CROSS CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING (GENDER ROLES)

The Definition of Male and Female

Gender roles are cultural and personal. They determine how males and females should think, speak, dress, and interact within the context of society. Learning plays a role in this process of shaping gender roles. These gender schemas are deeply embedded cognitive frameworks regarding what defines masculine and feminine. While various socializing agents—parents, teachers, peers, movies, television, music, books, and religion—teach and reinforce gender roles throughout the lifespan, parents probably exert the greatest influence, especially on their very young offspring.

As mentioned previously, sociologists know that adults perceive and treat female and male infants differently. Parents probably do this in response to their having been recipients of gender expectations as young children. Traditionally, fathers teach boys how to fix and build things; mothers teach girls how to cook, sew, and keep house. Children then receive parental approval when they conform to gender expectations and adopt culturally accepted and conventional roles. All of this is reinforced by additional socializing agents, such as the media. In other words, learning gender roles always occurs within a social context, the values of the parents and society being passed along to the children of successive generations.

Gender roles adopted during childhood normally continue into adulthood. At home, people have certain presumptions about decision‐making, child‐rearing practices, financial responsibilities, and so forth. At work, people also have presumptions about power, the division of labor, and organizational structures. None of this is meant to imply that gender roles, in and of themselves, are good or bad; they merely exist. Gender roles are realities in almost everyone’s life.

Gender roles are sets of societal norms which dictate the types of behaviors which are generally considered acceptable, appropriate, or desirable for people based on their actual or perceived sex or sexuality. The term gender role was first coined by John Money in 1955 during his study of intersex individuals to describe the manners in which these individuals expressed their status as a male or female in a situation where no clear biological assignment existed.

Gender roles are usually centered on conceptions of femininity and masculinity, although there are exceptions and variations. Some examples of gender roles include expectations for male versus female clothing, behavior, and expression. The specifics regarding these gendered expectations sometimes vary among different cultures, such as different religious groups, while other times are shared among many cultures. There is ongoing debate among theorists and scientists about the extent to which gender roles and their variations are biologically determined, and the extent to which they are socially constructed.

Various groups, most notably the feminist movement, have led efforts to change aspects of prevailing gender roles that they believe are oppressive or inaccurate. In addition, societal progress influences the alteration of gender roles in many areas such as the media, politics, and criminal justice.

The Different of Male and Female Role

Male and female  have many different, this different is influence from factor of the biological. There are three factors which make different of male and female:

  1. Hormones, Social Behavior, and Cognitive Skills

Biological factors that are thought to shape gender differences include hormones and lateralization of brain function. Hormones may organize a biological predisposition to be masculine or feminine during the prenatal period, and the increase in hormones during puberty may activate that predisposition. In addition, social experiences may alter the levels of hormones, such as testosterone.

2. Brain Lateralization and Gender Differences

Gender differences in the organization of the brain may be reflected in the greater lateralization of brain functioning in males, which may help explain male success at spatial and math skills. It may also explain female tendencies to be more flexible than males and to withstand injury to the brain more effectively.

3. Biology and Cultural Expectations

Androgenized female fetuses may become girls who behave more like boys and have more traditionally male interests. Such girls are also better at visual-spatial tasks thanother girls. However, environmental factors are also influential in boys and girls developing nontraditional gender-based abilities and interests.

From the factors above, male and female have many different. The different of male and female are:

  1. The different of male and female in development

Of the many presumed differences between the behaviors of males and females, some are real, some are found only inconsistently, and some are wholly mythical.

Girls are more physically and neurologically advanced at birth. Boys have more mature muscular development but are more vulnerable to disease and hereditary anomalies. Girls excel early in verbal skills, but boys excel in visual-spatial and math skills. Boys’ superior mathematic abilities, however, reflect only a better grasp of geometry, which depends on visual-spatial abilities. Boys are more aggressive, and girls more nurturant. Boys have more reading, speech, and emotional problems than girls.

  1. The different of male and female in the Education by Anna Gasparova and Partric

Boys and girl learn in different ways. While the boys require more attention from the teachers and their peers, girls are more self-conscious, requiring less attention. The more attention that boys get from their teachers causes them to get a better education than girls because girls are more at unease with themselves. Also in physical education the girls are separate from boys even though they take the same classes and play the same sports; they are taught differently.

The coaches favor the boys more because they think the males are more serious about sports than any female could ever be.Even though boys and girls take the same classes with the same teachers they get a different education, this is due to general differences. Females are more invisible in the classroom than males. “Girls are the majority of out nations schoolchildren, yet they are second-class citizens.”

They should feel equal to males and be able to express their true opinion and be confident of what they say. If a girl has an opinion and wants to express it, she should not hold back because she does not know how the male classmates wouldreact to her opinion.It seems like the classrooms are separated into two very different groups. One being the actors, who are the males of the class and the observers or spectators, who are obviously the females of the class.Male students control classroom conversation. They ask and answer more questions. They receive more praise for the intellectual quality of their ideas. They get criticized. They get help when they are confused. They are the heart and the center of interaction. Watch how boys dominate the discussions.

In conclusion, the schools do have unequal education for boys and girls. Boys get more attention than girls do in classrooms and even more in sports.

  1. The different of male and female in the workplace

There are four different of male and female in the workplace:

  • Women Are Team Players

Women were found to be more receptive to team efforts in the workplace than their male counterparts, according to a 2005 study by Catalyst. The study declared women as more “supportive and rewarding” in leadership roles. A second study during the same year by Caliper showed that women employed more compassionate and constructive behavior in regards to their team. Furthermore, women proved to be more persuasive and scored higher than men when it came to both persuasiveness and assertiveness.

  • Men Are Strong Negotiators

While gender roles in the workplace are not as clear-cut as they used to be, many men still retain their sense of privilege, possibly allowing them to be better negotiators. A 2003 study focused on students graduating with master’s degrees found that men were able to negotiate salaries 7.6 percent higher than women entering the workforce. More than half of the men were able to negotiate for more money, while just 7 percent of women did. Furthermore, men tend to be more willing to ask for raises than women.

  • Women Accept More Challenges

Possibly due to always being underestimated, women in the workplace are more likely to work harder and take on more responsibilities. In a 2009 study by Accenture, 70 percent of women in the workplace wanted to be challenged more, while less than half of working men asked for the same challenges. Because of their increased workload, women are also more likely to go into overtime than men. Hardworking women also tend to shrug off vacations to tackle their workload and call in sick less.

  • Men are More Confident

Men generally feel more confident in their work environment than women. Far from an evolutionary trait, and more likely a privilege trait, men are more willing to “wing it” on tasks they aren’t prepared for. In contrast, many women may feel unprepared even when they have prepared diligently. This confidence, or perhaps simply being male, reigns in more promotions than women, as men are more likely to be mentored by senior executives, according to the Harvard Business Review.

Referensi

http://genderrolesaroundtheworld.weebly.com/saudi-arabia.html#/

http://highered.mheducation.com

http://woman.thenest.com/female-vs-male-roles-workplace-14452.htmlFemale

http://www.csun.edu/-pb48827/grouppro.html

http://www.e-ir.info/2011/07/28/gender-equality-in-australia/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_role

https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/sociology/sex-and-gender/gender-roles

http://study.com/academy/lesson/gender-roles-in-1950s-america.html

http://people.howstuffworks.com/men-women-roles-changing.htm

https://borgenproject.org/potential-of-women-in-africa/

http://geography.name/gender-roles-and-sexuality/

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