Gender Inequalities (Gender Dysphoria)

Name: slshepley

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Product:	Gender Dysphoria
Date:	09/11/04 (472 review reads)
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Whilst studying for my degree in Finance I read a module of Behavioural Science for which I was asked to do some research into gender inequalities in the UK. For the benefit of readers I thought it would be a good idea to post my article to offer some understanding of why people react in the ways that they do to gender questions.

Gender is one of the few things that can be used to stratify people in every society around the world regardless of culture or religion. In Britain it has become somewhat traditional that it is the men that go out to work and are the breadwinners whereas the women are expected to stay at home, carry out the household duties and look after the children. This essay will look at the extent to which gender inequalities affect our society and will try to establish reasons for them by discussing the different theories that have been suggested.

To begin, it is important that a distinction is made between gender and sex as it is often the case that these are confused. Sex is genetically determined and refers to the biological differences between a man and a woman. Gender refers to masculinity and femininity – the socially constructed differences that we generally associate with being male or female.

Up until the 1930s when Mead carried out research into gender, it was regarded that gender roles are determined biologically as a result of the sex of a person. Mead looked at remote African tribes and discovered that they didn’t all act in the way that we generally accept as being normal. In some of these tribes, Mead noted that it was the women that hunted for food whilst the men stayed at home and looked after the children. In other tribes Mead saw that men and women played equal roles. From her research Mead concluded that in the case of gender roles, the nature versus nurture question could be answered. Her research showed that it was not possible for gender roles to be a natural occurrence.

Sociologists take the view that it must be socialisation that influences the way a person develops to be masculine or feminine. There are a number of different ways that a person can be influenced including family influences, especially as a child. Children in Western societies are brought up to have masculine views and characteristics by their parents if they are boys because that it what is traditional. A boy will look at his father as a role model and will learn to act like him. This is also the case with young girls who will look to their mothers for advice, taking into account her social standing and the roles that she plays in the family.

Another influence on children is school. It has been shown that teachers expect more from the boys in their class than they do from the girls even though it is often the girls who perform better in exams – this may be partly because it is they that are expected to be the breadwinners when they reach adulthood. In school as well as at home and for adults as well as children, peer groups play a very large role in gender determination. It is only very recently that homosexuality has started being accepted in Britain because of the strong views that Britons have about gender. This is reflected very often by peer groups who will put pressure on individuals to act in the traditional ways.

One of the most influential influences is the mass media. From a very young age people see on television what is expected of them as adults in the way of gender roles. Soap operas show children that it is the woman that looks after the children and adventure films often show the men as being the stronger character who goes out to work in a very masculine job.

It is difficult to look at gender discrimination in society as a whole because in many societies it is so widely accepted that it is normal for the women to take up feminine roles. A much easier approach to looking at gender discrimination is to look at it in the workplace by comparing firstly the numbers of workers and the roles that they are employed in.

In Britain there is a social division of labour whereby women are employed in jobs that reflect their traditional household roles such as care and nursing. Men on the other hand enjoy a much wider range of jobs. Also, it can be noted that women often work part-time so that they can still carry out their family roles in bringing up the children and taking care of the household duties.

In managerial roles women are noticeably underrepresented. For example, sixty-four per cent of the Barclays Bank workforce is female compared with only seven per cent of its top managers. This low representation in management roles has been partly attributed to women giving up their jobs to have children or only working part-time so that they can still look after the home, but there is also an element of male prejudice. In the corporate world it is often viewed that women cannot cope with management roles as well as men can and it is also the case that men are often unwilling to work for female managers.

Only a half of one per cent of all chief executives, one per cent of surgeons and just eighteen per cent of MP’s – the body that is supposed to represent the country - in Britain are female. A recent survey of the 100 most powerful people in Britain included only seven women.

Recent research by the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) shows that senior decision makers have a good understanding of the basic issues of gender inequality. It also shows however that these senior decision makers feel that enough is being done to tackle the problem. In its research findings the EOC suggests that complacency may be one of the reasons why gender inequalities still exist (EOC research findings into senior decision makers and inequality available at www.eoc.org.uk/eoceng/eocs/research) in that the people who have the power to make changes simply cannot be bothered trying to tackle the problem.

There are a number of different theories that try to explain why there is such a split between genders and why gender inequalities exist even in modern societies. Feminism is one such theory. Feminism is “aimed principally at exposing the inadequacies of existing ‘malestream’ theories” (Bilton et al, 1997, pg. 91) - i.e. those theories that suggest that men should be the dominant sex. Radical feminists have a strong patriarchal view in that they blame men for the subordinate position of women. Socialist feminists have a view that is more widely accepted than that of the radicals. They see capitalism as the principal cause of women’s oppression and exploitation by taking the view that men view women as cheap labour. Another and the most accepted feminist theory is that of the liberal feminists. This theory shares the same basic ideas as the other two but is more liberal in that it blames culture, the socialisation process and the sexist attitudes of men for the disadvantaged position of women in society rather than just men. The fact that liberal feminism is based on some ideas that are well established, researched and documented about gender inequalities and its liberal approach at a solution make this theory a sound one. Liberal feminists understand that gender inequalities have come about through years of social learning and so seek to encourage changes in attitudes towards women to solve the problem.

Marx offers a different evaluation of gender inequalities than that of the feminists. “Typical Marxist analyses of social life in modern industrial capitalist societies seek to demonstrate that the ways people live will always have benefits for capitalism” (Bilton et al (1997, pg. 510). Hence, Marx has the idea that it is good for capitalism that women stay at home and look after the children. This approach does have some grounding in that it would not be possible for men to go out to work and keep the economy alive if there was nobody at home to look after the children and carry out the household chores.

Marx also offers the view that it is not only good for capitalism that women stay at home and thus provide a cheap source of labour, but society makes it difficult for anything else. He says that one of the main factors in determining a woman’s place is social learning of the roles that women are supposed to play. However Marx does not offer any reasoning, except for the basic ideas that men are viewed to be the stronger sex and should bring home the bread, as to why it should be the women that are discriminated against. Although it may have been the case up until the middle of the twentieth century that workers in Britain needed to be strong, this is not the case anymore as jobs have become less labour intensive.

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