Sosiologi gender
Adults respond differently to communicative efforts of boys and girls. A study of infants aged 13 months found that when boys demand attention- by behaving aggressively, or crying, whining or screaming- they tended to get it. By contrast, adults tended to respond to girls only when they used language, gestures, or gentle touches; girls who used attention-seeking techniques were likely ignored. There was little difference in the communicative patterns at the start of the study, but by the age of two, the girls have become more talkative and boys more assertive in their communicative techniques.
The norms that are taught throughout childhood are influential in an individual's life because the ideas about gender that are typically taught by parents in early years are reinforced outside of the home. A study done by Dr. Mick Cunningham states that the normative behaviors and attitudes that children observe can influence the way that these children grow up to structure their own households in adulthood. Normative gender roles can be reinforced outside of the household, adding power to these hegemonic ideas about gender. An analysis of children's books in the twenty-first century, by Janice McCabe, suggests that this particular avenue of children's media symbolically annihilates females, representing them about half as often as that of males. Underrepresentation such as this can affect children and their views of gender. Children's TV networks, such as
Disney, Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network have demonstrated a disproportional representation of males and females on their respective shows in a study done by Beth Hentges and Kim Case. According to Hentges and Case, there are less female characters across all three children's networks; however, there is more propagation of stereotypical gendered behavior on Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon than that of Disney.
Some children are raised in atypical households that challenge normative gender roles. In Jada Tidwell's study, she observes the play of children who come from households with lesbian feminist mothers (both single mothers and couples). Tidwell's observations consisted of both individual play as well as play integrated with the mothers. As a result of these observations, Tidwell asserts that atypical environments can affect children's lives and ideas. According to Tidwell, households that challenge hegemonic cultural ideas ultimately give children a different perspective of gender than those of children raised in heterosexual, two parent households. In the families studied by Jada Tidwell, children reported ideas that both endorsed and challenged stereotypical gender roles at times. In a different study, Abbie Goldberg observed toddlers from various types
of households and how these children engaged in play. Goldberg's findings suggest that children whose parents are of the same gender tend to play in ways that are less adherent to stereotypical gender roles than children from heterosexual households. Susan Witt, in her article "Parental Influence on Children's Socialization to Gender Roles', advocates for androgynous gender roles in parenting, arguing that environments are more open minded about gender and encouraging to both their sons and daughters.
One of the most influential of the psychoanalytic theories of gender identity is the perspective developed in the book The Reproduction of Mothering. Its author, Nancy Chodorow, traces the implications for emotional development by linking them with the way mothers usually care for their infants in their formative years, while fathers are more emotionally distant. The development of an identity takes place as the infant gets more and more separated from his/her mother, with whom the infant is initially psychically merged. This process however operates differently for boys and girls. Girls can separate gradually, maintain a continuous sense of relationship with the mother, who is after all experienced as alike. For boys, on the other hand, separating from the mother, who is experienced as different, involves repressing the feminine aspects of themselves and rejecting their tenderness that was central to that early relationship. Boys' sense of maleness, according to Chodorow, is achieved at a great emotional cost.
Consequently, men grow up to have a more autonomous sense of self, and to be more independent, more instrumental and competitive in their dealings with others. They are also more likely to have difficulty expressing their emotions and to be anxious about intimacy. Women, on the other hand, have more ability and more need to sustain relationship with others.; they have greater empathy with others. They have difficulty however in maintaining the boundaries of an independent and autonomous self.
Before industrialization, economic activity, which centered around agricultural work, crafts and so on, was organized by households. Household members, whether male or female, young or old, contributed to the family's livelihood. Although women might do some types of work and men others, depending on region and class, the distinction between men as breadwinners and women as housewives didn't characterized pre-industrial divisions of labor.
Industrialization shifted much productive activity to factories, shops and offices. This separation of work from home signaled a profound change in gender relations and gender discourse. The home came to be understood not as the site of a family enterprise, but as a refuge from the world of work. Women were defined as the keepers of the home, as it was seen as their nature to create harmony and virtue rather than services and goods. Preindustrial society relied on gendered roles in the workforce to create equilibrium between men and women. Men were assigned the hunter role while women were assigned the domestic roles. Men were expected to supply food and shelter for the family while women were the caretakers for the children and their household. As centuries passed, this continued and created a divide in gendered roles in labor. Women remained dependent on men to provide, this dependence led to male roles being more valued in society which still remains in the 21st century.
Women and men experience different types of mobility within the workplace. Women tend to experience a glass ceiling, an invisible barrier that prevents them from moving up the corporate ladder. Men in jobs traditionally held by women, such as nursing, elementary school teaching, and social work, experience a "glass escalator" effect in which they are able to quickly ascend the job hierarchy to become managers and principals. There also tends to be a gender pay gap between men and women, with women earning 77% as much as men. One cause of the gender pay gap may be due to occupational segregation, which pushes men and women towards gender-specific forms of employment, rather than pay discrimination. Another cause is the double burden, a phenomenon in which women perform most of the unpaid childcare and household work despite being otherwise employed for pay. A
third cause is occupational sexism, one part of which favors men for promotions due to their traditional breadwinner status. The 2001 class action lawsuit, Dukes v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., charged Wal-Mart with sexist hiring and promotion practices.
In addition, the emergence of transgender individuals in the workplace has begun to disrupt the gender binary of male and female. By creating a hybrid gender identity, the transgender community suggests notions of movement toward postgenderism.