Chosen Topic Research #2- Gender Roles

A gender role is defined as a set of perceived behavioural norms associated particularly with males or females, in a given social group or system. It can be a form of division of labour by gender. It is a focus of analysis in the social sciences and humanities.

Gender roles vary by culture, and older, traditional gender roles in America have risen up recently. A detailed description of gender roles and their history is on this website: http://www.faqs.org/health/topics/8/Gender-roles.html

Women particularily have seemed to run into gender roles placing them under men in the past. Information and statistics on women and gender roles can be found here: http://www.trinity.edu/~Mkearl/gender.html

With television being a widely used for today's media, gender roles are still often portrayed as traditional roles with the man being dominant and the woman being the emotional homemaker. More information can be found on this website: http://library.thinkquest.org/17067/you/nfgender.html

Although I feel gender roles shouldn't be forced on everyone, I don't feel that all of them are necessarily wrong. If one choses to live out the role, as long as it's not harming anyone, I don't see anything wrong; they can emphasize various cultures around the world. Gender roles do have an influence on inequality, but if the roles vary enough among both men and women, it might not give the essence of inequality as much.

I do wish that gender roles didn't have an influence on sexuality, though, as I don't really see why a man can't chose the traditional feminine role without being accused of being homosexual. Women strangely don't seem to run into this problem as much and are typically just labeled as "tomboys" if they take the traditional masculine role. This brings out the large amount of inequality seen in gender roles.