GE-GS: GENDER AND SOCIETY

ENDRINA, NATHANIEL N.
Hand-Out # 3

Module 2: Gender Socialization

A. Socialization
 the institutionalization of the values, the beliefs, and standards of the
society for all members of a given group.
 can help one to predict how people behave, think, and feel in a group or
society.
 not “simply transmitted from one generation to the other; rather, they are,
to some extent at least, constructed by each generations.”
 Early and middle childhood are the most intense periods for the process of
socialization, but socialization is a lifelong process.

B. Gender Socialization
 a process that encourages girls and boys to adopt and develop certain
values, behaviors, and personality traits as masculine and feminine and
form the identity of men and women in a society.
 develops gender stereotypes and reinforces gender discrimination
because it can produce and reproduce gender roles as social facts and
spread gender discrimination as a natural issue.
Periods of Development
1. Prenatal Development- Conception occurs where all of the major structures
of the body are forming and the health of the mother is of primary concern
(nutrition, teratogens (birth defects), labor, and delivery)
2. Infancy and Toddlerhood- first year and a half to two years; a newborn, with
a keen sense of hearing but very poor vision is transformed into a walking,
talking toddler; Caregivers manage feeding and sleep schedules transformed
to constantly moving guide and safety inspector for a mobile, energetic child.
3. Early childhood- preschool years which precede formal schooling; the child
is busy learning language, is gaining a sense of self and greater
independence, and is beginning to learn the workings of the physical world.
4. Middle Childhood- ages of six through eleven, in the early grades of school
where the world becomes one of learning and testing new academic skills
and by assessing one’s abilities and accomplishments by making
comparisons between self and others.
GE-GS: GENDER AND SOCIETY
ENDRINA, NATHANIEL N.
Hand-Out # 3
5. Adolescence- dramatic physical change marked by an overall physical
growth spurt and sexual maturation, known as puberty; having a sense of
invincibility that puts them at greater risk of dying from accidents or
contracting sexually transmitted infections that can have lifelong
consequences.
6. Early adulthood- twenties and thirties love to hear that they are a young
adult; love and work are primary concerns at this stage of life.
7. Middle adulthood- late thirties through the mid-sixties where many are at
their peak of productivity in love and work; gaining expertise in certain fields
and being able to understand problems and find solutions with greater
efficiency than before.
8. Late adulthood- “young old” are people between 65 and 79 and the “old old”
are 80 and older; the young old are very similar to midlife adults; still working,
still relatively healthy, and still interested in being productive and active; the
“old old” risks of the diseases of old age such as arteriosclerosis, cancer, and
cerebral vascular disease.
9. Death & Dying- the physical, psychological and social aspects of death,
exploring grief or bereavement, and addressing ways in which helping
professionals work in death and dying; cultural variations in mourning, burial,
and grief.
Agents of Gender Socialization
a) Family- first and most important institution that teaches children to be
in different roles as a woman or a man. Parents have different
behavioral patterns and expectations of their children based on
children’s gender.
b) Peers- have strong impact on forming gender self-concepts and
gender stereotypes through interactions, friendships, and group norms.
Girls and boys might be encouraged to join different games and take
part in different activities and roles. Behaviors are “tried out” on friends,
and if they are rewarded, they will continue; if not, they will cease.
c) School- Formal education systems are designed to transfer the
values, behavior patterns, and standards to children through
interaction with teachers, peer groups, textbooks, and curriculum.
 Teachers have different behaviors and attitudes to their students
based on their gender, which are the result of their stereotyped
expectations about abilities and needs of girls and boys.
 As part of the hidden curriculum, textbooks might transform,
strengthen or diminish the developed and developing power
relations both in the classroom and in the society.
GE-GS: GENDER AND SOCIETY
ENDRINA, NATHANIEL N.
Hand-Out # 3
d) Social Mass Media- plays a significant role in teaching behaviors and
attitudes of specific social categories and has a strong effect on the
process of socialization.
 Women are presented as sex objects in these mass media, and
it is a factor for increasing gender violence against women
Workplace Socialization (Wilbert Moore, 1968)
1. Career Choice- selection of academic or vocational training appropriate
for the desired job.
2. Anticipatory Socialization- process by which knowledge and skills are
learned for future roles; some inherit their occupations.
3. Conditioning and Commitment- takes place while one performs the
work-related role.
Conditioning- reluctantly adjusting to the more unpleasant aspects of one’s job.
Commitment- enthusiastic acceptance of pleasurable duties that come as the recruit
identifies the positive task of an occupation.
4. Continuous Commitment- the job becomes an indispensable art of the
person’s self-identity.
Social Devaluation- person or groups is considered to have less social value than
other groups.

Theories for Explanation of Gender Socialization

a) Biological Theory- women and men are affected by different
hormones which may have different functions for the brain of women
and men.
 Social scientists consider that many aspects of gender roles,
identities, and behaviors are the result of social influences, not
biological differences.
 Nurture has a more significant role in differences between men
and women than nature.

b) Psychoanalytic Theory- The theory of psychosexual stages of

development of Sigmund Freud explains: “the source of libido (life
force) is concentrated in the erogenous zones of the child’s body and
children experience an unconscious feeling of desire for their
opposite-sex parent and jealousy and envy toward their same-sex
parent. He believes that girls cannot resolve Oedipus complex and
have a weaker superego.
GE-GS: GENDER AND SOCIETY
ENDRINA, NATHANIEL N.
Hand-Out # 3
 Some of Freud’s students were strong critics and developed the
alternatives for analysis of gender difference which put
emphasis on parental reactions as a main factor to forming
children behaviors.

c) Cognitive Developmental Theory- Piaget and Kohlberg studies the

mental process children use to understand their observations and
experiences; how children understand and interpret the world around
them and act in the society.
 gender identity- child’s growing understanding that they
belong to either the category of boy or girl
 gender stability- the realization that this gender identity does
not change over time,
 gender consistency- the understanding that gender identity is
not directly affected by changes in appearance, activities, and
characteristic
o “A child has developed strong notion of gender
constancy, the understanding that one is either a boy or
a girl and this categorization will not change.” This
cognition is not neutral; they recognize women and
men’s roles based on what society has defined.

d) Gender Schema Theory- Sandra Bem explains that gender

schematic is a “generalized readiness on the part of the child to
encode and to organize information, including information about the
self – according to culture’s definition of maleness and femaleness.
 “Children come to understand themselves in terms of gender
attributes they encounter in real life and, to no lesser extent,
through picture books”.
 As children come across information or new situations that
pertain to gender, they tend to use their gender schemas as a
guide for interpreting this information and a way to simplify
information and to make decisions.

C. 18th Century Enlightenment

 Enlightenment- a European intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th
centuries in which ideas concerning God, reason, nature, and humanity
GE-GS: GENDER AND SOCIETY
ENDRINA, NATHANIEL N.
Hand-Out # 3
were synthesized into a worldview that gained wide assent in the West
and that instigated revolutionary developments in art, philosophy, and
politics.
 Women could participate publicly in philosophical conversations in a
variety of venues, including social clubs, salons and coffeehouses. More
women had access to books and pamphlets, and more women
themselves committed their ideas to print.

1) John Locke- father of British Empiricism and the wheel behind the
1688 revolution in England.
 holds that the mind is a tabula rasa or blank sheet until
experience in the form of sensation and reflection provide
the basic materials—simple ideas—out of which most of our
more complex knowledge is constructed.
 saw the need for marital equality and fidelity and draws out
their political implications as indispensable to social and
political equalities among men and women in a given society.
 A tyrannical head of a family can never be a good candidate
for democratic political leader; bringing out the concept of
good governance, which presents the private and the
political life as spheres that cannot be treated in isolation in
any sincere pursuit of good governance.

2) Mary Wollstonecraft- a renowned women's rights activist who

authored A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792
 primarily argued for the equal education of girls and women,
which was an unpopular opinion at the time where the
majority advocated for women to receive a limited, domestic-
based education only.

3) August Comte- a French philosopher known as the founder of

sociology and of positivism.
 proposed that society went through three stages of social
evolution:
a. Theological stage: society is based on the laws of God.
b. The metaphysical stage: society works to find universal
rights of people.
GE-GS: GENDER AND SOCIETY
ENDRINA, NATHANIEL N.
Hand-Out # 3
c. Scientific/Positive stage: society uses science instead
of morality to solve society's problems.

4) Harriet Martineau- ''The Mother of Sociology'', received a personal

honorary invite to Queen Victoria's coronation in 1838.
 observed a link between slavery and the oppression of
women's rights
 social reform was a necessity in order to improve better
conditions for everyone; humans should live in accordance
with natural laws while emphasizing science, education, and
religious tolerance
 translated the works of Auguste Comte from French into
English so many new individuals could study his teachings

5) Karl Marx- books "Das Kapital" and "The Communist Manifesto"

formed the basis of Marxism; basis for communism.
 fundamentally concerned with analyzing the relation
between class exploitation and gender inequality. Women's
oppression is regarded as the product of the economic,
political, and social structures of capitalism.

6) Herbert Spencer- famous for his doctrine of social Darwinism,

which asserted that the principles of evolution, including natural
selection, apply to human societies, social classes, and individuals
as well as to biological species developing over geologic time.
 held a progressive view of gender, arguing that women were
as intellectually capable as men and advocating for full
political and legal rights for women.

7) Georg Simmel- the father of urban sociology; believed in the

creative consciousness that can be found in diverse forms of
interaction
 the equality of women's interests is a cause and
consequence of their solidarity.
 women's ability to think logically is often influenced by their
psychological and social circumstances, e.g. especially in
higher social classes, women’s education in the 19 th century
GE-GS: GENDER AND SOCIETY
ENDRINA, NATHANIEL N.
Hand-Out # 3
aimed to prepare them to interact with men, often forcing
them to hide their true selves and pretend to be someone
else.
 women's impulses are quicker and more direct, leading to
faster decisions in practical matters, whereas men's
judgments are the result of a slower, more reflective mental
process.

8) Emile Durkheim- the father of sociology because he established a

department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux; responsible
for introducing social science into the French academic system.
 most famous works are The Division of Labor in Society
(1893), The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Suicide
(1897), and The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912).
 women and men will become 'socially equalized, but in
different ways' as organized societies develop. Likewise, he
expected more equality of opportunity, although he added
that due to differences in 'aptitudes', women and men would
continue to serve different functions.

9) Georg Herbert Mead- developed the concept of self, which

explains that one's identity emerges out of external social
interactions and internal feelings of oneself. Self is not evident at
birth but emerges over time through language, play, and games.
The self consists of 'me' and 'I'.
 children learn by watching adult behavior; motherhood
serves to reinforce male and female roles in all societies.
 The generalized other is the ability of a person to recognize
the expectations of society and regulate one's behaviors
according to these rules.

10) Max Weber- best known of his work on the Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism; there was a link between the rise of capitalism
and an ethos of self-control associated with Protestant reformation.
 theory of bureaucracy- an approach that proposes a specific
way to manage an organization. It proposes that the most
appropriate way to run an organization is to structure it into a
rigid hierarchy of individuals governed by strict rules and
regulations.
GE-GS: GENDER AND SOCIETY
ENDRINA, NATHANIEL N.
Hand-Out # 3
 the male-female division of labour was natural, the mother-
child relationship was natural, and that most of the male-
female relationships could be explained on the basis of
biological factors.

Gender as a Social Fact

 When Emile Durkheim argues that gender is a social fact, he means that
“gender is socially constructed.”
 Social constructionism- proposes that everything people “know” or see
as “reality” is partially, if not entirely, socially situated. Take, for example,
money.

Doing Gender
 performing or deviating from the socially accepted performance of
gender stereotypes
 not just about acting in a particular way; a routine we engage in
every single day
 embodying and believing certain gender norms and engaging in
practices that map on to those norms
 fundamentally a social relationship; interactional rather than
individual; developed through social interactions
Gender Performativity
 a term first used by the feminist philosopher Judith Butler in their
1990 book Gender Trouble
 being born male or female does not determine behavior
 people learn to behave in particular ways to fit into society
 The idea of gender is an act, or performance.

 Gender as Omnirelevant- people are always judging our behavior to be

either male or female.
 Objectification- the act of treating a person like an object rather than an
agentive being- is often significantly gendered and, further, it is central to
the process of gendering a person, and rendering them legible as human
beings. This can only happen to someone who is socially positioned, to
have less social power, because they are the party in a position to be
treated as an object- less than human.
GE-GS: GENDER AND SOCIETY
ENDRINA, NATHANIEL N.
Hand-Out # 3
 Gender Essentialism- the belief that a person, thing, or particular trait is
inherently and permanently male and masculine or female and feminine.
In other words, it considers biological sex the primary factor in determining
gender.
 Gender Equity and Sport- advocating for equality in all aspects of sport
and recreational activity, regardless of what gender someone may choose
to identify with.
o Gender Verification in Sports- occurs because eligibility of
athletes to compete is restricted whenever sporting events are
limited to a single sex, which is generally the case, as well as when
events are limited to mixed-sex teams of defined composition.
Issues have arisen multiple times in the Olympic games and other
high-profile sporting competitions, for example allegations that
certain male athletes attempted to compete as women or that
certain female athletes had intersex conditions perceived to give
unfair advantage
o Transgender Athletes- athletes transitioning from female to male
versus male to female differ. Within the regulations of different
governing bodies, you will see that the transition period and when
an athlete can compete is different, depending on which gender
they choose.

D. The Effects of Gender Socialization on Men and Women

1) Men are encouraged to be brave, endure pain, confront danger, and
protect their loved one.
 achieving their masculine status with strenuous effort which can
deteriorate their physical health and make them more susceptible
to injury
2) Men are also taught at a young age to “suck it up”, or “rub some dirt in it”.
 under-reporting their illnesses or injuries, which negatively affects
their health.
3) Men are also taught to hide their emotions.
 can lead to elevated levels of stress and can result in a weakened
immune system, weight loss or weight gain, depression, sleeping
disorders, drinking and strenuous exercises.
4) Women are socialized to be the responsible ones, the nurturers, and the
caretakers
GE-GS: GENDER AND SOCIETY
ENDRINA, NATHANIEL N.
Hand-Out # 3
 Taking care of someone with a chronic condition can cause high
levels of stress and cortisol within the body, also known as care-
taker syndrome.
 can lead to weight loss or gain, depression, sleep deprivation,
sleeping disorders, drinking or exercising.
5) Women have work hard during their day jobs and when they come home
to take care of their children.
 can affect their physical health because many times women do not
have time to take care of themselves because they are taking care
of other people and their families.