COMSATS University Islamabad

Lahore Campus

Psychology Department

Anthropology

Topic: GENDER ROLES AND RELATIVE CONTRIBUTION TO

WORK

Submitted by:

Name: MifrahMajeed

Reg. No. FA19-BPY-046

Class: BS Psychology

Section: “A”

Submitted to: Prof. Aneel Waqas

Dated: 05 July 2020

Gender role:

Gender roles can be defined as the behaviours, values, and attitudes that a society
considers appropriate for both male and female. Traditionally, men and women had completely
opposing roles, men were seen as the provider for the family and women were seen as the
caretakers of both the home and the family.

Example:

  An example of gender is the pronoun he. Gender is defined as the socially constructed

roles and behaviours that society typically associates with males and females.

Gender roles in society:

Gender roles in society means how we're expected to act, speak, dress, groom, and
conduct ourselves based upon our assigned sex.
For example:

Girls and women are generally expected to dress in typically feminine ways and be
polite, accommodating, and nurturing.

Importance of gender in society:

Gender is an important consideration in development. It is a way of looking at how social

norms and power structures impact on the lives and opportunities available to different groups of
men and women. Globally, more women than men live in poverty.

Purpose of gender roles:

Gender roles are the product of the interactions between individuals and their
environments, and they give individuals cues about what sort of behaviour is to be- lived to be
appropriate for what sex. Appropriate gender roles are defined according to a society's beliefs
about differences between the sexes.

Trends in gender roles:

Societies can change such that the gender roles rapidly change. The 21st century has seen
a shift in gender roles due to multiple factors such as new family structures, education, media,
and several others. A 2003 survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated that about 1/3 of
wives earn more than their husbands.

Introduction:

Anthropologists do not agree on what the relative status of the two sexes means in the
abstract nor do they agree on how to measure it.

  Some argue that the key to status is the relative power and authority of men and women
and the roles of both sexes in decision-making, while others say it refers to how a particular
society values the qualities that are defined as masculine versus those defined as feminine. Still
others look to the work that men and women do and ask if it is equally valued. And this, in turn,
leads some to question whether separate can also be equal. Others try to gauge if men and
women have equal rights to live their lives as they see fit. Do women have personal autonomy
and do they fully participate in the institutions of their society at large or are they barred from
public life and primarily confined to the domestic?

Explanation:

Previous studies suggest that gender-role attitudes, parental attitudes, authoritarianism,

religiosity, contact with homosexuals, and exposure to educational influences are associated with
attitudes toward homosexuals. Few studies have been conducted on attitudes toward lesbians
specifically. This study investigated the pattern of predictors for male and female attitudes
toward lesbians. The regression analysis on males revealed that gender-role attitudes were the
only significant predictor, while gender role attitudes, parental attitudes, authoritarianism, and
educational and media influences contributed to female attitudes toward lesbians. Despite more
liberal gender role attitudes expressed by female respondents, there was no difference between
male and female attitudes toward lesbians. This finding and the additional contribution to female
attitudes toward lesbians made by the other predictors besides gender role attitudes suggests that
the female respondents' development of attitudes toward lesbians is a product of a wider array of
variables, with gender-role attitudes playing a more central role in the development of male
attitudes toward lesbians. Nevertheless, the importance of gender role attitudes to both male and
female attitudes toward lesbians suggests that stratification by sex might be an underlying
variable for both gender role attitudes and attitudes toward lesbians.

References:

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