Do gender roles still have relevence in our society today?

Great Debates
21

:smiley:

I don’t think the posters are saying anything at all. There are already women in every roll from construction workers to CEOs of big corporations. The only rolls I can think of that do not allow women are in the military. Yes, women should be able to try out for any job they want. They should not receive any special consideration, help or incentive.

I’m sorry, but this notion that all boundaries of gender rolls should be abolished is ridiculous. Maybe in your perfect world, everyone wears unisex jumpsuits and assexual haircuts.

Popular culture does not tell people how to act or think. It responds to what people are already interested in. If Cosmo wrote articles for women on drinking, sports and monster trucks and Maxim wrote articles for men about how to have hair like Brad Pitt and land that perfect wife, no one would read either magazine. In my expert opinion, men and women are already pre-programmed for certain things.

And what are the advantages of shattering these “gender rolls”? Are we better off with a world full of big butch women and efeminant men? I think not

By making them watch unpopular culture?
:confused:

22

Hey, no unnecessary slams on PBS now. :slight_smile: They’re my only source of wacky British humor.

Isn’t that oversimplifying, though? Being male is much more than monster trucks and sports and being female is more than the perfect hair cut and landing a husband. Or I hope.

I’m also not quite sure what you’re implying by “big butch women” and “efeminant men.” Even if we were living in a culture where that was the norm, I don’t see any inherent problems.

I’m not saying gender roles should be abolished. And I’m certainly not saying we should live in an “It’s Pat!” world either. What I’m saying is we shouldn’t be limited by what society tells us men and women are supposed to want. Yes, we should pay attention to our physical limitations, but just because women are “supposed” to feel guilty if they can’t find themselves a husband and a baby due to what the majority of our culture says doesn’t mean that they should. You’re saying that the media reflects our biology and our own desires, and if people want to do the traditional gender thing, that’s perfectly fine. It shouldn’t become what’s expected of everybody. Impressionable children shouldn’t grow up thinking there’s only one way.

Eonwe said:

Does that mean that women are typically passive? That is, just because men have traditionally run the business world doesn’t mean women aren’t suited for it. Society tells females that it’s often better to be passive and non-aggressive, but if we manage to get beyond what we’re told, I don’t think it matters who you are, as long as you have talent in whatever job you’re in.

23

When I’m in a public restroom, I have to admit that I just don’t pay attention to anyone else’s genitals. I never realized I’ve been using them incorrectly.

24

Warning: There is likely to be little new or interesting in this post, I just felt like piping up my thoughts.

I think that gender roles can be very useful in certain situations. Women, generally speaking (and this is at least partially biological in nature) are more nurturing and emotionally receptive. They have been hardwired by eons of evolution to be damned good at raising families, and those familial skills have applications in the real world. Women tend to make excellent psychologists and teachers, for example.

Men, generally speaking, tend to be analytical and curious. Men tend to make great scientists and mathematicians.

In addition, men are just flat-out stronger, on average. Thus, men are better suited for jobs like (as others have mentioned) policeman, fireman, construction worker, soldier, and so on. Both scientific (sorry, no cites available at the moment) and anecdotal evidence point to men and women gradually drifiting towards certain predictable interests.

I think that to actively discourage gender roles is to interfere with people making their own choices. If Little Tommy really wants that microscope for Xmas, I don’t think you should say, “Are you sure you don’t really want this Barbie, instead?” Let him have the microscope.

Now, of course, this isn’t to say that people should be pushed towards stereotypical interests. If Tommy wants the Barbie, let him have it. Similarly, I don’t think anyone should be prevented or discouraged from pursuing any career they choose… yet I also don’t think we should be launching large-scale campaigns to recruit a particular gender to a particular career. Just let things be, and things will naturally work themselves out. This will likely result in a lot of male policemen and a lot of women teachers. And that’s perfectly fine.

Now, one exception to this is that I don’t feel that women should be in the military in an active combat role. Not because there aren’t women who could kick ass and take names, but because having mixed male/female units creates very definite problems. Men are hardwired to protect women - again, evolution at work. As such, men are more likely to jeopardize a mission in order to save a female co-combatant than they are to save a male. Since this would, of course, lower the potential effectiveness of the unit, and since people’s lives are at stake here, I don’t think women should be allowed to be in any position where front-line combat is likely. Having women-specific and men-specific units would be prohibitively complicated (for reasons I won’t go into), and really isn’t worth the trouble. I have no problem with female officers outside of combat. They can be generals if they want, more power to them. Just not in combat.

Oh, with regards to bathrooms:

Keep them separated along biological lines. I agree that if a man really feels he needs to feel womanly, that’s his problem. However, if does a good job with his make-up, he can use the little girls’ room, and no one will be the wiser. :slight_smile:
Jeff

25

Gender roles will officially be irrelevant the day men and women are held to the same social standard of behavior and consequences. What I mean is that in many circumstances if a man were to behave in a particular manner toward me I would see not even a raised eyebrow if I punched him in the snoot. The moment the same is true of women as a rule then we will have made a giant leap for socail equality.

(Disclaimer: I’m not for punching folks out in general, but I’m not a fellow who by nature turns the other cheek either. My point is to shockingly illustrate the disparity by pointing out a common taboo. Just look at how extreme a female villain in even a fictional film has to be to warrant a punchout, while a generic male baddie is routinely beaten to death or neck-snapper or whatnot.)

26

[ul][li]First that is about the most gender biased statement that anyone could make.[/li]Second, it is not the truth. I ran a company and as mandated by law we had restrooms for our employees (female & male). The men’s room was seldom a problem, but the women’s room was almost always dirty. You can make remarks all you want about men peeing on the floor. I will leave to your power of deduction some of the messes women can make. I am not the only one that has had this experience. That’s 25 years of experience, not bias.[/ul]

27

kniz, believe me, I’ve seen what women can do to a bathroom. (Go to the women’s restroom at any public facility in Chicago and you can too.) There have been some damn good pit rants about this sort of thing.

I do know that there is a seriously unpleasant odor emanating from the men’s restrooms at work that is usually absent from the women’s restrooms. I’ve always attributed that to the presence of urinals. But I’ve never been in the men’s restrooms so I can’t say for sure.

28

Most of the time when that happens it is because the urinals don’t flush sufficiently. There are slobs that throw cigarettes in them (gum, etc.). I cured this with a sign placed where they were reading it during the act. The sign more or less degraded those that were not neat. It worked like a charm.

29

Not typically necessarily, but traditionally. So, to rephrase what I was trying to say, is are we, as a male dominated society, bringing about “equality” by subverting female gender roles.

Or yet another way (striving for clarity here :slight_smile: ), men have viewed themselves as better and more capable than women (as have women to a large degree) so are women being encouraged to abandon old behaviour and act more like men, while men are not really being encouraged at all to act like women, which was the “lesser” and “weak” way to be anyway?

Hope this clarifies my question. The lateness of the hour is already clouding my vision.

30

Ah, I think I see your point. What you’re saying is that by trying to make things equal, we’re just putting more females in traditionally male roles. Opening up roles in corporations and law firms for women, that sort of thing. But conversely, we’re not encouraging men to stay at home, raise their children.

In other words, we’re trying to bring about equality, but in a seemingly sexist way. By establishing equality by encouraging females to do the previously forbidden male-things, we’re assuming that those things are inherently better. Sort of how women pushed for the right to go to (previously) single sex Ivy League colleges, not many guys have broken down the doors to enter the all female Seven Sisters. Well, except for the co-ed Vassar, but that’s not the point here.

I suppose if you think about it, equalizing by only putting emphasis on what males did is just as bad. Both of these roles are different but both are significant. That’s really good- but I hope I got it right this time? :slight_smile:

31

Zoggie: Yeah, you got the nail on the head. Why do we assume that men currently hold the desired gig? No matter where yopu stand “the grass is always greener”.
I am willing to take over a traditional stereotypical female role of homebody/cook/cleaner/sexual object but I am having a hell of a time getting anyone to take me seriously. I keep shouting “This is for equality dammit!!” but it just isn’t working.

32

Zoggie, that’s it exactly. And not just in terms of career paths and choices. I think it’s fair to say that in the past we have expected women to be passive, kind (to the point of being “soft”), flexible thinkers, strong emoters, and all sorts of other feminine behaviors. I’d also suggest that another part of “equalizing” the sexes has been to try to erradicate many of those feminine behaviors. So, instead of embracing all people, men and women, who are overly compassionate, for example, we consider them weak, while “toughness” and objectivity in the face of tradgedy, traditionally male behaviors, are encouraged.

33

Cool. Yeah, that is true. Showing emotion and such shouldn’t be considered a bad thing, necessarily. Dr. William Pollack’s book Real Boys pretty much illustrates that gender roles can restrict both boys and girls (with an emphasis on boys), by basically showing how society frowns upon men losing face, or being emotional.

Neither men nor women should be restricted. That is, guys should be allowed to show emotion, IMHO, and women should be allowed to take on strong (for lack of a better word) characteristics. And both genders should be allowed to freely mix. To take on traits that are right for that individual, rather than just do what they are supposed to do. And I think that the society as a whole shouldn’t consider one characteristic better than another. Just because something has been previously considered feminine (i.e., being able to read emotions well), it shouldn’t be deemed unimportant.

34

Men are allowed to show emotion. Just because the rest of us do not join in in some Oprah-esque cry-in does not take away that ability.

What many of you are proposing simply goes against natural human instincts.

No major society of antiquity that I can think of has ever wanted more womanly-men or manly-women. For good reason; Each sex is better at certain roles.

Women are traditionally seen as more nurturing and whatnot because they are! Men cannot carry children to term, or breastfeed them. Throughout nature, the vast majority of mammalian females (especially in the primate world) tend to the young, humans included. There is nothing ‘narrow-minded’ about it.

Men are seen as aggressive and, in the human experience, as ‘providers’. Sure, on average we die younger because of it, but the traditional man protects and provides for his family. Nothing should be more important to a man then to see to it that his wife is provided with the resources to raise his genetic offspring.

Of course there are proper gender roles for both men and women; The fact that the PC crowd wants to ignore them does not make those roles any less relevant or important.

I would even say that with the rise of ‘feminism’, and its empty promises of equality, we have seen the decline of the family. Divorce rates are over 50%, etc.

35

Actually, it is possible for men to breastfeed. It usually requires the assistance of drugs, but in some rare cases diet alone is enough.

36

KellyM,
Uh, I’d ask for cite, but I really don’t want to risk seeing a picture of that…

37

At the risk of taking this thread in an irrelevant direction, I have to point out that not only is the divorce rate not over 50 percent, but the divorce rate itself is often bandied about (typically by political conservatives) in extremely misleading ways.

The fact is that the divorce rate in American society, expressed in terms of the number of divorces per 1,000 population, has stayed remarkably consistent during the last century. According to this PDF file from the National Center for Health Statistics, the divorce rate has hovered right around 2-4 divorces per 1,000 people for most years.

During what’s arguably the first wave of feminism, following publication of The Feminine Mystique in 1963, there was really no noticeable rise in the divorce rate. It only really began to rise around 1969, peaking around 1980, and began declining and stabilizing after that. The divorce rate in 1990 (4.7/1,000) is essentially the same as it was in 1946 (4.6/1,000).

Throwing around divorce rate figures also assumes facts not in evidence. For example:

–The rate for any given year counts a couple who were married and divorced that year the same as a couple that was married for 30 years and then divorced. The two cases are obviously not the same and should not be considered the same.

–The historical rate also counts serial marriers like Donald Trump or Elizabeth Taylor the same as two people who married, divorced, and never remarried anyone else.

–It ignores all sorts of other criteria. For example, as anecdotal data, my parents were married for 19 years before they were divorced. Afterwards, both became involved in long-term relationships with other people. My father has now been married for 18. My mother never remarried, but has lived with her boyfriend and maintained a household for 13 years. Six people, three couples, two marriages, one divorce. That microcosm yields a divorce rate of 50%, but doesn’t tell the whole story.

There’re a whole lot of other problems with the divorce rate, but suffice to say that it really doesn’t say a darned thing about “the decline of the family.” I won’t even bother to address the unspoken “etc.” unless Brutus cares to expand on it.

38

Why would the decline of the family be a bad thing? People who divorce probably should not stay together.

39

Agreed, Sterra. Especially in abusive relationships.

Where to begin? I don’t think there is any such thing as a “proper” gender role in our society anymore. A guy may not want to marry and start a family. He might be celibate. He may not care about passing on his genes to his wife if they decide to adopt. And if he’s gay, he’s certainly not going to be worried about passing on his genes to a wife. :slight_smile:

In other words, a guy doesn’t have to concern himself with being a good patriarch any more than a woman has to stay home and have babies. Nature may have intended one thing, but we have free-will. We’ve got non-traditional (for lack of a better word) families. I don’t think these old gender roles, in which the man was the bread-winner and the woman was the primary care-giver, are as important. Now we have families made up sometimes of two men, two women, one woman…as well as families with a husband, wife, and kids.

So what I’m saying is how is it bad that traditional gender roles are being challenged? Why allow them to limit ourselves, when we can made decisions without letting our gender hinder us? And is this necessarily the fault of PC crowds or are they just the easiest scapegoat?

40

Even gay men seem to want to pass on their genes, as evidenced by the gay couple awaiting quadruplets . In a sense, we exist only to pass on our genes, and Nature seems to see to it that the drive to do so exists, even in some unusual cases.

There was an excellent show on Animal Planet just now (2am EST, the website should give the shows name), regarding ‘play’. And human boys, true to form, ran in packs, had open and discernable means of picking an Alpha, were rough and smelly, etc.
The girls, on the other hand, wanted to play house, pretend to be mothers, and everything nice. These kids were ~3 years old.

There are simply things that women and men tend to be better at then the opposite sex; To ignore our evolutionary heritage seems foolish. A look at children playing would tell you that we naturally fall into our respective roles.

I would be interested to hear from a gay doper, though. Do gay couples have a ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ aspect to them? Does the partners fall into one of the two roles, sort of?