What does society construct for gender?
Take a moment to think about where you have heard the various phrases on the handout "Socialization of Gender Roles (Click on the link and follow the directions for PART I).
Here is the Google form for this lesson.
1. Which of the messages have you heard before?
Mark all the messages that you have heard - even if the message was not directed at you.
Mark all the messages that you have heard - even if the message was not directed at you.
2. What agents of socialization have you heard say those phrases from the link above?
List all the categories of people where you have heard these. Were they: parents, siblings, friends, peers, teachers, coaches, actors/actresses, tik-tok stars, somewhere else?
3. List the messages that the phrases convey for males. For example, for "Boys will be boys," you might write, "There's only one way to be a boy," You can't change boys," or, "It's ok for boys to be rough."
4. List the messages that the phrases convey for females.
This activity should reveal that even though people actually exist on a continuum (lesson 1), our culture constantly promotes a binary. We all hear these binary messages from all of the agents of socialization. The messages start even before you are born. So the idea of a binary is very strong and we are pushed to the ends of the binary from the moment we are born.
The boxes of the binary
Before going further, let me clarify about the biology of males and females. On average, categorically, men and women are indeed different. On average, males are taller, have more muscle mass and more testosterone and less estrogen than females. However, none of these are at the exclusivity of each other. Males and females both have testosterone and estrogen, they both have muscle mass. Females can be tall and have a lot of muscle mass. Males can be short and have little muscle mass. People are complex and we all exist along a continuum.
However, our society emphasizes the polar ends of the continuum. Males are pushed to be only masculine and females are pushed to be feminine. Society gives the appearance that there is only one way to be masculine or feminine. Below are some of the traditional traits that dominant US culture has pushed for each gender. Note that these are traditional in the sense that society has generally promoted them, even if they do not apply to you. To be clear, I am not saying that men and women should be these ways, I am saying that society has traditionally socialized men and women to be these ways.
5. Which of the traditional gender traits (above) resemble your answers to numbers 3 and 4 previously?
After you have tried your own search for words, or if the website was not working, click here to see my analysis of the RateMyProfessor data.
7. See how many words you can find that are completely gendered. Make a list.
Go to professor Schmidt's website, Gendered Language in Teacher Reviews. See how many words you can find that are genderized. What are the words? List them in number 7.
8. Any questions about how society constructs a gender binary?
List all the categories of people where you have heard these. Were they: parents, siblings, friends, peers, teachers, coaches, actors/actresses, tik-tok stars, somewhere else?
3. List the messages that the phrases convey for males. For example, for "Boys will be boys," you might write, "There's only one way to be a boy," You can't change boys," or, "It's ok for boys to be rough."
4. List the messages that the phrases convey for females.
This activity should reveal that even though people actually exist on a continuum (lesson 1), our culture constantly promotes a binary. We all hear these binary messages from all of the agents of socialization. The messages start even before you are born. So the idea of a binary is very strong and we are pushed to the ends of the binary from the moment we are born.
The boxes of the binary
Before going further, let me clarify about the biology of males and females. On average, categorically, men and women are indeed different. On average, males are taller, have more muscle mass and more testosterone and less estrogen than females. However, none of these are at the exclusivity of each other. Males and females both have testosterone and estrogen, they both have muscle mass. Females can be tall and have a lot of muscle mass. Males can be short and have little muscle mass. People are complex and we all exist along a continuum.
However, our society emphasizes the polar ends of the continuum. Males are pushed to be only masculine and females are pushed to be feminine. Society gives the appearance that there is only one way to be masculine or feminine. Below are some of the traditional traits that dominant US culture has pushed for each gender. Note that these are traditional in the sense that society has generally promoted them, even if they do not apply to you. To be clear, I am not saying that men and women should be these ways, I am saying that society has traditionally socialized men and women to be these ways.
5. Which of the traditional gender traits (above) resemble your answers to numbers 3 and 4 previously?
PEW Research Center found similar gendered language in a 2017 study about gender expectations for men and women. Click through the follow up analysis (2018), and look for ways that gender is constructed.
How Americans describe what society values (and doesn’t) in each gender? What traits does society value most in men and in women? What traits does society say men and women should not have?
You can click on the link above to explore their findings. Here is a sample of their findings. Gold is for women and green is for men.
Examples of data/evidence for the binary.
Please look at each of the links below. Look for how the marketplace creates the binary between male and female - especially in ways that are unnecessary. When you are finished looking at each, answer question six.
Please look at each of the links below. Look for how the marketplace creates the binary between male and female - especially in ways that are unnecessary. When you are finished looking at each, answer question six.
- Gendered Products; See this post about products that are pointlessly gendered thus reifying the idea of traditional gender traits.
- Gendered Halloween costumes.
6. After reviewing the two links above (aren't those funny?), what product was the most pointlessly gendered? What costume was the most ridiculously gendered?
Finally, one last bit of evidence that society pushes us to the binary is in the gendered language of teacher reviews. This example shows how socialization shapes how American college students perceive their professors. Sociology professor Ben Schmidt has gathered the metadata from ratemyprofessor.com at his site, Gendered Language in Teacher Reviews. The interactive chart lets you explore the words used to describe male and female teachers in about 14 million reviews from RateMyProfessor.com. You can enter any word (or two-word phrase) into the box below to see how it is split across gender and discipline: the x-axis gives how many times your term is used per million words of text (normalized against gender and field). You can also limit to just negative or positive reviews (based on the numeric ratings on the site). For some more background, see here. Not all words have gender splits, but a surprising number do. Even things like pronouns are used quite differently by gender. For example, the word "funny" shows up in the chart below. Notice that orange is female and blue is male. For every single subject (in the column on the left) funny is mentioned more in reviews of male teachers. Every single subject!
After you have tried your own search for words, or if the website was not working, click here to see my analysis of the RateMyProfessor data.
7. See how many words you can find that are completely gendered. Make a list.
Go to professor Schmidt's website, Gendered Language in Teacher Reviews. See how many words you can find that are genderized. What are the words? List them in number 7.
8. Any questions about how society constructs a gender binary?
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