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Social Construction of Gender

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Social Construction of Gender
BIBLOGRAPHY

1. “Night to His Day” – Judith Lorber

2. Wikipedia

3. Judith Butler

4. Yahoo

5. http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/ARTH200/

gender.html

In order to understand the answer of the above question, it is very

important to understand what exactly is “Gender” and what a “Social

Construct” means.

GENDER

In a layman’s language, Gender is simply the distinction between

male and female. However, if we look deeper in well, we will notice

the gender construction starts with the association of sex category

at the time of birth. Sex is the biological distinction between a man

and a woman and gender is based on sex. A sex category becomes

a gender status through naming, dress and the use of other gender

marks. The “normal” thing to do in this case would be for baby girls

to be dressed in pink and baby boys to be dressed in blue. The reason

for this is because society has made colors become a symbol to

distinguish boys from girls. Once a child’s gender is evident, people

treat those in one gender different from those in the other, and

therefore, the children respond to it accordingly. Sex doesn’t come

into play until puberty, but by that time sexual feelings have been

modified according to the gender expectations in children. I will

elaborate on the same in the latter part of this paper. Individuals are

born sexed but not gendered.

SOCIAL CONSTRUCT

Now, let us understand what a “Social Construct” means. Social

Construction is something you might not be aware of. Any norm

constructed by the society based on human judgment is a social

construct. The classic example of a social construct is money. Various

cultures utilize paper, gold, silver, or other items as a medium

for trade. To do this, we invest the object with value that we all

acknowledge (we act as if it has value), and this informs our practices

when it comes to money. But

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