Gender Roles

Is being a male an advantage or disadvantage in current society? Why or why not? When society talks about the advantages and disadvantages associated with gender or sex in our society, many people automatically think about the disadvantages of being a woman. There is unequal pay, sexual harassment, ridiculous beauty standards, so on and so forth. However, by taking this one-sided stance on gender issues, the disadvantages that men face are pushed to the side. While men may have the advantage in some or many ways, they also face their own set of issues including emotional suppression, aggression, and violence. Toxic masculinity is the idea that certain social behaviors associated with being masculine or male are actually harmful to men and …show more content…
Why? There are many social institutions that help teach gender roles in society today, however there is no stand-alone institution that accounts for everything. Rather, there are many institutions that interact to teach and reinforce the established gender roles. In America, the three greatest teachers of gender are families, schools, and media. Families are the starting point for gender role acquisition. Infants and children are exposed to gender roles in the home from birth. They see the roles that their parents take on and understand how this relates to their own role in the home and in society as well. For example, in some households, the mother stays home with the children while the father goes to work. This reinforces the gender roles of women being home makers and men being breadwinners. However, in other households, the mother goes to work while the father stays home. This creates new gender roles that contradicts the societal gender roles. In both examples, the family plays a major role in the individuals understanding of gender roles. Another teacher of gender roles in society is …show more content…
Teachers have the power to correct and guide behavior based on gender norms. For example, some teachers may expect girls to sit quietly and listen while being more lax with boys behavior because "boys will be boys". Other teachers might not believe in this idea of gender and may treat each of their students the same regardless of gender. Either way, children are being taught what is right or wrong based on the way they are treated by the adults in their life, especially their teachers. The final teacher of gender in our society is something a little less personal: