Essay On Social Construction Of Gender

Discussions concerning the ‘social construction’ of gender generally revolve around the premise that gender is not an intrinsic aspect of a person. Rather that it is something which has come about through the formation of societal ideas surrounding what it means to be a man or a woman. Arguments in opposition to this may draw their reasoning from biological differences between the male and female sexes as evidence of a natural divide between men and women, which could promote the attribution of genders to certain traits. Coinciding with this, the separation of sex and gender is a debate which lends itself to this discussion, as it too helps us to develop a wider perspective on whether there is a social division between the two, or if they are one and the same. Additionally, the notion that gender is something …show more content…
Due to the physical strength of men and the process of pregnancy and child rearing our society has formed a structure around this. From hunter-gatherer to factory worker and stay at home mum. This path leads to a patriarchal society, which is dependent on the preconceived sex and gender roles to maintain itself, as women must stay at home leading them to miss out on opportunities in education, which then could have progressed them into careers. Furthermore, we can see how this influences recent job trends in the fact that women only make up 35% of legislators, senior officials and managers (Leopold, et al., 2016). This is essential in understanding what is meant by the social construction of gender, as the majority of the world’s leaders are men, whilst in some areas of the word women are still not legally equal to men (Connell, 2009), it is this kind of structural division between the genders which helps us to consider how widely acknowledged these ideas of men and women are