes both real and imagined, are used as a means to justify their existence. Gender inequality arises from these perceived differences. Traditionally, society has always raised boys to be providers, stoic, uncompromising and demanding. Whereas girls are raised to be submissive, passive and to cater to a man’s needs.
Gender roles have changed tremendously in the last thirty or forty years. What used to be very clear cut; a man’s role, a woman’s role, is now nearly unrestricted. There is such a wide variation in modern gender roles that it is no longer accurate to define them narrowly and traditionally. Over the decades, gender roles for men and woman have changed dramatically. No longer are men expected to do the hunting and women expected to do the gathering, as stereotypes were once socially and culturally defined.
The traditional role of a woman was as a wife and mother. She was to be nurturing, compassionate, caring, and supportive of her husband. Many women still choose this role for themselves because it is a good fit for them, but many more women choose very different roles for themselves. The most difficult transitions have been into traditionally male domains of the business and professional world.
The women who first ventured in to traditionally male territory struggled to be taken seriously. They often felt they had to take on male-like body language and attitudes just to be seen as capable by their male peers. For instance, they wore severe business suits, groomed their appearance to avoid overt femininity, and adopted stronger body language. Direct eye contact, dominant body position, assertive behavior, and the like, are all examples of how female body language changed with their changing gender role.
In recent years, however, the role of women has again shifted and with that shift come more changes in body language. Women have generally established themselves in the business and professional world and are now asserting themselves as individuals rather than taking on traditionally masculine body language. For instance, they still dress appropriately for their business environment but styles are much more feminine than ever before. Many women have also softened their body language to be less dominant, without giving up any perception of authority or status.
What’s more, women generally don’t find themselves having to choose just one role for themselves. A woman can be wife, mother, entrepreneur, professional, career-minded, and any number of other things all at the same time. This means that a woman’s body language can change and adapt as well, based on her own personality and comfort zone.
The traditional role of a man was as a husband, father, and family breadwinner. He was to be strong, stoic, responsible, and in charge. Many men still choose this role for themselves, but many also choose very different roles to fulfil.
The men who first moved toward traditionally female territory faced many challenges, including judgments about their masculinity, their strength, and their general character as men. Any man who wanted to be more involved in his children’s upbringing, for example, was the subject of strange looks and outright stares if he took on more care giving responsibilities. Even the move into traditionally female jobs, such as nursing or teaching, created challenges.
In recent years, though, the role of men has shifted once again. Just as women have more freedom to choose from a wide variety of roles, so, too, do men have more of this same freedom? Men may choose to stay home on paternity leave with a newborn or adopted child, or even be a full time stay at home dad. In general, men have dramatically increased their involvement in child rearing, a fact that is readily seen when you look at all of the baby changing stations now installed in men’s restrooms.
The factors that have caused the changing role of men and women in modern times can be divided into two groups; economic factors and social factors. What is interesting is the causal link between these two groups. Some of the factors that contribute to the failure to maintain traditional gender roles of men and women today include:
The disruptions of the Second World War: The Second World War was both a social and economic disaster. During the war, work for women had become compulsory and by 1943, millions of women were in paid employment. Different structures of work had become more common; bi-modal work (allowing women to take a break to have children) and part-time work both increased greatly and were particularly accommodating for women.
Experience of women: Not only were more women in work after the war, but they had demonstrated that they were fully capable of working full or part-time jobs, jobs that had been typically occupied by men. Economically the war had created a huge labor shortage. As the economy began to rebuild, changes to the structure of the labor force were necessary to fill the jobs previously filled by those killed in the war.
Women’s labor movements: Another social factor was the increase in militancy of women’s movement in employment. The women’s movement had an effect on the change in the role of women in the economy, it gave women’s activism greater vigour and made it difficult for them to go back to the traditional gender roles prescribed for women.
Throughout the 1960’s many women’s groups argued for equal opportunities, equal pay, equal taxation and improved treatment of single mothers. They encouraged militant action and trade union membership. They helped to raise a wide range of issues and a widespread awareness of gender inequalities. There were positive results in the public sector which can be attributed to the women’s movement. In contrast, the private sector, where women were less vocal and less organized, saw fewer changes in the inequality gap.
Population control: Two other social factors are demographic changes and the increase in the availability of birth control. As the world continues to experience a fall in the birth rate, leading to smaller family sizes, this has further exacerbated the labor shortage problem. The increase in birth control means that women can now choose to have fewer children. This provides them with more spare and time, and gives them a greater opportunity to start working if they choose to do so.
Economic advancement: The advances in the global economy that have occurred in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries has closely linked the major social factor, female activism, with economics. The opportunity for women to take a more assertive stance is made possible through the increase in female employment in the first place. For example, in 1968, female sewing-machinists at Ford’s Dagenham plant went on strike for a re-grading of their jobs, and for equal pay. In the following months women workers elsewhere initiated equal pay strikes while trade unionists tried to encourage more women to demand equal pay. Because women are increasingly entering the workforce they now have the opportunity to organize themselves and join or form trade unions. Only when people are placed in large groups are they given the opportunity to form pressure groups.
Labor shortage: The single most significant economic factor was the shortage of labor following the Second World War, which forced governments into a change of attitude. When two million women left work at the end of the war it was the government who led a campaign to get them to return. This was a major turn for governments which had for so long emphasized the domestic role of women. Under pressure from women protestors, the US government introduced the Equal Pay Act in 1970 and the Sex Discrimination Act in 1975.
This new legislation helped change the role of women in society as it made working a more attractive option (previously the cost of childcare was too expensive and was not covered by the poor wages on offer to women). This resulted in a huge increase in the amount of part-time work. The increase in married women’s employment was almost entirely accounted for by the growth of part-time work. The Equal Pay Act did not produce equal pay but it meant that women received better pay which resulted in many returning or starting some form of work.
The shortage of labor also posed a major problem for employers who were not as quick to change their attitudes as the government but in the end were resigned to accepting the ‘new way’ of things. In fact ‘some employers were very happy with part-time female workers as they tended to be more productive than full-timers, more reliable in terms of attendance and cost less in terms of bonuses and benefits such as holiday pay’. The economic benefits of employing women soon became evident to employers.
A period of prosperity in the 1950s/60s further emphasized the need of extra labour in the economy. Demand for domestic goods and consumer durables increased dramatically during this period and magazines and advertising continued to generate this demand. As more women started working, demand for goods increased creating a ‘demand culture’, leading to more women wanting to work. So economic desires on behalf of women have resulted in social and cultural change and further changed the roles of women within society. This new demand culture has seen the development of the metropolitan woman, a more powerful, independent and more ambitious woman.
Legislative changes: In terms of legislation then, women in the workplace are fully equal with men, though in practice they are not. The changes in the law to provide for equality between men and women have made it difficult to maintain the traditional gender roles that were outright discriminative towards women. Today, women have the right to claim everything that men can claim, and it would be unlawful to exclude them on grounds of their gender.
In summary, the majority of factors that have led to the changing gender roles have been based upon an economic necessity. There have been social factors that have assisted the change, in particular collective bargaining, but even these are closely connected with economics. Today, it is nearly impossible to ignore the role played by women in family economics, and so it is no longer viable to maintain the traditional gender roles of the past.
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