Gender roles in Western societies
This is an excerpt from the paper...
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. Anthropologists find certain common patterns in the division of labor which help shape gender roles in different social settings. Over time, these roles become set and are accepted as if they were part of the natural order rather than the result of specific economic and social forces. Those who support the gender role changes that have been taking place and those who do not both may look to ethnographic studies of other social groups for support of the idea that traditional gender roles are only a reflection of a lower order of economic society or are a natural and necessary element in the human condition. Yet, such studies actually show that there is a wide variety of gender role patterns and of gender role socialization in the societies of the world, making the traditional social structure seem less "natural" and necessary and also influenced by more than economic rela
. . .
es and females were raised to have violent social personalities and to place no value on sensuality. This began at birth--breastfeeding of infants was performed in a utilitarian way, with no hint of pleasure, and nursing was only to give out food and never to comfort the child from fright or pain. The third group in the region, the Tschambuli, made a distinction for personality differences between men and women. These expectations differed from role expectations such as would be found in North America, but they also differed from the Arapesh and Mundugumor. This tribe preferred marriages in which a man had many wives, and ancestry was traced through the men of the family exclusively. Men owned property and officially "owned" their wives, but at the same time women in practice held the main power in society, made most of the economic decisions, and took the initiative in social life. For instance, the women were socialized to be sexually aggressive, while the men were not (Crapo, 1993, 197).
The description of the Mundugumor--except for the headhunting and cannibalism--is reminiscent of descriptions of the Greek city-state of Sparta in the sixth century B.C., and here is another example of two regions close together geograph
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Tallensi Africa, Arapesh Mundugumor, , Mundugumor Tschambuli, Gender Crapo, Athena Sealey, Spartans Mundugumor, Guinea Mead, Leacock EB, gender roles, California Slocum, social structure, gender role, traditional social structure, male female, traditional social, sex roles, western civilization, western societies, socialization process, male bias, gender roles socialization, male female roles, gender roles social, study gender roles,
Approximate Word count = 2090
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
More Essays on Gender roles in Western societies
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
