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 relations.
Crapo (1993) defines gender as a social identity consisting of the role a person is to play because of his or her sex. There is a diversity in male and female roles, making it impossible to define gender in terms of narrow male and female roles. Gender, says Crapo, is culturally defined, with significant differences from culture to culture. These differences are studied by anthropologists to ascertain the range of behaviors that have been developed to...