Gender Roles and Identity - Essay Example

Gender Roles and Identity Gender and one’s identity in a society plays a crucial role in his or her placement in the society. Whether the society is developed, developing or under-developed, the placement of different genders is somewhat the same. Men and women are not regarded as equal anywhere. With their physical and mental dissimilarities, they are regarded quite changed from each other. Men are regarded as the natural leaders and authoritarians of any society as all the societies are manmade. Our culture gives utmost importance to men and male gender as a whole. They are regarded as supreme creatures having liberty and strength to do anything they like, while women are deprived of their rights to liberty and freedom. Being a female, I am aware of the discrimination that females have to undergo in their daily lives. They have to live a submissive and subjugated life that depends on the will and wish of the male patriarch of the family. With modernism and technological development, female gender has attained a lot of significance, but this significance is to let them know about their place in the society and not to give them their due equal part in the society. Women are required to understand as what people expect of them when they have to work, study or be outside of their homes. Women always have to withstand certain checks and precautionary measures necessary for them, so that people around them can regard them as good and acceptable. Identity is what connects a person to his or her socially accepted position. What I am is the question that informs a person about herself or himself. We have to know ourselves in order to live successfully. Every person in a society has a background, cultural identity, social identity, gender identity and so on. How we get developed into a person with a unique personality, all depends on our development and bringing up. We have to experience certain events and happenings that bring changes in our personalities and make us what we are today. For example, as a child, I led my life with my grandparents and extended family. I experienced as a child when my cousin was born, my grandfather started giving him utmost importance because of his being a male child. He started giving me secondary position and with the passage of time, my position continuously suffered downsizing, so this was the first event in my life when I witnessed discrimination based on gender and my identity. Because of his treatment, I started feeling hatred for him and also for my cousin because he took my place. Culturally, the women in our country do not enjoy much liberty. Many of the decisions in our families are taken by male patriarchs of the family. Male figures are able to make decisions on behalf of women and they are also allowed to decide for their children. It appears that we have a very male directed society in which, male members of the family have identification while female members have no or ignorable identity. This situation is quite hurting and hateful as per women because they are deprived of their rights as equal partners of male members. When a woman gets married, there are a lot of expectations attached to her. She has to play her role as a mother and a wifeand these roles put chains in her feet. She has to act as is expected of her. The little freedom or liberty that she enjoys as an unmarried girl is snatched from her when she gets married. She has to act as her husband and her children want her to act. She is required to become acceptable to her husband in order to lead a happy married life. She is required to nurse, educate and nurture her children. She has to play her role as a homemaker. If she does a job, even then she is expected to play her role as a mother and wife without any compromise because of her job. Jobs do not allow her to ignore any of her duties as a mother and a wife. Female members of the society have to play certain roles that are expected of them to live a successful life. These roles are the roles of a mother and a wife. As a mother, a woman has to be caring, educating, understanding, supportive and nurturing the children. She has to do different jobs as a mother. She has to be the cook, she has to be the nanny, she has to be the homemaker and so on. As a wife, she has to be accommodative, caring, forgiving, comforting, accepting and submissive, and so on. Therefore, she has to play her expected roles. If she fails in any of her roles to be played, she is regarded as inefficient and not a good woman. Failure in her expected roles brings failure in her life and eventually, her home gets disturbed. She has to be very compromising and forgiving if she wants her home not to get shattered. Socially, it is perceived that women have to handle the burden of continuity of married life because if they consider it difficult and are unable to handle the burden, they do not lead married lives, but separated lives. In our daily lives, we face discrimination because of our gender identity. Being female is in itself a subordinate position and the professions that are offered to us are not considered equivalent to male professions. It is regarded that highly intellectual and genius professions require male figures than female figures and if females are there, they should be supervised by males so that they can work accordingly. The societies have undergone a lot of economic, technological, social, psychological and cultural progress, but all these progresses have failed to enable women to get equal position as males. The societies are male decided. There are certain norms and standards that are linked to women such as they should be submissive to men, they should be obedient, they should be forgiving, they should not be abusive, they should be humble and tolerant and so on, as the list goes on as per my understanding. The male members of any society, whether it is a backward society or a modern one, enjoy much more freedom, decision making, social structuring, nation building, and role defining and so on. They are regarded as the leaders of any society, as they are the ones who decide for others. For example, my father decided for me and my mother that we should live separately and without our grandparents and later on, he decided that I should lead the rest of my life with a single parent, my mother. My grandfather decided that I should remain away from him and lead a life separately. Therefore, I saw that male members of our family decided for us and we as female members and subordinate figures were just required to submit to their decisions and desires. Even in modern families, male members decide for the rest of the family. Women are regarded as weak and dependent due to which, they are given secondary status in the society. It is claimed that women and men in developed societies are equal, but it is not true. Women in workplaces have to suffer discrimination based on their gender identity. There are various laws and legislations for controlling discrimination against women, but even then, the issue of discrimination is underway. It is very difficult to make men control their discriminating acts against women because they develop their personalities in such a manner that they always perceive women inferior to men. Because of considering women as inferior, men are unable to acknowledge women as equivalent to men. Men perceive that women need to be protected and possessed because of their dependency on men. This consideration puts women in a weaker position as compared to men. There are gender roles assigned to men and women and their identity is designed culturally around their gender roles. Women are required to admit to their submissive and subordinate standing in a society against their male counterparts. The identity of women is culturally designed in a manner that women accept themselves as inferior to men. Society portrays men as better creatures than women who should get all the rights of a free citizen while women even after authorized to have liberty and personal decision making power, have to understand their dependency on men for leading their lives in a male dominant society.The gender roles assigned to females by their male patriarchs are that of wives and mothers and these roles required women to adjust themselves according to the demands of the society, male figures and their children. Women are required to bring changes in themselves to make themselves acceptable for men and society as a whole while men are not required to bring in any changes at all, as they are generally accepted as they are. The identity of women as compared to men is quite submissive and dependent. Read More