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Gender is used as a means of describing the distinction between the biological sex and socialized aspects of femininity and masculinity. [9] According to West and Zimmerman, is not a personal trait; it is "an emergent feature of social situations: both as an outcome of and a rationale for various social arrangements, and as a means of legitimating one of the most fundamental divisions of society."
Social Role Theory dictates that people are a product of societal social roles set in place via cultural traditions, whereby society instructs all individuals what roles are appropriate for which individuals under particular circumstances. [9] Social role theory can dictate many different types of social roles, in particular, gender roles ...
Sexologist John Money coined the term gender role in 1955. The term gender role is defined as the actions or responses that may reveal their status as boy, man, girl or woman, respectively. [44] Elements surrounding gender roles include clothing, speech patterns, movement, occupations, and other factors not limited to biological sex.
Gender roles are influenced by the media, family, the environment, and society. [6] In addition to biological maturation, children develop within a set of gender-specific social and behavioral norms embedded in family structure, natural play patterns, close friendships, and the teeming social jungle of school life. [6]
Gender role is not the same thing as gender identity, which refers to the internal sense of one's own gender, whether or not it aligns with categories offered by societal norms. The point at which these internalized gender identities become externalized into a set of expectations is the genesis of a gender role.
The roles varied greatly between nations. For example, a male variant might have to wear male clothing during warfare, but women's clothing any other time. These gender roles were often decided at a young age. If a boy was interested in women's activities, or vice versa, a gender variant role would likely be undertaken in adulthood.
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However, the media is a product of different cultural values. Western culture creates cultural gender roles based on the meanings of gender and cultural practices. Western culture has clear distinctions among sex and gender, where sex is the biological differences and gender is the social construction.