Gender Roles In Boys And Girls By Alice Munro

Brains only have a limited amount of storage space, so they have evolved to categorize similar things, forming the stereotypes. These have always been a large part of society, and despite a lot of efforts over the last few decades, the underlying belief system still stands. The short story “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro shows a lot of the beliefs common of the time: specifically, gender roles. The idea that women should remain in the household while the men work the farm is a sentiment expressed by virtually everyone including the narrator’s mother, grandmother, and even the feed salesman. In contrast to that thought process is the narrator, who wants to work outside with her father on the farm instead and constantly rejects her mother’s attempts to bring her inside.

At first glance, the narrator’s liberal style of thinking seems very similar to modern day. Overall public
For my fairly traditional Chinese parents that grew up during the Cultural Revolution, the idea of specific roles for each gender is quite ingrained in their minds. Growing up, tasks were often accompanied by “because that’s what men are supposed to do”, an attitude which is similar to that of the narrator’s mother. And my parents are not alone in this, as everyone knows the classic insult “Stop acting like a little girl!” It’s really hard to argue against such a deep set prejudice as gender roles, especially when you see that the logic still holds ground today: as of 2009 about 75% of the administrative and clerical jobs were held by women, while over 90% of people in the trades were male. The narrator puts it best: “A girl was not . . . simply what I was, it was what I had to become.” Gender roles define what a person is supposed to become, and even if today’s culture discourages such preconceptions, questioning looks are still given to people who stray from the norm; it’s merely progressed into a nonverbal