Social Construction Of Gender In Modern Society
Over the years, society has found a way to develop, downgrade, and even stay still in some sort of grey area for a few years. But the thing is, there is no “grey area”. As a society, we are constantly evolving without notice. You don’t pay attention to police brutality until you witness the Black Lives Matter movement protests around you, nor do you start talking about the genocide in Yemen until you learn that lives have been taken. Everything in society is in constant change to shape the generations to come. Social construction couldn’t have existed if we hadn’t built it up-not without some sort of society at least. We are now faced with the consequences of those constructs. The main one being gender.
Many people confuse sex and gender, and can’t really grasp the idea of it. Although gender starts with the assignment of sex, it doesn’t just stop there. Sex is biologically assigned at birth, while gender is socially constructed and culturally developed into what it is now. Ever wonder why females are encouraged to wear pink? And males are pushed to wear blue? Our mind has set itself into this consensus reality where masculinity is associated with the color blue, cars, and cursing every two seconds. While femininity is defined by the color pink, modesty, and dolls. The idea of gender has been engraved into everyone’s mind by heavily influencing it via media, religion and family. Being in a gender binary system; gender roles where masculinity and femininity take place have affected the ranking of both sexes in their work place, their society and even their own home.
Society distributes power based on the organized definitions of gender. Gender stratification is only real because we have allowed it, it has embedded itself into society without much notice. In politics, women earned the right to vote in Kuwait only in 2005, while other countries like the United States of America have solved this dilemma by 1920. Women’s voices have only been heard recently in the world of politics, and even now it isn’t the best it can be. Gender has a role in this by giving an idea that it’s okay for women to be viewed as weak and uneducated, while men are powerful and strong willed. Although politics is a perfect way to describe gender stratification, women have also been victims of economic inequality. The gender pay gap has been a worldwide issue, where women are being paid less that their fellow men co-workers of the same ranking and education status. According to Ortiz-Ospina and Roser (2018), “Women tend to be underrepresented in senior managerial positions. ” The chart below shows that not many women have high-paying occupations compared to men. Communities across the world have been functioning mostly as a male oriented society where women have a sub-role that fits into whatever standard men wish for. Women are frequently humiliated when taught to be dependent on men when it comes to money and raising their children.
Globally, Iceland has topped the World Economic Forum’s survey for gender equality. Iceland is very passionate when it comes to gender equality and are in constant progression to become better and better. It is one of the first countries to legalize clinical abortions and public breastfeeding. As for Kuwait, although it has developed greatly regarding women’s rights, it is still discriminating them by enforcing laws towards women that are inapplicable to men. An example of these discriminatory laws includes that each child who is born of a Kuwaiti mother and foreign father is unable to obtain the Kuwaiti citizenship, meanwhile, Kuwaiti men who marry foreign women have the chance to naturalize their offspring and their wife as well. Each country has social standards that have to be met, even though in Iceland it is legal to abort, in Kuwait it will never be legalized due to the Islamic belief system. It is each country’s obligation to encourage women’s right whether it’s associated with their bodies, work, or overall well-being, especially nowadays where women are less timid about speaking in their own voice, without a male companion speaking for them.
Most cultures nowadays are patriarchies, there are more men that hold high ranking positions politically, socially, and economically. There is a slim to none chance of finding a matriarchy system around this time due to men holding power. Patriarchy and sexism go hand in hand mainly because you can’t have one without having the other going along with it. According to Rickabaugh (2013), “Sexism is prejudice against persons on the basis of their gender. ” Both of these issues correlate in regards that there wouldn’t even be a patriarchy system if there was no sexism to begin with. With every patriarchy system, men will feel entitled to women, which will ultimately result in more violence. More than six hundred million women live in countries where sexual violence is legal. Crazily enough, these laws whether they are enforced or not are made by men.
Women should have the equal right to decide these laws for themselves especially since they are the ones going through catcalling, domestic abuse, and harassment on a daily basis, but due to patriarchy, that is not the case. Women have become slaves for men, even if this system is non-existent society has taught women to bow down to men’s feet, and taught men to view females as a tool to satisfy their needs. When women make mistakes, they are bashed and shamed for their tardiness, and when men do the same it is passed by with the famous saying ‘boys will be boys’.
