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Sociology
Culture involves a certain way of living of a certain group of people in which people puts on display a set of beliefs, social habits, language, knowledge, social standards etc. in a particular way. In culture, the music preference, code of dressing, marriage, hospitality, the behavior is very specific and customized to a targeted group of people living in society. It also consists of moral goals, the traditions, and beliefs, customs, roles assignment of genders etc. that are existing in a society.
Culture revolves around the way gender is portrayed and is conveyed in the society. It is a fact that the sex of any person remains the same in any culture due to its biological justification. But the meaning of a particular sex in relation to that person's gender role in feminine and masculine context may vary from culture to culture. As different cultures incorporate different definitions of feminine and masculine which does not necessarily have to do anything with their sexes (Oakley, 2016). This is why the interpretation of gender in regard to sex might be different in a few cultures. The aspects of gender portrayal are very much related to the broad definition of culture as culture acts as a social construction in all the ways that also includes the designing and implementation of cultural policy.
Due to this reason, gender cannot be separately studied by ignoring the influence of society and culture on the formation of gender. Gender is equally connected with society as it is connected with culture in the form of gender socialization. Individuals are informed in the society about the rules and norms they must follow and the behavior they should display which are assigned to their sex and this whole process of gender socializing is called gender socialization. The process of gender socialization starts as early in the individuals' lives as childhood. It begins at birth, enhances during childhood development, reaches to intensity in adolescence and ultimately adds to gender inequalities in empowerment, education, income, and employment etc. The expectations of society are different for girls and boys when it comes to their attitude. More precisely, gender socialization is the inclination towards boys and girls to socialize differently (Kollmayer et al.,2018). Boys are often assigned to male gender role depicting strong and leadership position in society and girls are assigned the feminine role of caretaker and manager.
One of the ways through which society starts the gender socialization in early childhood is through toys marketing. Toys are marketed specifically to boys and girls penetrating in them the gender society has chosen for them. Toys retailers make toys in such a way that almost every toy is specific for a specific gender. For example, they make market specific toy products of girls to be the Barbie dolls, kitchen cooking set, makeup and jewelry set, hello kitty etc. While they make separate toys for boys like guns, superheroes, action figures, cars, monsters etc. They even perform gender-specific marketing for their gender-specific toys by promoting the pink color for girls and blue color for boys. In America, going through Toys R' Us or Meijer makes the people easily distinguish between the toys separately for boys and girls due to the separation of aisles in such a way. Walking through the aisles intended for marketing of girls toys will quickly make us realize the stereotyping done at this level by looking at pink and colorful packaging of toys, princess style outfits, tea sets and over makeup of Barbie dolls. The same will happen while visiting boys' aisles as noises will be hard, gunfire beeps sound from every corner and engine sounds etc. This is why it is clear to say that marketing is obviously done for both the genders.
Giving an example of barber commercial here, when the first commercial of a talking Barbie was launched. It was shown in the commercial that the Barbie is talking to her love interest male doll named Ken related to her interests in shopping and modeling. This stance clearly sends a message to the society that girls are stereotyped and are made to be beautiful in society to attract male attention. This is why girl's toys encourage the girls to incline towards their role of housekeeping, subordinates, cleaning etc. In contrast, boys are provided with the toys of a superhero and cars to give them an image of their earning, command and leadership, successful roles in the society.
Toys have a strong connection to promote the larger structures of patriarchy in US society. Patriarchy means male dominance in society and women as their subordinates. Toys promote patriarchy system in children in a way that the girl's toys are made to be sensitive e.g. hello kitty and Barbie dolls whereas boys toys are superheroes and giant monsters that shows males are in power in the society. Shaw and Lee also agreed that society is the one that has made a clear sex difference in gender through organizing them according to their stereotyping of sexes (Shaw & Lee, 2011). They said that an individual's culture changes his gender and forces him to act according to the role he is assigned to. In the social construction of gender article, Lorber also points out the same thing by giving examples of males who hold their baby in public and experience staring due to the fact that this role is given to women from the society. Society does gendering more often than it is realized (Lorber and Susan, 1991).
There are many ways society intervened in my role as a gender. Society often assigned me those roles that were not willingly undertaken by me and forced me to adjust according to their standards and definition of a male and a female. Gender socialization should be stopped and all the individuals should be free to choose their gender by their own choice because it is our basic right to live freely and not to give in to social expectations all the time.
Works Cited
Kollmayer, Marlene, Barbara Schober, and Christiane Spiel. "Gender stereotypes in education: Development, consequences, and interventions." European Journal of Developmental Psychology 15.4 (2018): 361-377.
Lee, Janet, and Susan Maxine Shaw. Women worldwide: Transnational feminist perspectives on women. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011.
Lorber, Judith, and Susan A. Farrell, eds. The social construction of gender. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1991.
Oakley, Ann. Sex, gender, and society. Routledge, 2016.
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