Learning Gender Roles & Attitudes

At the same time, as we can all see in our own family situations, there are certain gender roles and attitudes that do not change that much. Men and women are differentiated biologically by sexual function and by the general role of women as nurturers of children, something that no amount of male parenting shift will ever change fully simply because it cannot be changed. Men and women are more likely to work together in equal situations, but men and women are still differentiated by dress, attitudes, and some behaviors.

Obviously, what we identify as 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 bec

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is associated with the nature versus nurture debate, which also emerges in a number of other sociological issues. This issue raises the question of which dominates, nature or nurture, meaning inherent traits or the power of training and socialization in a cultural setting. Most discussions of gender hold that it is the latter that is most important in determining social attitudes and behavior. The nature-nurture debate is heard in the question of how gender roles are developed--is it because of the nature of the sexes, or is it the nurturing process of socialization that creates one accepted role for boys and another for girls in a given society? Stephen Jay Gould considers the issue in terms of biological potentiality (which could be developed, or nurtured, through social interaction) and biological determinism (where physical attributes are decided and set by biology). Gould considers specifically the issue of sexual differentiation in terms of how men and women use their brains differently. Both are people, of course, and are such in part because they have brains of a certain size to differentiate them from the smaller brains of other primates. Gould finds that the issue is explosive but that there is no firm evidenc
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Approximate Word count = 2006
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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