Essay paper

The significance of a person’s gender in defining moral, social, political, and legal responses to
them has long been challenged. Some people feel that social standards play a role in how men
and women are regarded and treated, implying a double standard. One argument is that society
has a double standard when it comes to judging women’s and men’s sexual preferences.
According to studies, men find casual sexual behavior to be more acceptable than women.
Some believe that there are possible double standards between men and women in the areas of
dating, cohabitation, virginity, marriage/remarriage, sexual abuse/assault/harassment,
domestic violence and singleness.
According to other research, females are held to higher standards of competence than males,
as evidenced by tests involving emotional tasks.
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A gender role is a social role that includes a set of attitudes and actions that are typically
accepted, suitable, or pleasant for a person depending on his or her biological or presumed
sex. While there are exceptions and differences, gender stereotypes are often based on
perceptions of masculinity and femininity. Specific details about these gender stereotypes may
differ significantly among cultures, while other aspects may be universal. Gender roles and
their variations are debated to what degree they are biologically determined or socially
produced.
Gender roles influence a wide range of human behavior, often including the clothing a person
chooses, the profession a person pursues and the personal relationships a person enters.
Various groups, most notably the feminist movements, have led efforts to change aspects of
prevailing gender roles that they believe are oppressive or inaccurate.
The term gender role was first used by John Money and colleagues in 1954, during the course
of his study of intersex individuals, to describe the manners in which these individuals
expressed that they were male or female even though no clear biological assignment existed.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines gender roles as, “socially constructed roles,
behaviors, activities and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and
women.” Debate continues as to what extent gender and gender roles are socially constructed
(i.e. non-biologically influenced), and to what extent “socially constructed” may be considered
synonymous with “arbitrary” or “malleable”. Therefore, a concise authoritative definition of
gender roles or gender itself is elusive.
In the sociology of gender, the process whereby an individual learns and acquires a gender
role in society is termed gender socialization. Gender roles are culturally specific, and while
most cultures distinguish only two (boy and girl or man and woman), others recognize more.
Androgyny, for example, has been proposed as a third gender.An “androgyne” or
“androgynous person” is someone with qualities pertaining to both the male and femalegender. Other societies have claimed to identify more than five genders, and some
non-Western societies have three genders: man, woman, and third gender. Some individuals
(not necessarily from such a culture) identify with no gender at all.Many transgender people
reject the idea that they constitute a separate third gender, and identify simply as men or
women. However, biological differences between (some) trans women and cisgender women
have historically been treated as relevant in certain contexts, especially those where biological
traits may yield an unfair advantage such as sport.Gender role is not the same thing as gender
identity, which refers to the internal sense of one’s own gender, whether or not it aligns with
categories offered by societal norms. The point at which these internalized gender identities
become externalized into a set of expectations is the genesis of a gender role