How should we see gender norm?
By: Andrea Natalie
Tags: Gender Norms, Gender Roles, Gender, Gender Identity

by Andrea

Right now, gender norm remains a question on how it effects on the way of living. In general gender norm is social norms defining acceptable and appropriate actions for women and men in a given group or society. gender norm plays a role in shaping women and men’s (often unequal) access to resources and freedoms, thus affecting their voice, power and sense of self. For example, a common gender norm is that women and girls will and should do the majority of domestic work/chores. Using this definition, gender norms differ from informal rules or expectations that relate only or primarily to the behaviors of one sex.

Historically, gender norm comes from gender roles have been largely attributed to biological differences in men and women. And psychology study gender role is to refer to the prescribed behaviors, attitudes and characteristics associated with one’s gender status as a female or a male. Attributes associated with gender are the result of learning in accordance with cultural standards or prescriptions. The importance of Gender roles culturally influences stereotypes which create expectations for appropriate behavior for males and females. An understanding of these roles is evident in children as young as age 4 and are extremely important for their social development.

Taking this approach, we question does gender stereotypes effect someone’s personality? and so the researchers actually found gender differences for every one of the 10 aspects of personality that they looked at women scored higher, on average, on enthusiasm, compassion, politeness, orderliness, volatility, withdrawal, and openness, while men scored higher on assertiveness. And does gender stereotype effect someone’s intellectual capability? Based on a US study on gender stereotypes found that ‘common stereotypes associate high-level intellectual ability (brilliance, genius) with men more than women. These typecasts discourage young girls from pursuing certain subjects and fields, and eventually influence their career choices. That’s why the existence rate of a business man is higher than the existence rate of a business woman. so, in the end we can’t ignore the fact that gender stereotypes do effect someone’s personality and someone’s intellectual capability.

Gender norm also has its own effect on society, first let’s talk about the negative side. because gender norms reflect and contribute to inequalities in the distribution of power and resources that often disadvantage women and girls, many gender norms do, in practice, limit girls’ development opportunities and undermine their wellbeing. Even as girls’ options have opened up, boys’ lives are still constricted by traditional gender norms: being strong, athletic and stoic, in which men are expect to not show vulnerability, being nicer, displaying sadness, or even displaying empathy. Yet when it came to their bodies, girls said they did not feel equal. About three-quarters of girls 14 to 19 in a survey said they felt judged as a sexual object or unsafe as a girl.

And on the other hand, the positive side of gender norm. the existence of gender norm becomes the base for parent to educate their child on how to act, in other mean gender norm is used to shape a child’s character. And so, this also prove that in some point gender norm is also harmless in some cases because it can be the base of how a person act as how their gender was meant to act, but it doesn’t mean you have to act as how the norm tells you. But in some point, we also knew that it’s true the fact that gender norm is harmful in some ways, especially socially and mentally where they felt pressured because of the expectation on following the gender norm. gender norm can cause them to feel stressed whether to follow the norm or to lose their own preference on how they live. And socially they would be scared of being judge by society because of how they choose to live, and mostly gender norm makes people think lowly of themselves because of the thoughts that their different on how the gender norm expect them to act and think of themselves as a disgrace

We can break gender norm by many ways, some of the ways are as following. Breaking gender norm is pretty common in the fashion world. In fashion world, boy’s wearing skirt and make up or the vice versa as women wearing man’s boxers is not seen as a transgender or any other names that is not suitable to labeled as. That shows how free fashion world is without getting judge, cause in fact gender structure doesn’t exist in the fashion world. Other ways to break gender norm is to think before you speak, why? Because the words come out of yourself have may made an effect to others, in other word we can’t speak so highly or lowly one of the genders in which may cause huge impact on how people view on themselves.

Other way to break gender norms is to encourage a “gender-equal society” is a “society in which both men and women, as equal members, have the opportunity to participate in all kinds of social activities at will, equally enjoy political, economic and cultural benefits, and share responsibilities.” In such a society, the human rights of men and women are equal. To the point where we can be free by being who we are without being judge. Both genders have their own special traits that differentiate both of the gender and the existence of both genders must not be effect on our lifestyle, career and our how we see ourselves.

In conclusion, gender norms have both negative and positive sides. Positively, gender norm is the base of how we think of ourselves, how we act, etc. Negatively, gender norm is also pretty harmful for society it can affect gender with bad stereotypes and thus, affect genders mentally. There are many ways to break gender norm starting from how you change your mindset. How you dress doesn’t matter; it will not decide on what gender are you, etc. and it all comes to the end where people can’t make gender as something to stop you from doing something, and gender norm must not affect negatively to our lifestyle, career, and the way we live. Instead, it should enhance the quality of one’s life.