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A gender role, or sex role, is a set of socially accepted behaviors and attitudes deemed appropriate or desirable for individuals based on their gender or sex. Gender roles are usually centered on conceptions of masculinity and femininity .
Gender is one of the most pervasive and prevalent social characteristics which people use to make social distinctions between individuals. Gender distinctions are found in economic-, kinship- and caste-based stratification systems. [31] Social role expectations often form along sex and gender lines.
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."
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.
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.
An example of primary-classificatory organization would be sex and then race. An example of primary-relational organization would be age and kinship. Kinship is the social class position is ascriptively determined for the child by the link between the father's family role and his work role.
However useful, countries have significant complex populations that require more exacting definitions. Commonly seen are uses of race, gender and ethnicity. In the scope of academic demography, all of these are social constructs, ascribed to groups or individuals for stratification.
This breakdown of traditional roles leads to the natural decrease of a gender-specific social structure. Feminist Ideologies. Feminism is not a direct opposition to patriarchy, it is a theory in response to patriarchy. Feminism focuses on the empowerment of women in society and the dismissal of traditional gender roles that are oppressive.