The Influence Of Gender Roles

Gender roles are conventional behaviors expected from individuals based on their birth sex. These gender-based ideals often support the idea that men are meant to be masculine, straightforward, emotionally repressed, and aggressive, whereas women are meant to be submissive, demure, nurturing, and above all, beautiful. Although some argue that the purpose of these roles are to cultivate positive qualities in men and women, they ultimately build barriers for nonconformist individuals as well as promote severe inequality. It is because of these norms that women and men are reduced to harmful stereotypes, which is why they must be eliminated in order to abolish the closed-minded nature of our society. Gender based standards can dictate the self …show more content…
Due to societal pressures towards females to fulfill feminine archetypes, many girls feel ashamed to pursue professions in the STEM industry, partially because ten percent of preteen girls confess that their parents encouraged them to pursue a career in engineering whereas twenty one percent encouraged their daughters to become actresses, as reported by the Girl Scouts of America. Encouragement during a child’s early stages definitely carries over to adulthood, which is probably why there has been a seventy nine percent decline in the number of first year women going into the computer science field, as is disclosed by Women In Technology. Men are also often taught that expressing emotions is unmasculine, which heavily influences their tendency to hide their emotions. Sadly, this causes irreparable emotional trauma and may cause future intimacy issues. Additionally, women are often excluded from having interests that are considered predominantly male, and are mocked for being passionate about subjects such as sports or science fiction. Although immersing oneself in comic books seems like a valid pastime for all genders alike, comic book writer Frank Miller continually uses women as plot devices to develop his male characters whereas Kevin Smith, the host of Comic Book Men, refuses to feature women in his program. Societal based gender ideals have not only influenced …show more content…
Elementary school aged girls are often taught that physical and verbal aggression from their male peers immediately translates to inept declarations of romantic affection. Normalizing this hostile behavior with idiomatic phrases such as “boys will be boys” sets the foundations for sexual and physical violence for both heterosexual men, some of whom will believe that behaving in such a manner is acceptable, and women, whom will go on to tolerate said behavior from a partner. Gender roles also create a number of sexual double standards that are exclusive to women, as exemplified in the ideology that a woman should be “pure” and view her virginity as sacred whereas men are encouraged to have sexual prowess during their teen years. The industry often profits from exploiting women as sex objects, and yet those that proudly own their sexualities are pegged as promiscuous for doing so, as proven true by Return of Kings blogger Naso, whom asserts that “[virgins are]...more valuable” whereas “sluts are a dime a dozen... If one slut isn’t pleasing him in some way, a man can move on to the next. Virgins today are rare, and a man will put in much more [of an] effort to keep her around.” Society also reinforces the gender based ideology that sexually inexperienced men are depreciative, which is correlative to the sexist belief that nearly