Cultural Bias and Sexism

Sexism has not been eliminated from American life any more than racism has. Sexism exists because we teach our children sex-role stereotyping, and children learn from their parents the conception of "feminine" and "masculine." Much about these conceptions is not biological at all but cultural. The way we tend to think about men and women and their gender roles in society constitute the prevailing paradigm that influences our thinking. Riane Eisler points out that the prevailing paradigm makes it difficult for us to analyze properly the roles of men and women in prehistory--we have a cultural bias that we bring to the effort and that colors our decision-making processes. Sexism is the result of that bias, a bias imposed by our processes of acculturation.

Gender roles in Western societies have been changing rapidly in recent years, with the changes created both by evolutionary changes in society, including economic shifts which have altered the way people work and indeed which people work as more and more women enter the workforce, and by pressure brought to make changes because of the perception that the traditional social structure was inequitable. Gender relations are part of the socialization process, the initiation given the young by society, teaching them certain values and creating in them certain behavior patterns acceptable to their social roles. These roles have been in a state of flux in American society in recent years, and men and women today can be seen a

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in their place by limiting their options. This was accomplished on one level by preventing women from gaining the sort of education offered to men, and while this has changed to a great extent, there are still inequalities in the opportunities offered to men as opposed to women. Susan Brownmiller writes: The sad history of prohibitions on women's learning is too well known to be recorded here. . . In much of the world women are barred from advanced knowledge and technical training." Yet opening the world of business with new opportunities for women does not dissipate much of this frustration because both men and women continue to be ruled by their early training, by the acculturation process which decides for them what sort of existence they will have, and which leaves them feeling guilty at times when their reality and the image they have been taught from childhood do not mesh. It would be a mistake to see changing gender roles in society as threatening only to the males who dominate that society. Such changes also threaten many women who have accepted a more traditional role and who see any change as a threat. This response is not new. When women first agitated for the vote at the beginning of this century, they w

Category: Psychology - C