Skip to main content

GENDER STEREOTYPING

Gender stereotypes are a daily motion and are very normalized. Every day in our lives, we go through conditions wherein we see or sufferer a misogynist remark or action because of our gender. We all have absorbed gender stereotypes into our system that we forget to think logically about such attitudes and behaviours. And somehow become a part of it by either experiencing it or by actually doing it or by just quietly watching it happening around. Every day, we as individuals are bombarded with an overwhelming amount of information, and so, to make sense of it all and the world around us, we stereotype, putting things and people into boxes we can easily arrange and organize. Oh, you’re a girl? You must love to cook. You’re a guy? You must love tools. Of course, it’s much more complex than that, but in essence, that’s what our brains do. Wrongly judging or putting down males for engaging in activities or behaviours that are stereotypically “female”, like playing with dolls, interest in cooking, etc. Or doing the same with females for engaging in activities or behaviours that are stereotypically “male” such as riding a bike, playing a certain sport, wearing baggy clothes, more involvement with male friends etc. men do not cry or express emotions or women aren’t supposed to be assertive or get angry is another form of gender stereotyping. How does expressing emotions relate to a man’s masculinity? How does riding a bike relate to a woman’s femininity? These things need to be thought through..


The worst impacted group for gender stereotyping are the children. From when they are born, they are given certain basic things. Like anything with colour blue is for boys and pink for the girls. Is it wrong for a boy to like the colour pink or for a girl to like the colour blue? We need to internalize that colour can’t be sexualized. These are merely gender stereotypes that are being followed illogically and are transferred from generation to generation. These gender stereotypes are so embedded that when it reflects into one’s behaviour, it ends up discriminating the other. This is the damage that gender stereotyping does to people. To stop this gender stereotyping we need to have an open mind. We should stop internally judging people by way of their gender. We need to learn and accept that men can be emotionally weak and women can be physically strong and that there is nothing wrong or weird about it.                                                                                         


Written by- Neomi shah                  Roll no- 273 

Image references:

Popular posts from this blog

INTERSECTIONAL FEMINISM

We all are familiar with the ‘F’ word today. I am talking about feminism, obviously! So... from- pinterest         Feminism is an idea, a movement, a structure started by the women in our society, prominently from 174 years long. Along with the passing years, the definition and the aim of feminism kept changing and we today need to understand intersectionality and feminism together. The fight was first about equality between men and women, now the fight stands to vanish the discrimination of hierarchies, of social structures like gender, caste, race, ethnicity, sexuality, ability and class. So, unfortunately equality can’t be achieved just by smashing patriarchy. When it comes to the section of gender, there are various hierarchies like- we will quite generally solve the social status of cisgender women first, and then the transgender’s. Consider caste in it-   a transgender dalit women who wants to get married to a heterosexual man, but that wouldn’t be accepte...
Read more

MARGINALISED GENDER IN LITERATURE

  Change is a necessary element to any field subjective or objective, to widen  its perspective.  from- link Literature, which was inherently a male dominated field, was revolutionised by the slow intrusion and inclusion of marginalised genders. In earlier days access to literature of any language required a mastery in language which was unfortunately only a privilege that the men of the family had. Yet there were unconventional people, who believed that their daughters deserved as much of right in the field of language as their sons. Many extraordinary personalities were born of this. but unfortunately literary piece written by a woman was looked down upon, considered unequal to the ones written by male. We might as ourselves, how to solve this problem and somehow reach out to people with our words? Could we believe that the society held its prejudice so high and mighty, such cruel and insensible discriminations that people would rather lose their identity than their art...
Read more