Essay Series 1.2: Girls and boys are forced into gender roles from childhood, with consequences for both.

Gender stereotypes affect how everyone lives their lives. The gender-related pressures and expectations start during infancy, and peers reinforce them as children grow into adolescence. Girls learn to be compassionate and focus on others’ needs and their own appearances. Boys learn to be stoic, emotionless, competitive, and controlling. These trends continue into adulthood and can warp human relationships.

Gender Roles and Childhood

Society reinforces gender roles from birth. Parents and strangers treat infants differently by rewarding them for engaging in behaviors typical of their gender. It starts with parents treating boys and girls differently when children show aggression or independence. Generally, boys get rewarded for these behaviors, and girls don’t. Their peers react poorly when a child’s behavior doesn’t comply with gender roles.¹⁹

Early adolescence, from age 10 to 14, is a critical period for shaping gender attitudes.²⁰ Girls and boys experience this differently. By adolescence, girls feel valued according to how they look, and boys according to how they perform. In late adolescence, girls have lower self-esteem than boys.²¹

During adolescence, girls’ and boys’ school and career aspirations are about the same. However, adolescent girls are more likely to choose non-traditional careers than boys are.²² Girls may be feeling more freedom to break out of gender roles than boys do.

Society expects a lot out of boys in terms of toughness and lack of emotion. Boys are supposed to be physically tough and have a high tolerance for pain. Society expects them to fight and engage in competitive sports. Boys are supposed to be independent, deal with problems on their own, and be stoic with few outward signs of emotionality. Boys are also supposed to be aggressively sexual and controlling in their relationships.²³

Parents and peers reinforce these norms for boys, and peers become more important as boys age into adolescence.²⁴ Boys in Western societies report more external pressure and bullying than girls if boys don’t adhere to their societies’ gender roles.²⁵

Some of the results of societal expectations are that boys have more freedoms and power than girls. They are more likely than girls to endorse gender stereotypes and engage in early and unprotected sexual behavior.²⁶

A study of young adults in college in 62 countries examined the strength of gender stereotypes related to weakness of women and dominance of men. In 58 percent of countries, students rated agency (competence, determination, and independence) as more desirable in men than communion (compassion, understanding, and warmth) in women. Students in less gender-equal countries were more likely to hold these views. Women across countries were less likely to have these views than men. In 95 percent of countries, college students rated men’s weakness as more objectionable than women’s dominance. This view didn’t vary by level of gender equality in a country. The authors concluded that men are especially critical of their peers who don’t conform to gender norms. Healthier, wealthier, and more educated countries were more likely to be egalitarian with regard to gender.²⁷

Femininity and Masculinity in Adults

Stereotypes about femininity and masculinity limit everyone’s lives. Women are supposed to meet shifting beauty standards that devalue their worth in other areas of their lives. Men are supposed to be stoic and dominant, which can restrict the emotional depth of their human relationships.

Femininity

Society assumes feminine characteristics involve compassion, empathy, love, dependence, and nurture of others. These traits can be harmful when women are the only people expected to have them and when they routinely put others ahead of themselves.

Society also pressures women to be beautiful and appear young, no matter how old they are. Pressure comes from social media, advertising, peers, and men. Social media influencers often gain followers because of their beauty regimens. Beauty for women often involves Botox at young ages and plastic surgery involving women’s faces, breasts, buttocks, stomachs, hips, and genital areas.²⁸

Society judges, scrutinizes, objectifies, exploits, sells, and controls women and their images.²⁹ It’s hard for women to keep up with standards that vary over time and across cultures. In the United States during the late 1800s and early 1900s, beautiful women had ample bodies, and some of the most popular actors were older women. The more mature figures popular before World War I yielded to the very thin, young women of the 1920s, who were called flappers. By the 1950s, women were supposed to be in tailored, elegant clothing that gave them an hourglass figure. The 1960s were like the 1920s in their focus on women looking young and being thin. Twiggy was a 91-pound model who epitomized the trend in the 1960s. Helen Gurley Brown, the longtime editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine, said that being thin is “sacred.”³⁰

Beauty standards also vary by culture. Following are some examples of the more disfiguring standards. Starting with the Imperial Court in the 900s CE,³¹ elite Chinese women endured foot binding. Four of their toes were rolled inward, and the heel bone was forced into a vertical position. This practice broke bones and distorted girls’ feet. The practice later spread to the wealthy classes and became a common practice in China by the 1300s CE. The practice stopped when the Chinese communist government ended it in the mid-1900s.³²

Female genital mutilation still happens in sub-Saharan Africa, East Africa, India, and Indonesia. The elements of this practice vary. However, they can include removing a young girl’s clitoris and her labia. This mutilation can also involve sewing up most of her vaginal opening while only allowing a small outlet for menstrual blood flow. This practice is supposed to guarantee virginity, eliminate masturbation, and keep girls and women uninterested in sex so they don’t stray outside of their marriages. At least 230 million girls and women alive today have endured female genital mutilation in the 30 countries where this is a common practice.³³

The Kayan people, native to Myanmar and also living as refugees in Thailand, have a tradition of placing heavy brass coils around young girls' necks. The coils depress their collarbones and compress their ribs, making their necks appear longer.³⁴

Western societies have imposed their own standards on women during my lifetime. High heels restrict women’s movement and can cause pain, deformities, and muscle damage, among other problems. Girdles could be uncomfortable and cause pain, skin irritation, breathing difficulties, and muscle and circulation damage. Modern shape wear can cause similar problems if it is too tight or doesn’t fit well. Extreme thinness can cause systemic health problems and early death. What these standards share is the idea that women’s bodies aren’t acceptable as they are.

Masculinity

Stereotypical masculine characteristics are strength, dominance, independence, and self-reliance. When men have to appear physically and emotionally hard and always be strong, their sense of self-worth is under attack. Men can kill off the emotional parts of themselves. As a result, they often aren’t emotionally open and often don’t seek help with emotional or physical problems. If men don’t measure up to the stereotypes, they can experience shame and peer pressure. In addition, masculine stereotypes about sex can damage everyone. Men can feel that they are entitled to sex, have an uncontrollable need for it, see sex as an achievement, and regard women as sex objects.³⁵ Acting on these beliefs can cause suffering for girls and women.

Gender Differences in Behavior

Sex differences don’t explain gender differences in thinking and behavior patterns. However, societal pressures do seem to explain them. Some of the differences involve women feeling less confident and expressing themselves more hesitantly than men. Women smile more and have smaller personal spaces than men. Women also tend to be able to understand non-verbal communication better than men. Women are generally less physically aggressive than men, and when helping others, men tend to do more dangerous and typically masculine tasks.³⁶

Men and women who don’t fit gender stereotypes are “othered.” Openly sensitive men are considered weak, incompetent, suspicious, or dishonorable. Women who don’t fit in are considered strident, untrustworthy, malicious, unbalanced, or dangerous.³⁷

In the business world, women generally have two tracks. One is to be tough and competitive like men are supposed to be. Another is to be insightful, understanding, and empathetic like stereotypical women. The first track often gives women the reputation of being difficult and troublesome to the organization. The other track can keep women from promotions.³⁸

Reflections

Women are supposed to be demure, caring, emotional, and decorative. The results for them are putting others’ needs before their own and finding much of their value in how they look.

Since beauty standards change, it’s very difficult for women to keep up with them. Long ago, a friend told me, “Women have to suffer to be beautiful.” She was correct if one defines beauty by society’s shifting standards.

Everyone ought to be able to choose how to dress and decorate themselves according to their own beauty standards, without suffering private or public backlash. Sadly, backlash can occur when women aren’t thin enough, men aren’t strong enough, and others choose to dress according to their own standards.

Growing up, I valued myself according to my looks, so I wasn’t thinking about my education, career options, or achievements when I was an adolescent. Others judged me according to my looks too. The first such comment I remember came from my father when I was 12. He called me “thunder thighs.” After he and my mother saw my reaction, he never made another comment about my body, and he didn’t say things like this to my younger siblings.

As I grew older, my priorities changed to career and parenting goals, and I’ve been less wrapped up in my appearance. In my late 60s, finally, I feel beautiful because I’m not trying to have a thin, childish body. I’m moving toward being strong and as healthy as I can be.

Men are just as trapped by their gender stereotypes as women are. Men are supposed to be tough, sexual, and unemotional. So relationships between the sexes often are fraught with emotional disconnects. That has been my experience and that of many women I know.

Both sexes suffer from stereotypes that require them to behave in ways that aren’t natural for humans. Our species is social and wants meaningful connections.

How have society’s stereotypes affected you?