NATIONAL

SERVICE
TRAINING
PROGRAM
nstp@wvsu.edu.ph

Learner’s Guide
Module 5: GENDER SENSITIVITY
Joyce Christine D. Colon, MA (Social Sciences)

Overview

Gender is a social construction that defines the roles, relations and identity of men
and women. In turn, it also gives way to gender disparity, disadvantage and
discrimination. Consciousness raising and awareness on these challenges and issues
related to gender is essential. It is in this context that gender sensitivity is relevant.
Gender sensitivity refers to the ability to recognize gender issues and to recognize
women’s different perceptions and interests arising from their different social position
and gender roles. It builds on an understanding of gender differences and refers to taking
an approach that is responsive to gender differences and relations between genders. It
is one of the first steps in promoting a gender fair society.

This module covers an introduction to gender and how it is socially constructed. It

includes a short overview of the gender situation in the Philippines. It also discusses sex
and gender concepts, manifestations of gender bias as well as other key gender concepts
in relation to gender sensitivity.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this module, the students must have:

▪ Explained basic sex and gender concepts.

▪ Discussed how gender is constructed, maintained and reinforced in the society.
▪ Familiarized with the gender situation in the Philippines.
▪ Identified manifestations of gender bias and gender issues in the society.
▪ Demonstrated sensitivity in perceiving existing gender issues and inequalities.

Gender and Society: An Introduction

At birth, when doctors say, “It’s a boy!” brings varying cultural responses. In some
countries, this exuberance results in blue blankets, toys associated with males and a host
of other gender socialization messages. In some Asian societies, boys are sources of great
rejoicing, whereas girls maybe seen as a burden. All social interactions and the
institutions in which the interaction occur are gendered in some manner. Much of what
we stereotypically consider to be “natural” male or female behavior (driven by biology),
are sometimes imposed by cultural expectations of how men and women should behave.
 The concept of gender and sex has biological roots, but social constructionism
holds that even biological facts become interpreted through the screen of cultural
assumptions. Beginning at birth, each individual passes through many stages of life
development. At each stage, there are messages that reinforce appropriate gender
behavior and gender roles in that society.

Social psychologists and anthropologists suggested that social behavior, including

gender roles, are largely shaped by social and cultural influences. At such, gender
relations and its variations in different societies and cultures show that most roles and
identities are not biological, but rather socially constructed. Gender, hence, is a powerful
concept that shapes the way we see ourselves and others on the basis of constructed
categories of what it means to be a man or a woman in the society.

Sex and Gender: The Basics

Sex is a natural distinguishing variable based on biological characteristics of being

a man or a woman. It refers to physical attributes pertaining to a person’s body contour,
features, genitals, hormones, genes, chromosomes and reproductive organs. Sex, hence,
refers to biological characteristics (including genetics, anatomy and physiology) that
generally define humans as female or male.

Sex differences between women and men are biological.

Gender refers to the socially differentiated roles, characteristics and expectations

attributed by culture to women and men. It identifies the social behavior of women and
men and the relationship between them. Hence, gender refers to socially constructed
set of roles and responsibilities associated with being women and men.

Gender roles and attributes are not natural or biologically given.

Sex is a natural attribute that a person is born with. Gender, on the other hand, is
created, produced, reproduced, and maintained by social institutions, a process otherwise
referred to as the social construction of gender. Because gender roles, attitudes,
behaviors, characteristics and expectations are learned, they can also be unlearned.
 Sex Gender
Congenital and biological Culturally and socially dictated
Given at birth Socially constructed
Biological and physiological characteristics Roles, behaviors, activities, and
that define men and women attributes that a given society
considers appropriate for men and
women.
Natural Learned
Male or female Masculine or feminine
Sex is fixed Gender is fluid
What you were born with Due to social and cultural conditioning

Society tends to assign roles, attitudes, behaviors, characteristics and expectations

to individuals based on biological differences. This tendency results in unequal relations
between women and men, with men being considered as the superior sex mainly because
of their stronger physical characteristics.

Sex roles are socially coded behaviors and practices on the basis of one’s sex.
Meanwhile, gender roles refer to normative expectations about the division of labor
between sexes and to gender-related rules about social interactions that exist within a
particular cultural-historical context. These roles are commonly assigned tasks or
expected behaviors linked to an individual’s sex-determined statuses. They are taught
and reinforced by society’s structures and institutions, such as the family, school, peers,
community, church, government and media. Repeated exposure to these agents over
time leads men and women into a false sense that they are acting naturally rather than
following a socially constructed role.

The learning of gender roles begins in early childhood. Girls are taught to be
feminine, while boys are taught to be masculine. Stereotyped feminine traits include being
gentle, kind, loving, nurturing and emotional, to name a few. Meanwhile, stereotyped
masculine traits, for example, include being aggressive, tough, sports-oriented,
testosterone driven, strong and unemotional. Gender-linked characterizations can lead,
developed and evolved into gender issues. These are gender-linked beliefs (ideas,
attitudes and behavior), processes, systems, conditions and situations that block an
individual’s attainment of full or of a satisfying life.

Gender roles, attitudes, behaviors, characteristics and expectations are learned;

therefore, they can also be unlearned. In promoting a gender-fair society and for the
people in the community to appreciate gender and development, they first have to
heighten their awareness of gender concerns and be able to respond to gender issues.
Gender sensitivity makes this possible.
Learning Activity 1

Instructions: Identify the following statements whether it is related to sex or gender.

_____________1. Women are compassionate while men are assertive.

_____________2. Girls are gentle, boys are rough.
_____________3. In one case, when a child brought up as a girl learned that he was
actually, a boy, his school marks improved dramatically.
_____________4. Sex is not as important to women as it is for men.
_____________5. Males have testicles and females have ovaries
_____________6. Women give birth to babies, men don’t.
____________ 7. Women can breastfeed babies, men can bottle-feed babies.
____________ 8. There are more women than men in the caring professions such
as nursing.
____________9. Men are susceptible to prostate cancer, women are not.
____________10. Boys don’t cry.

Overview of the Gender Situation in the Philippines

Manifestations of Gender Bias

Gender roles have resulted in gender bias manifested in the following: multiple
burden, abuse and gender-based violence, marginalization and subordination as well as
sexism and gender stereotyping.

Multiple burden is the assumption and performance of several tasks or

responsibilities. Women have multiple roles. These refer to the reproductive, productive,
community management and constituency-based politics roles assigned to women.

Reproductive roles refer to activities needed to ensure the reproduction of

society’s labor force. This role involves, for example, childbearing, child rearing, and
household management. Meanwhile, productive roles involve income-earning activities
whether in the formal or informal sector. Community management roles include
participation in decision making and organizations at all political levels of government and
civil society. Most of which are performed on a voluntary basis. These are activities
undertaken at the community level to ensure the provision and maintenance of scarce
resources of collective consumption such as water, health care and education. Community
politics roles are undertaken primarily at the community level, organizing at the formal
political level, often within the framework of national politics.

Gender stereotyping are automatic labels, characteristics or roles given to men

and women. These are fixed, unquestioned gender-linked beliefs that are dictated by
culture and society. It refers to society’s perceptions and value systems that instill an
image of women as weak, dependent, subordinate, indecisive, emotional and submissive.
Men, on the other hand, are strong, independent, powerful, dominant, decisive and
logical.

Sexism refers to prejudiced attitudes and behavior towards either sex based on
cultural and social stereotypes. Institutional sexism is seen in the extension of traditional
roles of mothers to types of courses, discriminatory hiring practices as well as
stereotyping of certain work and lifestyles as “male” or “female”. Widespread
discriminatory practices against women disenfranchise them and keep them from full
participation in the society.

Sexism is also seen in regarding women and defining them with regard to their
sexual availability and attractiveness to men. Moreover, it is reinforced when patriarchy
and androcentrism combine to perpetuate beliefs that gender roles are biologically
determined and, therefore, unalterable.

Marginalization includes treating a person as a second-class citizen. It also

involves preventing or blocking a person from going up the ladder on the basis of their
sex. For example, women’s participation in development is limited to traditional programs
and projects, especially those related to maternal and child care, day care centers and
nutrition. This results in failure to recognize women’s concerns in other areas, particularly
within the economic sectors. Hence, women are unable to develop their potential to the
full. Meanwhile, gender subordination refers to submission, sometimes due to force or
violence, or being under the authority of one sex. It often results in women having no
control over available resources and having no personal autonomy.

Gender-based abuse and violence refers to any act of gender based violence
which leads to, or may lead to, physical, sexual or psychological harm, against a person
on the basis of gender or social role in a society or culture, including threats, beatings,
violence related to dowry, non-marital violence, rape, sexual violence related to
exploitation, sexual harassment and intimidation in the workplace or school, trafficking in
women, sexual exploitation and forced prostitution. This type of violence is perpetrated
in the name of gender and predominantly refers to men’s violence towards women and
children. However, gender-based violence also recognizes that it is possible for males to
be survivors and for women to be perpetrators of violence, too.

In the Philippines, RA 9262 (Anti-Violence Against Women and Their

Children Act
of 2004) defines violence against women as any act or a series of acts committed by
any person against a woman who is his wife, former wife, or against a woman with whom
the person has or had a sexual or dating relationship, or with whom he has a common
child, or against her child whether legitimate or illegitimate, within or without the family
abode. It includes, but it not limited to, the following acts:

• Physical violence which refers to acts that include bodily or physical harm
• Sexual violence
• Psychological violence and abuse
• Economic abuse

Physical abuse refers to acts that include bodily or physical harm. Sexual violence
includes acts which are sexual in nature, committed against a woman or her child. It
includes, but is not limited to, rape, sexual harassment, acts of lasciviousness, treating a
woman or her child as a sex object, making demeaning and sexually suggestive remarks
and physically attacking the sexual parts of the victim’s body. It also includes the
following:

 forcing her/him to watch obscene publications and indecent shows;

 forcing the woman or her child to do indecent acts and/or make films
thereof,

 forcing the wife and mistress/lover to live in the conjugal home or sleep
together in the same room with the abuser;
  acts causing or attempting to cause the victim to engage in any sexual
activity by force, threat of force, physical or other harm or threat of physical
or other harm or coercion;
 prostituting the woman or her child.

Psychological violence refers to acts or omissions causing or likely to cause

mental or emotional suffering of the victim such as but not limited to, intimidation,
harassment, stalking, damage to property, public ridicule or humiliation, repeated verbal
abuse and marital infidelity. Psychological abuse includes causing or allowing the victim
to witness the physical, sexual or psychological abuse of a member of the family to which
the victim belongs, or to witness pornography in any form or to witness abusive injury to
pets or to unlawful or unwanted deprivation of the right to custody and/or visitation of
common children.

Economic abuse refers to acts that make or attempt to make a woman

financially dependent. This includes but is not limited to the following:

 withdrawal of financial support

 preventing the victim from engaging in any legitimate profession,

occupation, business or activity, except in cases wherein the other
spouse/partner objects on valid

 serious and moral grounds as defined in Article 73 of the Family Code;

 deprivation or threat of deprivation of financial resources and the right to

the use and enjoyment of the conjugal, community or property owned in
common;
 destroying household property;

 controlling the victim’s own money or properties or solely controlling the

conjugal money or properties.

Other Key Gender Concepts

Discrimination

▪ Overt behavior in which people are given different and unfavorable

treatment on the basis of their race, class, sex, and cultural status.

▪ Any practice, policy or procedure that denies equality of treatment to an

individual or group.
Gender Awareness

▪ The ability to identify problems arising from gender inequality and

discrimination, even if these are not evident on the surface and are
“hidden,” or are not part of the general and commonly accepted
explanation of what and where the problem lies. Gender awareness
means a high level of gender conscientization.

Gender and Development

▪ A development perspective that

recognizes that there are blocks
(gender biases) that prevent
people from attaining their full
potentials ( as human beings
with worth and dignity).

▪ Works to remove works to

remove gender biases in
individuals, families and
institutions as well as in the
programs, projects and
activities.

Gendered Division of Labor

▪ The allocation of differential tasks, les, responsibilities and activities to

women and men according to what is considered socially and culturally
appropriate.

Gender Equality

▪ Gender equality means that women and men enjoy the same status and
conditions and have equal opportunity for realizing their potential to
contribute to the political, economic, social and cultural development of
their countries. They should also benefit equally from the results of
development.
 ▪ Gender equality refers to the equality of women and men in:

Rights: social, economic and legal

Resources: command over productive resources including education, land,

information and financial resources

Voice: power to influence resource allocation and investment decisions in

the home, community and at the national level.

Gender Equity

▪ Gender equity moves beyond a focus on equal treatment. It means giving

to those who have less on the basis of needs, and taking steps to
compensate for historical and social disadvantages that prevent women and
men from otherwise operating on a level playing field. Equity can be
understood as the means, and equality is the end.

▪ Equity leads to equality.

Gender Fair Society

▪ A society where women and men share equally in responsibilities, power,

authority and decision making.

Patriarchy

▪ The “rule of the father,” or a universal political structure that favors men
over women. It was originally used by anthropologists to describe the social
structure in which the patriarch has absolute power over everyone else in
the family.

▪ Male domination of political power and domination that maintains an unjust

system for the benefit of the rulers at the expense of the ruled.

Public/Private Dichotomy

▪ A distinction that serves to maintain the division of the economy into production
and reproduction functions. Production work occurs in the public arena and is given
value. Goods and services in this sector are fully recognized, remunerated, and
 reflected in official statistics. Outputs in the reproductive or domestic sphere,
however, do not have any value and are considered as merely sustaining the
requirements of those in the productive sector.

▪ The public sphere is usually regarded as the domain of men, who are perceived to
have a primary status in society because they perform what are considered major
functions. Men’s exposure in the public sector makes them the dominant gender
in all spheres of life. They are able to participate fully in economic, political and
cultural endeavors. Women, however, are relegated to the private arena of the
home. They take on reproductive functions which are regarded as secondary
pursuits.

“The Personal is Political”

▪ A phrase invented by the women’s liberation movement to describe its basic

approach: “We regard our personal experience, and our feelings about that
experience, as the basis for an analysis of our common situation.” It affirms
the notion that people themselves make an analysis of their situation that
will lead them to action.

▪ A slogan reflecting how women discovered that problems they had once
thought to be personal and private were shared by women in general,
setting in train a process of placing women’s shared experiences in a
political framework that challenged existing power relations between
women and men.

Activity 2

Try this exercise which aims to challenge your assumptions about how biology and
culture interact to shape us as men and women. Write down the first things that come
to mind in response to the following questions:

1. Women, if you wake up tomorrow and you are a man, how will your life be
different?

2. Men, if you wake up tomorrow as a woman, how will your life be different?

Think about it. Start from the minute you wake up. Trace your morning routine.
What you will you wear? What will you eat? What will you experience in school? Would
suddenly being of the opposite sex change what you could normally do or say, or where
you could go? Will people respond to you differently? Which differences will be
determined by the change in your biology, and which ones by cultural expectations of
what it means to be a man or a woman? (Adapted from Cultural Anthropology: A Toolkit
for a Global Age, 2014)

Activity 3

Form a group with six members. Make at least two infographics that show and
identify the various gender issues and concerns in the workplace, school, home, and in
the community.

References

Al Justa, Unan. Working with Gender-Based Violence Survivors. United Nations and
Works.

Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), 2012.

Ballantine, Jeanne and Keith Roberts (2011). Our Social World: Introduction to Sociology.
Canada: Sage.

Coeterier, Nicole (2014). Gender Sensitivity Resource Pack. Nepal: IHRICON.

International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Accessed from:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/sdfe/pdf/download/eid/3-s2.0 on Nov. 22, 2020.

Little William and Ron McGivern. Gender, Sex and Sexuality, In Introduction to Sociology.
Nov. 22, 2020. Available at:
https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontosociology/chapter/chapter12-gender-sex-
and-sexuality/

Gender 101: GAD Dictionary Transforming Government to Think and Act GAD: A
Handbook on Gender and Development Training. Manila: National Commission
on the Role of Filipino Women, 2003.

Guest, Kenneth (2014. Cultural Anthropology: A Toolkit for Global Age. New York; W.W.
Publishing.

Kelly, Gary (2001. Sexuality Today: The Human Perspective. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2001.
Kintanar, Thelma (2013). Gender Concerns on Campus. Manila: U.P. Center for Women’s
Studies.

Masilungan, Elena. State of the Filipino Women Report: 2015 Highlights. Manila:
Philippine Commission on Women, 2016.

Teaching Gender, Sexuality and Reproductive Health. Manila: Ford Foundation, 2006.

Transforming Government to Think and Act GAD: A Handbook on Gender and

Development Training. Manila: National Commission on the Role of Filipino
Women, 2003.