Introduction
The notion of gender has stirred people’s minds for centuries. Diverse approaches have been elaborated to explain how genders are formed, considering the biological, psychological, and social differences between males and females. This paper hypostatizes that gender is primarily a social concept because gender roles are assigned to society members based on the perceptions and stereotypes people hold for males and females alike. Moreover, gendered patterns followed by the more significant part of the populace determine social roles for both men and women.
The Social Constructs of Gender: Key Reasons for Its Primacy as a Social Concept
The Impact of Societal Role Assignment on Gender from Early Childhood
Firstly, from early childhood, boys and girls are assigned different societal roles. These differences are not biologically conditioned but socially constructed to fit the growing generation to the roles society assigns to its members. Thus, as a rule, girls are encouraged to be kind and supportive, while boys are inspired to face challenges and assume leadership roles. Grounded in history, where women mostly stayed at home with children and men provided for the family, these perceived social roles are instilled in infants and teenagers. Later, to fit these roles, women are encouraged to choose the profession of educators working with children.
In contrast, men are encouraged to become engineers as they are believed to be good at invention (Valentine et al., 2019). The ideas of emphasized femininity and male dominance often serve to hold women in subordinate positions and are not biologically grounded. The world has seen several women leaders more successful than men in similar positions.
The Role of Stereotypes in Shaping Gender Differences and Inequalities
Secondly, the interplay of differences and inequalities fosters the pattern of gendered stereotypes expressed through diverse means. Patterns are “regularized, prepackaged ways of thinking, feeling, and acting in society” and can be seen in all walks of life (Valentine et al., 2019, p. xv). One such pattern is the color schema used to dress boys and girls. Thus, in the US, it is appropriate for girls to wear pink and for boys to be dressed in blue. There is no biological or logical ground for such a differentiation. However, it persists as part of gender stereotypes.
Biological Arguments Against the Social Construct of Gender
The opponents of the social view on gender claim that gender is a biologically grounded construct. They understand gender as a set of biological characteristics of a person that includes a range of physiological features of the human body based on gender differences (Valentine et al., 2019). This view holds that the differences in the physical construction of men and women determine their psychological characteristics and gender roles. Thus, the proponents of this view believe that men should be given intellectual work. Their brain is more significant, and they do physical work because they are more robust. Women, as a weaker gender, should, therefore, be entrusted with housework.
While, in many ways, this view underpins the postulates expressed in the perception of gender as a social concept, the ideas it holds are poorly grounded. Thus, it has been found that a man’s brain holds the same proportion in a man’s body as a woman’s brain in her body. Therefore, both sexes can have similar intelligence (Valentine et al., 2019).
Physiological characteristics also vary across the population; one can find men devoid of any strength and women who exhibit particular physical strength and endurance. Moreover, while few people would argue against the natural differences in men’s and women’s physic, it is not the main characteristic that defines gender. Gender is a social construct because it holds certain expectations for females and males, which both sexes may successfully fulfill.
Conclusion
Thus, there is no reason why men cannot be educators and women cannot be engineers or why people of different sexes cannot wear clothes of the same color, blue or pink. However, these stereotypes are deeply entrenched in the social conscience and are not easily unrooted. This entrenchment, expectations, and stereotypes finally define a person’s way of life since an average individual is more guided by social expectations than hormones. Therefore, gender as a social construct gets the upper hand over gender as a biological concept.
Reference
Valentine, C. G., Trautner, M. N., & Spade, J. Z. (Eds.). (2019). The kaleidoscope of gender: Prisms, patterns, and possibilities. Sage Publications. Web.