Negative Consequences Of Gender Role Stereotyping Sociology Essay

In today’s community so many stereotypes happen daily. People judge others based on the visual representation they see and at times even make allegations based on these evaluations. It’s immoral and shouldn’t be supported. This assertion is true no concern how some in community wants to see it as wrong. It happens and I believe that people should not be judged based on their characteristics. Some people might believe we live in a community where stereotyping is eliminated to a minimum, as far as addressing them goes. Nevertheless, gender stereotypes, racism stereotypes, and sometimes prejudice stereotypes towards people have been acknowledged, they have attempted to be dealt with and attempted to be controlled but it’s unavoidable. Sure some might feel we live in a community where this doesn’t occur, but the fact of the matter is its not, and it wants to be understood. Some feel you can accept people despite of race or sex. Accepting an individual who just selects to dress or look different shouldn’t be that difficult. Nevertheless, some have found, this is not the situation. Stereotypical bias towards anybody, particularly the ones who select to look differently, is a main problem. It is a main issue that goes most of the time un-addressed and it’s sad.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a research in order to identify the negative consequences of gender stereotypes.

Negative Consequences of Gender Role Stereotyping

In our existing society, males and females execute specifically different roles which are found on nothing more than their natural gender. Although these roles do not posses true for every person, the mainstream of people lives out their lives in accordance with these very pervasive roles. Community tends to allocate classes of social roles to “man” individuals and classes of social roles to “woman” individuals (as community perceives their genders). These sex roles boundaries what both men and women can and cannot do. Gender roles enslave persons and force them to be what others want them to be. They are perpetuated and enforced by the mass media and community usually several ways, some which are evident and others which are more subtle. In several communities, there is a strong trend to overstate these sex roles, and it appears to regularly jump from a valid surveillance to a false conclusion.

Gender roles can be described as a set of behaviors and attributes that are standard for every gender in a community. Gender role stereotypes are broadly-held beliefs about those behaviors and attributes (Singleton, 1987). The stereotypes to a great extent become the roles. Community forces people into some roles simply by anticipating that those roles are appropriate and enforcing them. Generally, the roles common in modern Western community recommend that males should be bossy, aggressive, and better at the math’s and sciences, should become victorious in their professions, and should manage and suppress their emotions. Females, on the contrary, should be obedient, nurturing, gentle, superior at languages and the humanities, emotional, and eager of nothing more than a content family and a husband to provide for her, while she remains at home and tends the house.

These gender-typed roles are effected and reinforced by the mass media and community usually in several ways, some evident and others more subtle. Nevertheless, there is a formerly broadly-held standpoint, somewhat less popular presently, that sex roles are the consequence of innate biological distinction between the genders; that men are biologically better-suited to hold positions of authority, for instance, and that females are more suited to look after the home and kids.

It has been presently and regularly suggested that the presently championed roles are limiting and damaging to all engaged, males and females alike, from the time that they are kids. This view holds that our gender roles are solely the product of the community in which we live, and that their inappropriateness with the truth of individual characters causes pain and stress for several individuals, as do other types of oppression and stereotyping. Most of the study in this area has been based on researches which indicate the disparity and subordinate position of females in Western community.

The natural view of sex roles states that the discriminated sex roles which survive in our community are the products of our evolution, and are inextricably connected with capabilities predominant in one gender or the other which are decided naturally. The roles prescribed for each gender are based on physical capabilities and properties of that gender, such as intelligence, brain lateralization, and varying hormone levels. This view was the accepted one all over the history, and has only recently been challenged.

The issues with this view are, first, that it supposes that existing Western gender roles are the “correct” ones, second, that it rejects that we can or should alter our existing roles, and third, that it implies that conventional gender roles are adaptive and helpful to physical and psychological health. Recent proof and study favors the conclusion that none of these three points is really true. If existing Western gender roles are in fact naturally programmed into all human beings, we would anticipate such roles to be universal, and this is obviously not the case. If nothing else, this view overlooks, or diagnoses as pathologic, individual distinctions.

Although certain consistency across several cultures is in fact discovered, even those who see these personalities as evolutionarily based have developed other, superior explanations for them than that they are natural and unchangeable. One such view states that societal distinctions in child-rearing practices are accountable for varying capabilities in every sex, but that these distinctions are due to the evolutionary sexual behavior of a polygene’s species, as they believe humans to be.

The supposition that gender roles are natural, and thus unchanging, can be refuted by the simple visible fact that gender roles, even within our community, have altered and are in the procedure of altering. Females, long deemed to be incapable to hold positions of authority or professions engaging intelligence, are at last beginning to be enabled to serve in such abilities (though the struggle for full identification is still far from over). Additionally, females are in the procedure of refuting the belief that they must have a family and kids to be done, when in fact several are happier without them.

As regards psychological health and the adaptively of gender roles, the simple fact is that, when a association between gender roles and physical and mental health is discovered, it generally points to the conclusion that the woman gender role in specific is extremely associated to lower self-respect, higher levels of neuroticism (noticeable in such traits as over-sensitivity to condemnation and denial to involve in assertive behavior), and reduced capability to cope in those persons who adhere sternly to their socially prescribed sex role. Researches have proved that females, as well as males who are considered to be extremely “feminine” on the Bem Sex Role Inventory, are much more probably in situations of job stress to use avoidance coping at the cost of other, more useful, techniques.

Additionally, females have been proven to be considerably less contented with their bodies, due to a sex role which states that they must be beautiful in order to attract a male, which should be of dominant significance in their lives. Even females of low body weight commonly diet, supposing themselves fat. This becomes an issue when it is proved that these thoughts of insufficiency about one’s own body are connected to eating diseases, low self-respect, despair, and lowered or insufficient use of contraceptives. Perhaps one of the causes for the raised stress clear among those trying to adhere to the gender role recommended for them, also the most compelling proof against the natural approach, is the fact that several of the commonly-held Western gender capability stereotypes on which gender roles are based are simply inexact.

Past and existing transforms in gender roles can furthermore be described by the fact that, since cultures alter, what roles are adaptive to each culture will also alter over time, and should do so. The socio-cultural view, affected to a large extent by feminism, additional states that the existing woman gender roles in our community are psychologically harmful to females, in that they encourage as desirable behaviors and beliefs which are unsuited with truth and are maladaptive to mental adjustment. The man sex roles are also harmful to males for the same causes.

Much of the study completed on the harmful effects of sex stereotyping has concentrated on the way in which these stereotypes serve to further subjugate females. Nevertheless, males are hurt as well. Males are described that they should never show their feelings, they are socialized to be aggressive, and they are taught to derogate anything woman. This manifests itself as a high level of competitiveness, a disability to be open and susceptible, and a lack of ability in interpersonal communications.

Inherent in this rejection of all things feminine is also a natural belief that maleness and femaleness are opposites. This dichotomy is damaging to males in specific, because it teaches them that if they try to gain some wanted feminine characteristics, they will in turn lose some of their maleness, which is perhaps the ultimate terror of the sex-stereotyped male. Moreover, both these dichotomized gender roles are detrimental to community as a whole because they promote violent behavior in males, against both each other and females, discourage individuals from following some activities in which they might excel provided the opportunity, and foster the communication space between the genders. For instance, several researches have establish that acceptance of rape myths such as “most sufferers are at least partially to blame,” are connected to gender role stereotyping and mistrust of the opposite sex on the part of both males and females.

It would look clear, provided all the study extant, that even if it is the case that gender roles are the consequence of our species’ evolution and the physiological predispositions of each sex, and were adaptive in the past, these roles have not changed to reflect the altering truths of our community. Thus, any adaptive benefits they may have presented in the past are no longer present, and the roles must alter in order to be adaptive for individuals these days. This view is certainly daunting; if sex roles are to alter, then so must several other institutions of our community. The truth that most if not all adults these days adhere to these roles to some extent does not make this any easier. To alter the outlook on females would need alters in how we perceive family relations, how we teach our kids, our criminal and civil laws, and religion, among other things.

Maybe the first step to making these alters is to change the methods in which males and females are presented in the mass media. Presently, such materials as T.V. perpetuate the conventional gender roles by presenting and emphasizing them, while discrediting those who go against the existing roles by either presenting them in an adverse light or, more regularly, by failing to present them at all. The belief that all females should be young and good-looking, and that their looks should be their main concern, is perpetuated by the facts that most females on TV are under 30 years old, and these females are shown continuously paying concentration to their looks, and by the fact that when females do make news, such things as their marital status, height, and hair color are regularly mentioned, even when these are unrelated to the problem at hand.

Conclusion

This is a very significant, if not essential, realization for community to come to. Provided that the existing gender role stereotyping has so several negative effects for all individuals in our community, and has yet to show any positive consequences, it stands to cause that when such an unbelievable force for oppression is eliminated from our lives, it can only advantage all engaged in the long run. Such study as has been completed in the past is required also in the future, but it must be accompanied by an active try to alter the things that are discovered, rather than simply acknowledging their harmful consequences in statistical breakdowns. It must also be made apparent that these roles are not general and unchallengeable and that there is hope for alter. Only when these truths are realized can our community begin to move toward a prospect of gender relationships that is adaptive for our time and for the upcoming.