The Effects of Gender Roles and Stereotypes in Society

The Effects of Gender Roles and Stereotypes in Society

Abstract

Gender roles refer to values, behaviors, and attitudes societies view and sanctify as appropriate for males and females. On the other hand, stereotypes are overgeneralized beliefs about a given group of people in society. The overgeneralized beliefs constitute expectations which people may have about individuals belonging to a particular social group. Gender roles and stereotypes have multiple effects on society. The origin of stereotypes is best explained by the social role theory. This study utilizes secondary sources to justify the role that gender roles and stereotypes play in society. The work will also investigate the origin of stereotypes based on the social role theory. Social theory will also be used to understand how stereotypes and gender roles are propagated in society and the effects of the same. The work will eventually conclude by giving a general overview of major ideas discussed in the paper.

Introduction

Gender roles refer to values, behaviors, and attitudes societies perceive and sanctify as appropriate for males and females (Godsil et al., 2016). Traditionally, gender roles for males and females are opposing and distinct. On the other hand, stereotypes are generalized view about characteristics or attributes that ought to be owned by members of a particular social group. People construct or inherit stereotypes based on other individuals’ gender identity, sex, ethnicity and race, age, nationality, social-economic class and language, amongst other extractions. Gender stereotypes constitute normative beliefs about men and women, masculinities and femininities, and these beliefs vary from one culture to the other and from time to time. This assignment investigates the effects of gender roles and stereotypes in society.

Stereotypes represent generalized expectations about the bearers of a specific social group. Despite the existence of general differences between these groups, not all persons will differ from one another. For example, men are typically known to be taller than women, but this is not always true as we are aware of women who are taller than men. Yet the stereotypical view that a particular trait defines membership of a given social group makes people overemphasize differences between social groups and, in turn, underestimate variations therein. This task intends to examine how the social role theory justifies the origin of stereotype and gender role; and the impact the duo have on our societies.

Social Role Theory

According to the social role theory, gender stereotypes originate from individuals’ indirect and direct observations of men and women in their social roles. The theory furthers states that role-constrained behavior officer necessary information since most behavior influence roles. As a result, individuals tend to refer to peoples’ social roles based on their behavior (Eagly & Wood, 2016). Social role theory also suggests that gender stereotypes are extracted from the gender division of labor, which defines a society. In American culture, where men are perceived to hold positions in higher offices and paid relatively higher than women, it has resulted in stereotypes that associate men with agencies. Besides, the gendered division of labor offers men and women distinct skills. When gender stereotypes are dominant in a group due to mixed-sex membership or cultural contexts, stereotypes orient behavior through expectations that members construct for one another’s conduct.

Social role theory explains that people’s beliefs concerning social groups in our societies are gotten from experiences with these members in their roles they play daily (Eagly & Wood, 2016). These are the roles that people know a particular group is good at over time. The behaviors shown during the exhibition of these social roles tend to be overrepresented by society members. For example, a view that women are good at unpaid functions such as caring for children in charity affairs, conceive women of having characteristics such as caring, social sensitivity and a sense of nurture and warmth to other people which makes them carry out such activities (Huppatz & Dagistanli, 2017). As a result, society members view that members of a particular social group occupy and carry out specific social roles more effectively and competently than the other as in when women carry out unpaid charity works more effectively than men. Such a stereotyped view is generalized as a common characteristic for women even when such may not hold through across the entire women population.

When people form stereotypes, people rely upon and use behaviors that are common to a particular social group since most behaviors are structured and found in daily roles undertaken by members of a specific social group. Since most behaviors are inscribed in social functions, social role theory suggests that the roles which people occupy in a social set up (for instance, paid and unpaid positions) are essential pillars for the formation of stereotypes. Despite other types of roles, such as friendship and family roles, have common occupants in most social groups, occupational roles, in many cases, do not represent groups equally. For example, in America, Hispanics are well known for lawn service roles, high school dropouts for food service roles, and senior citizens in-store clerks. Social role theory is essential in the definition of stereotypes not only of gender nature but also social class, age amongst other positions people occupy in social groups.

Despite the presence of many theories explaining the origin of gender and other forms of stereotypes, the social role theory gives a comprehensive explanation of psychological explanations underlying stereotypes. Social role theory focuses directly on observable characteristics of an assigned gender or social group members. Society members consider these behaviors based on social roles since social life is the structure of occupational roles, family, leisure, friendship, and other tasks that are linked with particular forms of behaviors. Different theories explaining stereotypes mostly rely on social structures such as interdependence and status as the core sources of stereotypes. Despite social structural information correlating with group stereotypes, structural information may not give fundamental observations from which the society builds these stereotypes. The daily activities conducted by members of a particular social group to perform their social roles offer crucial data that the community uses to construct group stereotypes.

How do Gender Roles and Stereotypes Impact Society?

Stereotyping; the use of simplified categorizations of characterizations to define people from other groups, helps in understanding and categorizing people based on their social roles. Stereotypes founded on the social group are applied during interactions with other societal members. Whereas stereotypes are easy to adopt, Koenig & Eagly (2014) noted they are hard to avoid, and stereotypes emerge in contexts where an individual feels threatened or is under stress or anxiety, especially during decision making. Stereotypes happen on such occasions because avoiding the adoption of stereotypes demands a mindset focusing on the immediate situation. Stereotypes also serve the cognitive role of justifying and rationalizing behaviors and feelings. Stereotypes can place an object in a better or worse place that an individual deserves based on the group that the person is associated with.

Stereotypes are automatically applied and, as a result, may lead to prejudice in behavior and judgment. Prejudice emerges based on the contemporary world of competition societies are constructed upon, which allows the advent of prejudice as a tool for a particular gender or social group to maintain an elevated position over other groups. Social dominance theory proposes that individuals are naturally biased to different extents as a result of structural factors such as control over social resources. As a result, people hold prejudiced feelings against members of a certain social group to uphold power differences. Consequently, the target group of prejudice is determined by how power is distributed in society, which may vary from time to time and place to place. However, in many cultures, power distribution between men and women is not supposed to change, which therefore indicates that power relations between women and men are stable and hard to alter. Therefore stereotypes interwoven to them are also hard to break.

Gender stereotypes trigger expectations of how a person should behave. Gender stereotypes have an impact on a person’s productivity and chances in life. Koenig & Eagly (2014) suggested the existence of an invisible barrier which women ought to dismantle to obtain a place in power positions. In many global societies, the differences in power distribution between men and women are noticeable, with men occupying a higher position.

The social role theory proposes two sets of belief which are commonly associated with gender, namely community, and agency (Ortiz, 2017). The theory claims that women are expected to exhibit communal traits such as being compassionate by being friendly, sympathetic, and kind while men are perceived as agents, for instance, for being aggressive, self-confident, dominant, and ambitious. Gender stereotypes accommodate prescriptive and descriptive stereotypes whereby prescriptive stereotypes exhibit how women ought to behave, for instance, being compassionate. In contrast, descriptive stereotypes indicate preconceptions of characteristics that a particular gender ought to have; for example, women being warm and hospitable. Additionally, gender stereotypes are connected with prejudice since they place men and women in specific positions based on gender. Since most men are placed in elevated ranks in power, women are considered to be marginalized groups.

Research has investigated the impact of stereotypes on decision-making. Löfstrand (2018) investigated the effect of masculine and feminine communication approaches under the prevailing circumstance of stereotypic threat. Studies concluded that women adopting a masculine communication approach were presented as less warm. Based on the provisions of social role theory, the manner under which men and women are distributed in social roes is critical to the mastery of how the two genders behave uniquely in various situations. In Western societies, for instance, it is an acknowledged norm that men are considered to be more responsible for general family income, with women being given more responsibility for taking care of the household. Due to such an observation, gender roles then affect behavior and how women and men are perceived, which consequently leas to distinctions on gender roles whereby men are attached to superior roles, for instance, leadership.

Conclusion

As presented above, stereotypes are simplifications and generalizations of information regarding other individuals that people use in daily endeavors. Stereotypes are structurally biased on gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity, which may form the basis of discrimination. The social role theory has played a crucial role in defining the origin of stereotypes and how they influence the continuity of social structures. Gender roles refer to the range of behavioral traits considered appropriate, acceptable, and desirable for people in accordance to their sexuality. As discussed above, gender roles and stereotypes have contributed to the placement of men and women genders in different positions in our societies. Whereas some of these impacts are not too harmful, some have brought forth issues of discrimination, with others affecting women productivity in decision-making processes. Negative stereotypes have also obstructed from the dinner table of leadership and higher office roles while given lower domestic tasks and chores

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References

Eagly, A. H., & Wood, W. (2016). Social role theory of sex differences. The Wiley Blackwell encyclopedia of gender and sexuality studies, 1-3.

Godsil, R. D., Tropp, L. R., Goff, P. A., Powell, J. A., & MacFarlane, J. (2016). The effects of gender roles, implicit bias, and stereotype threat on the lives of women and girls. The Science of Equality, 2(1), 14-15.

Huppatz, K., & Dagistanli, S. (2017). Gender Roles. The Wiley‐Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 1-2.

Koenig, A. M., & Eagly, A. H. (2014). Evidence for the social role theory of stereotype content: observations of groups’ roles shape stereotypes. Journal of personality and social psychology, 107(3), 371.

Löfstrand, P. (2018). Communicating, Negotiating and Stereotyping: The roles of context, situation and gender in small group decision-making (Doctoral dissertation, Mid Sweden University).

Ortiz, D. (2017). Gender Stereotypes and its Effects on Communities. Proceedings from Philosophy of Love Volume 1 Spring 2017, 25.