Breaking Cultural Rules about Gender

Breaking Cultural Rules about Gender. To me, gender has always been the basic distinction between men and women. It signifies the difference between the way men and women lead their lives, how and with which gender they identify themselves. What this means to me, is that people divide themselves into two groups and identify themselves with the social attributes and gender roles associated with those genders. Gender is not simply the natural physiological distinction, it is also the construct into which people try to fit and identify with. Personally , I identify with the female gender role and in my culture, the woman is the one whose responsibilities include tending to the house chores and to make sure everybody is well fed .The very first rule I had decided to break was to stop cleaning, cooking, doing laundry and serving food for a couple of days . In my culture, a typical Russian woman is faced with certain expectations that she is expected to follow because it simply is “the order of things”. I am expected to cook, to follow this gender role . It is a huge part of female gender role that I am accustomed to and this is exactly why I had decided to break it. I decided that the most genuine responses are extracted when the family won’t know it is an experiment and I had not told anybody about this .But already form the morning when I hadn’t made breakfast for the family , or washed the dishes afterwards, my family was in shock and awe. This is exactly the type of response I had expected. While my mom and sister cleaned up the table, I just sat there and drank my tea without any signs of haste. My mom came up to me and asked if I was feeling well or why I hadn’t helped. My dad was telling me to resume the housework because “You are the eldest daughter and you have to “. It became clear to me that this gender role had been passed down from generation to generation of women and I was just following the culturally acceptable way. For my