Gender Stereotypes by Aileen Najera

anaje011_ — 2023-11-28 01:22:37 UTC

Living in a Mexican household, gender roles are still prominent. Often told and instructed women are to serve the men in the household. Always told by my mother "Tienes que lavar los trastes, la ropa, hacer de cocinar, y mantener la casa limpia" you have to wash the dishes, wash the clothes, cook, and maintain the house clean. Women are often subjected into domestic roles, "women still do most of the domestic labor and child bearing" (Lorber, 1991). Often times we see women still care for their children, maintain the household, care for the husband, and on top of that some women also maintain a full time job. We see how gender roles are very much still alive to this day, sometimes much more prominent in certain communities.

anaje011_ — 2023-11-28 01:22:38 UTC

There I am driving on the freeway when I see a truck pass by my first thought is that a man drives that car. Whenever I see a truck I automatically believe a man drives it. When I see a truck I think masculine, I think of a man. We even coined the term car mom, a suv. There is this social construct of the association of gender to a type of car. As a society we have created this image of men, powerful, strong, dominant, and we carry this image towards cars, the same thing can be said about trucks, they are powerful, big, strong, sturdy. The social construct of a male, "the tough guy who swallows his feelings and solves his own problems" (Reiner, 2023). This very gender construct is what we as a society have created and has emerged in different forms. the construct of gender is everywhere in our lives, everywhere we look we associate a gender to it.

anaje011_ — 2023-11-28 01:22:40 UTC

Pink or blue a decision many make when expecting a child. Will they decorate the nursery pink or blue. Will their child wear a pink dress or a blue shirt and jeans. The association of color to gender has been a social construct that never seems to fade, the association of the color pink to girls and blue to boys. Yet what is the importance of color to gender. A color doesn't define you, simply because you wear the color pink doesn't automatically imply your a girl. The association of pink to femininity and blue to masculinity. As a child I recognized this trend, girls wear pink and boys wear blue. I once asked a boy why he doesn't like pink, "Eww pink is a girls color", what's so wrong with liking pink. Yet why do we continue to follow this social construct. Why do we continue to associate our children with a color simply based on their gender.

anaje011_ — 2023-11-28 01:22:45 UTC

When you look at a snail your first thought isn't is it a male or female. How can you tell the sex of a snail? Snails are hermaphrodites, they have both male and female sexual organs. Snails have essentially destroyed every social construct we have developed on sex and gender. Society often times hold a very dated knowledge on sex and gender believing that it is often exclusive to male and female, yet this snail tells us the contrary. If your familiar with Noah's Ark, he wanted to bring a female and male pair of each animal, yet how will he do this. Sex and gender isn't as simple as male and female, this snail has demonstrated this. We often find that, "sex automatically implies male or female" and " gender also automatically implies male or female" (Roughgarden, 2004). Yet we have learned that sex and gender are much more than male or female. This snail is an example of how extensive sex and gender is, how sex and gender isn't only male or female.

anaje011_ — 2023-11-28 01:22:46 UTC

Think of the last time something broke down in your house who did you think will come to repair it a women or men. Its even in the name "repairmen". The connotation around tools, that they are only for men. Think back to the 1940's when Rosie the Riveter was first introduced, such a revolutionary moment, women working the jobs of men. What happened to this revolution, where are the women working with tools. Jobs such as construction, repair technicians, mechanics are still male dominated, there is a lack of women in male dominated fields. We continue to see this gender construct of tools are for men everywhere.