Chapter
3
SEX-ROLES
AND THEIR VARIATIONS:
BEHAVIOR
APPROPRIATE FOR WOMEN
AND
BEHAVIOR APPROPRIATE FOR MEN
Being a male or a female determines the
life-patterns of each person,
especially in cultures that have strong traditions:
If an individual was born female, she would be expected
to grow up to become a wife and mother and to pursue domestic
tasks
—taking care of the household, the children, & the food.
If an individual was born male, he would be expected
to grow up to become a hunter, gatherer, and/or warrior.
He would spend more of his time away from the
household.
Each culture had slightly different
expectations based on sex.
For instance, in some cultures women do most of the agricultural work.
Modern anthropology has elaborately documented these sex-roles
as found in every known culture except a few,
where only slight differences were expected between the two sexes.
Some cultures developed elaborate rules
defining how men and women ought to behave
—and specific sanctions for those who step outside their
sex-roles.
But sex-roles have become much less rigid in
advanced cultures.
Now women can pursue medicine, law, & construction
—occupations from which they used to be excluded.
And men can pursue teaching, nursing, & child-care
—occupations which used to be almost exclusively for
females.
Also women can now be found in positions in business and government,
which used to be occupied overwhelmingly by men.
These trends will probably continue in
advanced cultures.
How long will sex-roles last?
The only forms of behavior that will never be found in both sexes
are child-bearing and breast-feeding.
And what used to be the life-long job of raising children
can now be limited to just a few years, after which (or instead of
which)
a woman can do just about anything a man can do.
For clarity, we will define a sex-role as
behavior assigned because of sex.
Later we will discuss gender-personalities or gender-patterns,
which are internal psychological (rather than social) phenomena.
When some thinkers proclaim that “women are
made, not born”,
they are noting that sex-roles are created by societies,
not that the female sex is a product of enculturation.
Sex-roles are clearly social constructs.
Ch. 3 SEX-ROLES AND
THEIR VARIATIONS: APPROPRIATE
BEHAVIOR by James
Park 15
Created
1-11-2009; Revised 1-4-2012