Understanding Gender Roles: Societal Perspectives and Equality Movements

1. Chapter 4 Gender and FamilyKey Terms

2. SexThe biological aspect of being male or female. • RoleCulturally defined expectations that an individual is expected to fulfill in a given situation in a particular culture.

3. Gender role The role a person is expected to perform as a result of being male or female in a particular culture. • Gender-role stereotypesRigidly held and oversimplified beliefs that males and females, as a result of their sex, possess distinct psychological and behavioral traits.

4. Gender role behaviorsActual activities or behaviors that we or others engage in as males and females. • Gender identityRefers to being male or female.

5. Patriarchal societiesSocieties in in which males dominate political and economic institutions and exercise power in interpersonal relationships. • Egalitarian societiesSocieties in which women and men enjoy similar amounts of power and neither dominates the economic or political institutions.

6. Matriarchal societiesSocieties in in which females dominate political and economic institutions and exercise power in interpersonal relationships. • Bipolar gender roleIn this model, males and females are seen as polar opposites, with males possessing exclusively instrumental traits and females possessing exclusively expressive ones.

7. Sexual orientationThe nature of someone’s sexual preference, be it for partners of the same or opposite sex or both. • Social constructAn idea or concept created by society through the use of social power.

8. Gender TheoryAsserts that society may be best understood by how it is organized according to gender and that social relationships are based on the socially perceived differences between females and males that are used to justify unequal power relationships.

9. Gender-resistant feminismAdvocates more radical, separatist strategies for women out of the belief that their subordination is too embedded in the existing social system. • Gender-role attitudeRefers to the beliefs we have regarding appropriate male and female personality traits and activities.

10. Social learning theoryDerived from behaviorist psychology and its emphasis on observable events and their consequences rather than internal feelings and drives. • ModelingLearning through imitation.

11. Cognitive development theory Focuses on the child’s active interpretation of the messages he or she receives from the environment. • PeerA child’s age-mates.

12. Post-gender relationshipRelationships lived outside the constraints of gender expectations. • Gender-rebellion feminismTends to emphasize overlapping and interrelated inequalities of gender, sexual orientation, race, and class.

13. Social feminismThe belief that workplace and family supports are essential if women are to experience a high quality of life. • Profeminist men’s movementProfeminist men believe that men ought to share responsibilities within their households and that women and men ought to be equal partners. Also, profeminists argue that men and children would both benefit from closer connections between fathers and their children.