Gender roles are largely culturally defined rather than biological. Children learn appropriate gender roles from their environment and society. While gender roles have changed significantly in recent decades as more women enter the workforce, traditional views of gender still influence society. Feminists advocate for expanding options and challenging stereotypes to achieve greater equality and fairness between men and women.

1. Gender Roles
Childrenlearn from their parents and society the conceptionof "feminine" and
"masculine." Much about these conceptions is not biological at all,but cultural.
The way we tend to think about men and women and their gender roles in
society establish the dominant paradigm that affects our thinking. Riane Eisler
points out that the dominant paradigm makes it difficult for us to evaluate
properly the roles of men and womenin early history.Sexism is the result of that
unfairness imposed by our process of acculturation.
Gender roles inWestern societies have been changing rapidly in recent years,
with the changes createdboth by evolutionary changes insociety, including
economic shifts which have changed the way people work and certainly which
people work as more and more women enter the workforce.Perhaps pressure
brought to make changes because of the insight that the traditional social
structure was unbalanced. Gender relations are a part of the socialization
process, the initiationgiventhe young by society,teaching them certain morals
and creating in them certainbehavior patterns acceptable to their social roles.
These roles have been in a state of change inAmerican society inrecent years,
and men and womentoday can be seen as having expanded their roles in society.
With womenentering formerly male dominions and men finding new ways to
relate to and functioninthe family unit.

2. When I was growing up, a man was never heard of having a job other than the
oilfield.Our jobs as young men, was to simply keepour rooms cleanand take
care of the outside house. Like,cut the grass and pick up any trash around the
house. Some young men, had jobs at restaurants and things of that nature.
Gender canbe well defined, as a social identity consisting of the role a person is
to play, because of his or her sex. There is diversity inmale and female roles,
making it impossible to define gender interms of male and female roles. Gender
is culturally defined,with significant differences from culture to culture.These
differences are studied by anthropologists to as certainthe range of behaviors
that have developedto define gender and on the services at work in the creation
of these roles.The role of womenin American society was conditionedby
religious attitudes and by the conditions of life that overcame through much of
Americanhistory.The culture of Europe and America was based for centuries on
a masculine system inwhich exclusive ownership of the female by a givenmale
was considered important.This resulted that women were regulated to the role
of property,with no voice intheir ownfate.
It is clear that for most of history women were expected to be content with this
sort of life and were trained for that purpose. Clearly,circumstances of family life
have changed inthe modern era. Industry has been takenout of the home, and
large families are no longer economically possible or socially preferred.The

3. home is no longer the center of the husband's life,and for the traditional wife
there is only a reduction of interests and possibilities for development in her
without an occupationand with an unsatisfactory emotional life.
The change in sex roles that can be discernedin society is closely tiedwith
changes in the arrangement of the family.Changes in both, family structure and
sex roles over the last century have produced the uproar we still see today.One
of the problems with the changing role of women is the degree to which society
perceives this is causing unwanted changes in the family,though it is true that
changes in the family have changed the roles of women. As women entered the
early 1990s, they faced a number of problems.
Most of these problems have been around for some time, and women have
challenged them and even improved them without solving them completely.
They are faced inthe workplace,in the home, in every day life.Women have
made advances towardthe equality they seek only to meet a repercussion in the
form of religious fundamentalism, claims of reverse discriminationby males,and
aggression from a public that thinks the women's movement has woneverything
it wanted and should now be silent.Both the needs of women today and the
repercussion that has developed derive from the changes in social andsexual
roles, which have taken place in the period since WorldWar II.These changes
involve the new ability of womento break out of the gender roles createdfor
them by a male-controlled society.

4. The desperation women feel has been nurtured throughout history by the
practice of keeping women intheir place by limiting their options.This was
accomplishedonone level by preventing women from gaining their the sort of
educationoffered to men, and while this has changed to a great extent, there are
still inequalities inthe opportunities offered to men as opposed to women.
Yet opening the worldof business with new opportunities for women does not
disperse much of this frustration,because both men and women continue to be
governed by their early training. The acculturation process,which decides for
them what sort of existence they will have.This canresult infeelings of guilt
when their reality and the image they have been taught from childhooddo not
interlock.
It wouldbe a mistake to see changing gender roles in society as a threat only to
males who dominate the society.Such changes also threaten many women who
have acceptedmore traditional roles and see change as a threat. Whenwomen
first united for the right to vote at the beginning of this century,they were
opposed by women's groups who wanted things to remainas they were.
The main problem of their argument was that woman suffrage placed an added
and unbearable burden on women. These arguments are heard today from

5. religious fundamentalists who believe that the women's movement is a threat to
the family.The fact is that the family has changed and that the traditional family
structure of homemaker, husband as breadwinner, and childrencreate only 10
percent of families.The role for womenhas expanded with more women in the
workplace and with a variety of family structures with new roles for all members
of the family.Business has been slow to change and to recognize the new family,
and for all the criticisms about the women's movement as anti-family,the
movement has instead followedthe trend of placing the family inthe front of
addressing family issues as dynamic to women.
There is much evidence that boys and girls are treateddifferently form birth, and
this fact has been noted inevery worldculture. It may never be possible to
separate out the precise effects of physiology and cultural training onhuman
beings. Not only do they individually influence people,but also they interact with
each other and with each person's unique essence to affect human behavior. To
agreement with the reality of this complex interaction of factors,and to
agreement with an increasingly complex external world, feminists ask simply for
options in life styles.
Those stuck insexism, cannot allow eventhe simple request to ask why women
are inferior.The reason sexism exists at all is because of an acculturationprocess
which subtly creates it,and it is preserved in part for that reason. Also,because

6. perceived changes in the roles and status of women create a repercussion based
on fear of change.
Surveys have shown that identical resumes or scholarly articles are ratedlower
if the applicant is though to be a woman rather than a man. While advances have
been made over the last decade, the challenge remains for the next, and as long
as women constitute small minorities innontraditional employment contexts,
considerable problems will remain. The women inthe workplace must work
harder to succeed than their male equals, and once they have succeededthey
have to deal with the envy and concern. Women,who do not advance, only
confirm the stereotype for others.
The perceptionremains that women can't make it by predictable morals,or are
less committedto doing so. Ineither event,they do not seem to permit the same
investment in training,assistance, and promotionopportunities as their male
equals.
Feminist have been calling for some time for a change inthe political sense.They
want more women inoffice and the political arena;they want a new type of
political thinking; one that empowers people rather than government and that
addresses the issues that are of importance to men and women.

7. Today, people are far less willing to accept these artificial roles even unwillingly,
and this includes the provision-keeping womenin the home and out of the public
arena. To have more women inoffice it is necessary to have more women run.
As noted, public views change more slowly thanthe reality of gender roles.They
will continue to change slowly as long as we continue acculturating childrenwith
the same sexual stereotypes that have so long succeeded. It is necessary that we
address this issue from early childhood,with parents demonstrating a different
view of gender and sexual roles. Schools and church should take a part in
eliminating the old stereotypes infavor of a more reasonable and rightful way to
view both men and women.

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