A gender role, or sex role, is a social norm deemed appropriate or desirable for individuals based on their gender or sex, and is usually centered on societal views of masculinity and femininity.
The specifics of these gendered expectations may vary across cultures, while other characteristics may be common across many cultures. In addition, gender roles (and perceived gender roles) vary based on a person's race or ethnicity.
Gender roles influence a wide range of human behavior, often including the clothing a person chooses to wear, the profession a person pursues, the manner in which a person approaches things, the personal relationships a person enters, and how they behave within those relationships. Although gender roles have evolved and expanded, they have traditionally kept women in the "private" sphere and men in the "public" sphere.
Various groups, most notably feminist movements, have led efforts to change aspects of prevailing gender roles that they believe are oppressive, inaccurate, and sexist.
Background
A gender role, also known as a sex role,Levesque R.J.R. (2011) Sex Roles and Gender Roles . In: Levesque R.J.R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Adolescence. Springer, New York, NY. . Retrieved 22 January 2018. is a social role encompassing a range of behaviors and attitudes that are generally considered acceptable, appropriate, or desirable for a person based on that person's sex. Gender roles can be linked with essentialism, the idea that humans have a set of attributes that are necessary to their identity based on their gender. Sociologists tend to use the term "gender role" instead of "sex role", because the sociocultural understanding of gender is distinguished from biological conceptions of sex. There are multiple theories that explain how gender roles can affect different aspects of everyday life.
In the sociology of gender, the process whereby an individual learns and acquires a gender role in society is termed gender socialization.
Gender roles are culturally specific, and while most cultures distinguish only two (boy/man and girl/woman), others recognize more than two. Some non-Western societies have three genders: men, women, and a third gender.See also: Trumbach, Randolph (1994). London's Sapphists: From Three Sexes to Four Genders in the Making of Modern Culture. In Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History, edited by Gilbert Herdt, 111–36. New York: Zone (MIT). Buginese society has identified five genders. Androgyny has sometimes also been proposed as a third gender. An androgyne or androgynous person is someone with qualities of both the male and female gender. Some individuals identify with no gender at all."LGBTQ Needs Assessment" (PDF). Encompass Network. April 2013. pp. 52–53. Retrieved 6 March 2015.
Many transgender people identify simply as men or women, and do not constitute a separate third gender. Biological differences between (some) trans women and cisgender women have historically been treated as relevant in certain contexts, especially those where biological traits may yield an unfair advantage, such as sport.
Gender role is not the same thing as gender identity, which refers to the internal sense of one's own gender, whether or not it aligns with categories offered by societal norms. The point at which these internalized gender identities become externalized into a set of expectations is the genesis of a gender role.
Theories
Sex differences in psychology can be explained by various theories, see possible causes. According to the theory of social constructionism, gendered behavior is mostly due to the social construction of gender. Other theories such as evolutionary psychology disagree with that position.
Most children learn to categorize themselves by gender by the age of three. From birth, in the course of gender socialization, children learn gender stereotypes and roles from their parents and environment. Traditionally, boys learn to manipulate their physical and social environment through physical strength or dexterity, while girls learn to present themselves as objects to be viewed.Cahill, S. E. (1986). Language practices and self-definition: The case of gender identity acquisition. The Sociological Quarterly vol. 27, issue 3, pp 295–311 Social constructionists argue that differences between male and female behavior are better attributable to gender-segregated children's activities than to any essential, natural, physiological, or genetic predisposition.
A 2024 study researched the social construction of gender. The author, V.J. Daniels, discussed the relationship between the gender pay gap and social construction. She looked at the gendered language in different statutes and cognitive dissonance. The author examined whether there was gendered language in literature and in laws governing equal pay. The second part of her research question was to see if the gendered language in these laws, acts, and literature affected how individuals' experiences. The author found that in the Equal Pay Act of 1963, gendered language was strongly feminine, whereas in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Paycheck Fairness Act (2021–22), it was strongly masculine. In total, there were more masculine words than feminine. The results of the interview portion of the study indicated that the male interviewee had a high Bem score, meaning he expected his needs to be heard in his home life and at work. The women who were interviewed had a low score, meaning they did not expect their needs to be listened to in their home life and workplace.
As an aspect of role theory, gender role theory "treats these differing distributions of women and men into roles as the primary origin of sex-differentiated social behavior, [and posits that] their impact on behavior is mediated by psychological and social processes." According to Gilbert Herdt, gender roles arose from correspondent inference, meaning that general labor division was extended to gender roles.
Social constructionists consider gender roles to be hierarchical and patriarchal. The term patriarchy, according to researcher Andrew Cherlin, defines "a social order based on the domination of women by men, especially in agricultural societies".
According to Eagly et al., the consequences of gender roles and stereotypes are sex-typed social behavior because roles and stereotypes are both socially shared descriptive and prescriptive norms.Eagly, A. H. (2004). Prejudice: Toward a more inclusive understanding. In A. H. Eagly, R. M. Baron, & V. L. Hamilton (Eds.), The social psychology of group identity and social conflict: Theory, application, and practice (pp. 45–64). Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association.
Conflicts between aspects of gender roles result in gender role conflicts.
Major theorists
Talcott Parsons Working in the United States in 1955, Talcott ParsonsFranco-German TV Station ARTE , Karambolage, August 2004. developed a model of the nuclear family, which, at that time and place, was the prevalent family structure. The model compared a traditional contemporaneous view of gender roles with a more liberal view. The Parsons model was used to contrast and illustrate extreme positions on gender roles, i.e., gender roles described in the sense of Max Weber's ideal types (an exaggerated and simplified version of a phenomenon, used for analytical purposes) rather than how they appear in reality. Model A described a total separation of male and female roles, while Model B described the complete dissolution of gender roles.Brockhaus: Enzyklopädie der Psychologie, 2001. Model A – Total role segregation Model B – Total integration of roles Education Gender-specific education: a high professional qualification is important only for men. Co-educative schools, same content of classes for girls and boys, same qualification for men and women. Profession The workplace is not the primary domain for women; career and professional advancement are deemed unimportant to them. For women, a career is just as important as for men; equal professional opportunities for men and women are necessary. Housework Housekeeping and child care are the primary functions of the woman; participation of the man in these functions is only partially wanted. Both parties to the marriage do all housework in equal shares. Decision making In case of conflict, man has the last say, for example, in choosing the place to live, the choice of school for children, and buying decisions. Neither partner dominates; solutions do not always follow the principle of finding a concerted decision; status quo is maintained if disagreement occurs. Child care and education Woman takes care of the largest part of these functions; she educates children and cares for them in every way. Man and a woman share these functions equally.
The model is consciously a simplification; individuals' actual behavior usually lies somewhere between these poles. According to the interactionist approach, gender roles are not fixed but are constantly renegotiated between individuals.
John Money "In the 1950s, John Money and his colleagues took up the study of intersex individuals, who, Money realized, 'would provide invaluable material for the comparative study of bodily form and physiology, rearing, and psychosexual orientation'." Money coined the term gender role, which he defined in a seminal 1955 paper as "all those things that a person says or does to disclose himself or herself as having the status of boy or man, girl or woman."
The team concluded that gonads, hormones, and chromosomes did not automatically determine a child's gender role.Fausto-Sterling, Anne (2000). Sexing the body: gender politics and the construction of sexuality. New York: Basic Books. . In other words, children do not have a gender role, which is often assigned by society. Money's 1955 definition of 'gender role' was closer to gender identity or expression.
West and Zimmerman
Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman developed an interactionist perspective on gender that goes beyond the construction of "roles." For them, gender is "the product of social doings of some sort undertaken by men and women whose competence as members of society is hostage to its production." Elisabeth K. Kelan describes this approach as an "ethnomethodological approach" which analyzes "micro interactions to reveal how the objective and given nature of the world is accomplished," suggesting that gender does not exist until it is empirically perceived and performed through interactions. West and Zimmerman argued that the use of "role" to describe gender expectations conceals the production of gender through everyday activities. Furthermore, they stated that roles are situated identities, such as "nurse" and "student," which are developed as the situation demands, while gender is a master identity with no specific site or organizational context. For them, "conceptualizing gender as a role makes it difficult to assess its influence on other roles and reduces its explanatory usefulness in discussions of power and inequality." West and Zimmerman consider gender an individual production that reflects and constructs interactional and institutional gender expectations.
Judith Butler