Doing Gender: The Social Performance of Gender Roles in Everyday Life
Overview
This paper examines the concept of 'doing gender' as a routine social accomplishment in everyday life. The author analyzes how gender roles are performed across social, economic, and political spheres, and explores the mechanisms through which individuals learn to perform gender-appropriate behaviors, including mass media influence and peer group pressure.
What this essay covers
- Introduction to the concept of doing gender and its conscious and unconscious performance
- Examples of gender performance in security, politics, and economic fields
- Analysis of how individuals learn gender roles through mass media and peer group socialization
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Doing Gender
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Doing Gender
We often perform specific tasks based on our gender. This comes consciously or unconsciously depending on the type of task and the region we grew up in or where we live. The way we perform these tasks or behave based on our gender is referred to as gender doing. It is a routine accomplishment in our everyday life (Sternheimer, 2016). Several examples of doing gender are available in social, economic, and political spheres. The first example is gender security. Most people believe that men provide security to society. In most cases, men act as a security threat at home or in public while women seek protection from men.
The second example is politics, where people elect women more than men because they believe men offer better leadership. Since 1960, only 60 countries have had women in their top executive seats (O'Neill, 2021; Rafferty, 2018). The third example that I want to provide is in the economic field. Most businesses are often gender-biased. Women often open groceries while men dominate the electronics businesses. Also, women perform house chores primarily compared to men because it is traditionally believed to be female roles.
We appropriately learn to perform our gender role in several ways. The first is that mass media train us to behave in a particular way by continually sharing content portraying specific tasks and behavior as male or female (Rafferty, 2018). For example, males often host challenging topic programs while fashion and beauty are reserved for females.