Sociology paper- Gender and Family Issues

In the recent General Election, we have seen the rise of female politicians like Tin Pei Ling (People’s Action Party) and Nicole Seah (National Solidarity Party); 32% of ASEAN region’s senior management roles lies in the hands of women, while the global average is 21%; and myself writing this paper is another example of how women enjoys equal education opportunities in my society. Yet there is still such an article dated so recently, and while we condemn the brutal act, we have to see the tragic truth beneath: the society has the larger part to play. Activists fear eight million girls have disappeared in India, many did not even get to breathe their first breath like Zainab. The reason is horrifyingly simple: their families want sons instead of daughters.

While sex is simply a biological construct that can be explained by chromosomes, gender is a social concept that is nurtured or instilled into the individual. Gender, and the conceptual roles of different genders, is a social structure that aims to maintain social stability by ensuring that the parts of society could operate together to ensure the smooth functioning of the whole society. One such example is the way heterosexual marriage are considered “correct” and “appropriate” while homosexual relations are frowned upon in Singapore, this is to ensure that man and woman can come together to start an “ideally functional” family. Gender is also meant to be a cultural categorizing tool that “must be so simplified that they can be quickly applied as framing devices to virtually anyone in the population to start the process of defining self and other”.

The social stability sounds amazing in theory, but the categorization of gender often causes conflict and division instead. When people are divided into two groups, it is very easy to identify which group is “privileged” and which group is “subordinate”, and when such groups comes into play, there will be oppression when the privileged group try to maintain their advantages at the expense of the other group. Due to the contribution of men in fighting wars and working in labor intensive agricultural sector in the first few chapters of global history, they are perceived as functionally more important than females. This perceived importance than led to their privileges like being favored in household (having claims to inheritance) or having better education opportunities (China’s imperial examinations), which in turn results in the dominance of males over females. Thus, while the manifest functions of gender are to organize society and encourage formulation of group identity, it unconsciously allows creation of stereotypes and behaviors of oppression.

Although the infanticide and abortion of female fetus in South Asia could be attributed to the need for laborers in the agricultural sectors, gender stratification and inequality is also observed in more developed societies due to the long established “structure of power and social convention instead of biological necessity”. This is evident in a family where although both parents are working adults with equally high level of education, the father is still considered the head of the household.

Lastly we shall not forget that the victims of infanticide and abortions are not only females, they were daughters too. This particular incident instead of agreeing with family as "a social group characterized by common residence, economic cooperation, and reproduction”, it leans more towards Marxist views that a family is “a site of gender conflict and a basis for the perpetuation of social inequality”. Evident by Umar Zaib having control over the life and death of his daughter while his wife Sumera could only cry helplessly, the family is actually a class society in miniature where the patriarchal system result in oppression of the females.