To what extent would you explain gender differences in terms of gender socialization?

We are living in the world with gender difference, though the difference is varied from one culture to another. Sociologists often explain gender difference in terms of the Nature and the Nurture Explanation. Nature Versus Nurture Explanation also called the Genetic versus Environmental Controversy, questions if the difference in behavior of male and female is due to their genetics (Nature) or their environment or ways of upbringing (Nurture). Some phenomenon of gender stereotypes is better explained by the Nature Explanation while most of them can be explained well by the Nurture Explanation. Though genetics do play a role in separating the actions and behaviors of males and females, it is only to a certain extent; most differences between the sexes are based on differential socialization of men and women. In this essay, it explains a little about the Nature Explanation but focus on the Nurture Explanation. It attempts to give validity to the nurture side by showing evidences that gender roles are a product of gender socialization. Firstly, it gives concrete examples of socialization in our daily lives. Then, the causes of gender difference and gender roles stereotypes will be examined by the Social Learning Theory and Cognitive Development Theory. At the end, the criticism of socialization and the recent change in socialization will also be stated. The Nature Explanation The Nature Explanation was proposed by Steven Goldbery. He argued that anthropological record shows that all human societies past and present have been patriarchies, that is, societies in which men dominate women. The majority of top positions and highest statuses are occupied by men rather than by women. Thus, Goldbery concluded that men are born with dominance. (Haralambos, 1995) Therefore, Biology, and hence genetics and hormones, serves as the answer to account for and give rise to masculinity1 and femininity2, for instance, men are more aggressive and competitive than female. The Nurture Explanation — Gender Socialization Is The Key Sociologists have also tried to open the door to the Nurture Explanation and prove that gender differences are the product of culture. Gender Socialization is one important field of the Nurture Explanation. Under the effect of socialization, male and female develop different personalities, aspirations and role expectation or even achievements in the society. 1) Examples of Gender Differences under Socialization Socialization is a gender-role model tried to specify the ways in which males and females are socialized to be what is considered masculine and feminine in a particular culture. (Abbott, 1992). Sociologists claim that we are under the effect of socialization through our life cycle. Some examples are given as follows: 1.1 Infant Socialization — Effect of Parents' Upbringing Certainly, it is difficult to distinguish between a boy baby and girl baby, apart by observing their difference in biological features. When they are being brought up, they have been unconsciously under the effect of gender socialization. It is believed that parents have great influences in extending the effects of socialization in the process of nurturing their children. For instance, boys are dressed in blue and girls in pink; girls wear dresses with hearts or flowers while boys wear super hero pajamas. 1.1.1 Toys and Games The parents' choice on toys for their children also reveals socialization. As children get older, parents reinforce gender roles by encouraging activities and choosing toys that are gender-specific. (Bryant & Check, 2000) — Girls play with Barbies dolls and kitchen sets while boys with Legos, trucks and motor cars. Toys for boys tend to encourage their exploration, manipulation, invention, construction, competition and aggression whereas girls' toys typically rate high on creativity, nurturance, and attractiveness. (Renzetti & Curran, 1998) Moreover, Parents, especially fathers, tend to engage in rougher and more physical play with sons. Moreover, even for story books and cartoons, men are always typically rewarded for being smart and brave heroes like Supermen and Spidermen; Girls are usually princess with good look and being gentle, warm and kind hearted. (Renzetti & Curran, 1998) 1.1.2 Emotional Expression and Altitudes Tthe parents socialize the boys by encouraging them from a very early age to express certain types of emotions but not others, like fearfulness. Research in 1974 and again in 1995 showed that parents, especially fathers, describe newborn girls as softer, finer-featured, smaller, weaker, and more delicate than boys. (Bryant & Check, 2000) In addition, they think that it is natural for boys to be ill-mannered and aggressive. They consider it as â€Å"energetic†. Yet girls have to be polite, gentle and quiet. All these observed behaviors are obviously not because of genetics and are not preceded when they were babies, it is the parents who think their sons should behave in these ways, and therefore they treat them in such a way that elicits these behaviors and altitudes. 1,2 Socialization of School Education Schools reinforce traditional gender roles in many ways. Boys are socialized to be more analytical, critical and scientific-minded. This accounts for the fact that boys dominate in Science subjects like Engineering, Computer Programming and Pure Sciences. Girls are socialized to be good at language, so larger proportion of girls study in Business Administration, Literature and Fine Arts. Concerning other special subjects in secondary schools, Woodwork is only available for boys whereas Home Economics is for girls only. This also creates a gender stereotypes that men must deal with heavy works but women must be learnt to do housework. 1.3 Socialization of Mass Media — Advertisements Advertisements not only sell products, but they also sell gender stereotypes. The models and photos appeared in the advertisements in newspaper and magazines are also carefully chosen to display cultural understandings about differences between male and female (Richardson, 1988): Women are chosen for selling household products and cosmetics while men selling luxurious cars, mobile phones and high technology products. Sometimes, Many advertisements even promote the product being user-friendly by saying that â€Å"Even housewives know how to use it!† They unconsciously convey a message to the public that women are intelligently inferior to men. To conclude, we have been consciously and unconsciously socialized in many aspects in our daily lives. Eventually, men develop masculinity: self reliant, independent, assertive, forceful and analytical; women develop femininity: affectionate, sympathetic, sensitive to other's need, understanding, compassionate, emotional, warm and tender. 2) Social Learning Theory and Gender Role Stereotypes Two theories have been put forward to explain gender socialization as well. They are the Social Learning Theory and the Cognitive Development. 1) Social Learning theory Mischel, Bandura and Walters have developed a theory of learning sexual identity known as Social Learning Theory. It is a behaviorlist theory that relies on reinforcement of the environment of the society and modeling explanations of behavior (Coltrane, 2001). Initially, there are few physiological or behavioral differences between males and females at birth. However, as boys and girls are treated differently and put into different learning environments by their parents, they learn the behaviours of both sexes by means of their observations. They are more likely to imitate the behaviors of his or her own sex. Eventually, they develop different needs, wants, desires, skills and temperaments and eventually give rise to masculine and feminine direction to the emotions and behaviours of men and women. Gender roles are defined â€Å"entirely social created expectation of masculine and feminine behaviour initiated and perpetuated by the institutions and values of a society† (Abbott, 1992), that is, by Socialization. Gender roles usually contain certain general characteristics. These characteristics include: i) The expectation of certain personality traits. ii) Social roles iii) Social positions and occupations In this section, it will focus on how social learning brings out gender difference in social roles and occupations. 2.1 Social learning in Social Roles Due to the traditional family structure which has been deep-rooted in people's mind, men always take up the role of fathers and breadwinners while women are mothers and housewives. As a result, men are socialized to be assertive, independent and strong so that they can be the â€Å"pillar of the family†. On the other hand, women are socialized to be gentle, warm, tender, sensitive and dependent to fulfill her jobs of taking care of their husbands as well as nurturing their children. At the same time, since parents serve as the primary models for their young children, children learn from their parents by seeing what their parents do. Thus, socialization continues to exert its effect through generations. If the mother always does all the cooking, the implication to their children is that this is women's work; if the father is always the one to climb on the roof and repair electrical appliances; children soon learn that this is men's job. (Abbott, 1992) Boys and girls thus imitate their fathers and mothers respectively by acquiring the same kind of skills and developing same personality traits. Research has found out that daughters directly internalize their mothers' attitudes because they perceive these attitudes to be realized in the practice of their mother's daily life. (Carine, 1998). The internalization of altitude of girls is stronger than that of boys as fathers have high chance to go out for work and lowers the chances for their boys to imitate. In addition, parents may consciously or unconsciously have special expectations of their boys and girls and attempt to teach a child appropriate gender role behaviour. Research shows that the more traditional the gender role attitudes of a mother, the stronger her tendency to emphasize a daughter's conformity, and the more traditional her daughter's attitudes appear to be a mother's conformist orientation substantially contributed to the extent in which daughters develop a more traditional view on gender roles. (Carine, 1998) 2,2 Gender Role Stereotypes in Occupation Gender is often attached to different social positions and occupations in several ways. This results in gender inequality in work (Haralambos, 1995): According to the Human Capital Explanation, Women are less committed to paid employment as women are generally not considered as â€Å"human capital3† by most employers. Employers believe that women, who has been socialized to be home-centred, marriage-centred and child-centre, are less committed to their work. Thus, they are often employed in the secondary labour market with lower pay, job security and promotion prospects. On the other hand, there are expected roles of men and women at work. For instance, in cultures of many countries, women are usually considered at jobs as nurses, social workers, flight attendants, domestic workers, etc because these jobs involve nurturing and sensitivity that are associated with femininity. (Abbott, 1992); by coincidence, most of the jobs associated with women rank lower in the society, thus people claim that women are being discriminated by taking up lower levels of the occupational hierarchy. For men, they are usually considered better engineers, politicians, bureaucrats as they are socialized to be more logical, rational, independent and capable. As a result, they are likely to take up professional roles in the society. Needless to say, for jobs that require excellent physical institution, like the Police Force and fire fighters, men always dominate. Women, even with accepted levels of physical institution and qualifications, are less welcomed, because female hav e been portrayed as the weaker sex. 3) Cognitive Development Theory A Cognitive Developmental Theory, advocated by Kohlbery, posits that children learn gender and gender stereotypes through their mental efforts to organize their social world. Kohlbery claimed that men and women are different and these differences constitute a central organizing principle of social life. The process is called gender polarization. The theory also views gender acquisition as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Children are active agents employing cognitive processes in understand the society and the world. Initially children understand their world by sorting objects and people into categories, one of the example is to organize information on the basis of gender categories. Children interpret and learn about gender stereotype and how to â€Å"do gender† in culturally appropriate ways in thinking and behaving. It is because as they gradually grow up, they understand that gender stereotype is central to the way the society is organized. (Coltrane. 2001) At the very early stage, a baby is not concerned with his or her gender identity. As the child gets older, he or she begins to develop an identity for him- or her-self and establishs a personality that reflects their masculinity or femininity. For example, boy and girl babies usually play with each other when they are very young, but they choose to play with other kids of the same sex starting form their Oedipal period (beyond age 3). Also, Boys are raised up by their mothers and they used to be under the clutches of their mothers. However, they want to be with their dad when they gradually grow up. They refuse to go shopping with their mothers anymore because they think that it is not something that a boy should do, according to their understanding about gender stereotype. If they play with children of the opposite sex, they are likely to be teased by their peers; if they act in such ways that do not match with their own sex, like boys wearing dresses and girls being aggressive and fighting with boys, their behavior will be considered as deviance and may even be condemned by the society. To conclude, in order to be considered as competent members of the society, men and must learn how to fit in appropriately as gender individuals. This is how cognitive development brings out gender differences. Criticism of Socialization Socialization is the evil for the rise of gender roles stereotypes, which may cause gender inequalities and many problems in the society. Throughout the history, all human societies have been patriarchies and androcentristic, that is, male are superior to female and male experience is the normative standard (Coltrane, 2001) Girls seem to accept a negative stereotype of their abilities. Research studies showed that even girls get better grades in the college than the boys do, they are less likely to believe that they can be more successful in a career (Abbott, 1992). Job segregation and alienation caused by gender role stereotypes greatly narrow the field of career that each sex can choose. Both men and women may be prevented form choosing certain careers that are considered as not suitable for their sex: Women find it difficult to be fire fighters and join and Police Force. Similarly, men's chances to be secretaries, nurses and flight attendants are much reduced even they are ambitious to do so. Therefore, socialization is to blame for limiting the potential development for both sexes. Regrettably, because of socializa tion, employment somehow counts on sex, but not ability. Men and women have been socialized to perform certain gender specific roles. These roles have been changing in the society at a relatively rapid pace, but the traditional value of gender role stereotypes is changing at the same rate. One vivid example is that women nowadays may earn more than their husbands do and provide for the families whereas men are forced to take up the role of doing housework and rearing children. Thus, negative consequences arise from resistance to these role changes. This imbalance of role and value change has large implications for the future of the stability of the family. The difficulty our society has with accepting these changing roles can cause strain between spouses which can ultimately lead to an increased divorce rate. Worse still, if the accepted traits of stereotypes do not match with a person's real inclination or characteristics, this could causes stress and leads to low self-esteem of both sexes for being unable to live up to an ideal masculinity and femininity. (Reiter, 1980) High degrees of competitiveness may lead to stress and violence in men; passivity and dependence may leave women unable to support themselves in a crisis. In more serious case, the problem can be fatal: Men have long been socialized to be strong and independent. The pressure to conform to traditional roles limits the emotional expression by men and hinders them from seeking assistance even when they encounter high level of psychological stress. This can explain the increased suicidal rate of men in recent decades. Changing Gender Role of Stereotypes However, as mentioned before, socialization occurs in different ways according to the time and the particular culture. When time changes, there are also changes in the forms of socialization. Firstly, there is an obvious change in pattern of the labour force. Women are getting more education and this makes the working opportunities to them more attractive. They can become professional like lawyers, doctors, accountant, engineer, etc. Today, many important government positions and even principal officers in Hong Kong have been taken up by women. For example, the former Chief Secretary for Administration, Mrs. Anson Chan, the former Secretary for Security, Mrs. Regina Ip and the Secretary for Justice, Ms. Elsie Leung are influential political figures in the society. Secondly, as women begin to marry later and are more likely to stay in the labour force longer, more employers are more confident and willing to employ female in the primary labour market which gives them higher income and promotion prospects. Lastly, because of the economic downturn, there is an increased participation in the work force. All these train women to be as competitive and capable as men in order to survive. Women are no longer expected to take up occupations at the lower level of the occupational hierarchy. In addition, there is also a slight change in the gender role in the family: Mothers have increasing power in the family, no matter in terms of finance and â€Å"administration†. Fathers are no longer as the only breed winner while mothers also contribute to the finance of the family. Similarly, housework is not considered as women's work anymore, but it is duty shared by both fathers and mothers. Besides, mothers have a say at home on all matters and involves in important decision making. Conclusion: Strike A Good Balance To conclude, many daily examples have proved that socialization is the evil for most cases of gender difference. It portrays the expected image of male and female in one culture and also restrict their thinking, behaviour and lives in a number of ways. As given in the previous paragraph â€Å"Criticism of Socialization†, many problems may arise when stereotypes are seen as ideals for behaviour which makes people follow blindly. It seems that socialization is an inevitable evil deep rooted in our norms and values. Thus, it is important to strike a balance: we can live under the effect of socialization but we should avoid serious gender stereotypes. Only by doing so, we can build up a healthy society where gender differences and inequality can be minimized.