Gender

Socialization
❑ Definition
❑ Agents of Gender
Socialization
GENDER SOCIALIZAT ION
Definition:
 It is the process of learning social expectations and
attitudes with one’s sex.
 The tendency for the boys and girls to socialized
differently.
 Gendering- the process of a child’s learning of his/her
gender identity.
GENDER SOCIALIZAT ION
❑Encompasses the process of learning society’s
gender roles and their advantages and
limitations.
Example:
❑ Men are traditionally expected to be strong, aggressive even dominating.

❑ Women are expected to be nurturing, sensitive, emotional and relatively

passive.
Agent of
Gender
Socialization
❑Parents
❑Teachers/Schools
❑Peers
❑Media
❑Church and Religion
AGENT OF SOCIALIZAT ION
Definition:
• It pertains to a person or group that plays a
role in the childhood gender socialization
process.
FAMILY
Family is the most
important agent of
socialization
because it serves
as the center of a
child’s life.
GENDER SOCIALIZAT ION: FAMILY
Description
❑Smith (2005) argues that gender role socialization
begins after even before birth.
❑Other forms of gender role socialization takes the
form of clothes, rooms and toys.
❑Gender pervades every aspect of family life
GENDER SOCIALIZAT ION: FAMILY
Description
❑In adulthood, family influences what kind of career
or mate we choose, how we run our household and
how we raise our own children.
❑ Note: Even parents who emphasize gender equality ay inadvertently reinforce
some stereotypes due to their own orientation or gender socialization.
SCHOOL
Teachers have
stereotype
behaviors
regarding the
attitudes towards
both sexes.
GENDER SOCIALIZAT ION: SCHOOL
Description
❑In the early adolescence, gender norms are firmly
established.
❑Girls and boys are frequently put in same-sex groups and
assigned gender-stereotyped tasks.
❑It also socialize individual into their gender roles.
❑Teachers treat male and female students differently.
GENDER SOCIALIZAT ION: SCHOOL
Description
 Assessments of teachers for the duties of girls and boys differ, boys are
valued for skills, intellectual levels while girls for the form and presentation
 The teachers connect the progress of girls with their great efforts, while
the progress of boys with the fact that they are naturally smarter.
 In case of failure for boys they think that they have not used the maximum of
intellectual skills that they possess.
 Girls are expected to be polite while boys to be oblivious.

 The school and teachers are institutions that can and should govern and possess the
gender education to all meanings
PEERS
Peers is defined as
a group of
individuals with
the same interest,
social positions,
etc.
GENDER SOCIALIZAT ION: PEER
Description
 Peer interactions also contributes to gender
socialization.
 Children tend to play with same gender peers.
 Some influences about how gender was perceived can be
direct or indirect.
MEDIA
Media teaches
children about
what it means
to be a boy or a
girl.
GENDER SOCIALIZAT ION: MEDIA
 From the media, we learn certain activities and
attitudes that appropriate for our prospective
genders.
 Girls: caring, sensitive, beautiful and reserved
 Boys: assertive, strong, analytic and athletic
 Body Consciousness- awareness of one’s body based
on gender lines
GENDER SOCIALIZAT ION: MEDIA

• Television commercials and other forms of advertising

reinforce inequality and gender-based stereotypes.
• The mass media is able to deliver impersonal communications
to a vast audience.
CHURCH/
RELIGION
Religion is a collection
of cultural systems,
belief systems, and
worldviews that relate
humanity to spirituality
and moral values. In the
early society, religion
provided a bond of
unity
GENDER SOCIALIZAT ION:
CHURCH/RELIGION
 Many traditional interpretations of the Bible yield the message that
women are subservient to men (Tanenbaum, 2009).
 This message begins in Genesis, where the first human is Adam, and
Eve was made from one of his ribs. The major figures in the rest of
the Bible are men, and women are for the most part depicted as wives,
mothers, temptresses, and prostitutes; they are praised for their roles
as wives and mothers and condemned for their other roles. More
generally, women are constantly depicted as the property of men.
GENDER SOCIALIZAT ION:
CHURCH/RELIGION
 The Ten Commandments includes a neighbor’s wife
with his house, ox, and other objects as things not
to be coveted (Exodus 20:17), and many biblical
passages say explicitly that women belong to men,
such as this one from the New Testament:
GENDER SOCIALIZAT ION
THROUGHOUT LIFE
GENDER
SOCIALIZAT ION
THROUGHOUT LIFE
Gender socialization is a life
long process. The beliefs that
we acquire in our childhood
can affect throughout our
lives. The impact of this
socialization can be big,
small or somewhere in the
middle (Encyclopedia of Early
Childhood Development,
2014).
Gender
Inequality
GENDER INEQUALITY
Definition
❑ “Gender inequality is a social process by which people are
treated differently and disadvantageously, under similar
circumstances, on the basis of gender.”- Oxford Dictionary
(2007)
❑ Refers to disparity between individuals due to gender.
❑ Can be traced in the earliest type of society, basically based
on biological differences.
GENDER INEQUALITY
Patterns of Inequalities
❑Lack of mobility ❑Professional Obstacles
❑Freedom of marriage ❑Restricted Land
❑Citizenship Ownerships

❑Custody Rights ❑Access to Education

❑Violence