Let your son play with dolls
And daughter with race cars!
Even if you are not aware about the concept of Gender Socialization, it is most likely that this concept has germinated in you at birth, intensified during adolescence and today you are under its influence. Knowingly or unknowingly, you have passed on your beliefs about what constitutes gender specific behaviour and traits to others. As a result, there exists gender inequalities in education, employment, income, empowerment and other outcomes during adolescence and later in life. Lett’s go for a short ‘Traits Characterisation Test’. There is a list of traits attached below. All you have to do is, mark the appropriate gender, which clicks your mind the first and you find that gender associated with that trait. Are you ready? Here we go!
So, what was the result? Passed to be a Stereopticon or failed to be a Gender Neutral? I am highly sure that most of you would have passed with flying colours, and will keep adding feathers to your glory. Having said that, there comes into play the need to define Gender Socialization.
“Gender Socialisation is a process by which individual develops, refines and learns to ‘do’ gender through internalizing gender norms and roles as they interact with the agents of socialization, such as their family, social networks and other social institutions.”
Do you ever wonder how girls are expected to wear a certain colour and look feminine during early childhood? These expectations escalate to even higher benchmarks as the same girl grows up to be a woman.
Fun Fact: Pink was a ‘Boy’s colour until the 1940’s!
Boys on the other hand are expected to be wild and tough. We all must have heard about that one ‘norm’ which is utmost common - “Boys don’t cry”; in addition to the list of norms that have been blatantly imposed in the society since ages. Even worse, to this day, where women cricketers are wearing blue and men are flaunting pink jerseys on the field, we have regressively boring baby showers on the same old blue-pink boy-girl theme! Now what comes into play here is “Differential Reinforcement”.
Differential Reinforcement
The reinforcement of the gender roles and the stereotypes begins through teaching by parents, when a mother asks her daughter to not lift heavy objects perceiving she can’t do that and calling her brother to it instead; pressure by people, when a boy is made to perform certain spiritual rites which a girl cannot do; Institutions imparting teaching to behave in a certain way, when there are set standards of uniform for school boys and girls, to list a few. It would be an eighth wonder when daughters would be encouraged to ride bikes and that sons can go to take dance lessons! There are numerous flavours in thoughts one would find when it comes to Gender Identity.
“If a girl looks like her mother, has good hair, light complexion and a ‘good’ nose; she can grow up to be a helping hand to her mother and take care of her siblings. Not to forget, boys also attract comments, but they typical focus on their ability to defend the clan. “He looks stronger and will defend his family and kinship.”
Agents of Socialization:
The examples show how gender socialization is reinforced by the “agents of socialization”, who in turn are influenced by factors such as the socio-economic conditions of a country, gendered and political structures, social and cultural norms, the global media, and their own local communities. To list a few more agents:
Parents
Other people
Toys
Books
Television
Teachers and school
It is yet a generous appeal to the masses to “let toys be toys” not your instrument of gendering thoughts.
Inculcate such approaches to provide your children with less traditional concepts and less divisions between what it means to be a boy and a girl. A key recommendation is to make use of the structural level and develop programmes and policies that complement these shifts to achieve greater gender equity. Looking for these openings to influence gender socialization during adolescence is particularly important as today’s adolescents are pivotal to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and their gender attitudes and outcomes will influence future generations. Let us sanitize our mind-set for an era when-
Every time a girl tries to lift something that seems to be heavy, her mother doesn’t scream at her to stop and calls her brother to come to lift that object.
Every time a father is doing outdoor activities such as camping, fishing, or hiking he calls his daughter for assisting him
Every time a boy tries to help his mother in the kitchen, just absorb the scene with a normalcy.
Every time a boy who will cry after being hated by her sister; his father doesn’t yell at him "stop acting like a little girl"
Every time a girl's parents buy her for Christmas a doll, a house filled with kitchen accessories, don’t presume that maintaining the house will be her job as a woman.
Author-
Antisha Nigam
antishanigam73@gmail.com
On paper, a final year student majoring in Finance and minoring in Economics, from the University of Delhi. In person, a wild species, who is currently struggling for the answers to "Why" rather than "What" and "How". One can always reach out to me for a ceaseless conversation over platter of Food, Finance and a cup of hot poetries. Till then, keep inhaling oxygen.
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