The Construction of Gender Roles

The inequalities that women face in relation to men has been an important social issue that has lasted for hundreds of years, still affecting women in our contemporary society today. Classifications that are of “particular importance for social image construction are age, social class, ethnicity, sex and sexual preference”, and “our perceptions of women and men are shaped by our symbolic constructs of femininity and masculinity” (Hunter College Women‘s Studies Collective, 1995). Psychologically, gender roles describe appropriate behaviour that is associated with each of the sexes. People who do not conform to normal behaviours of their gender are believed to have atypical gender roles. Throughout history, biological and social factors, both dependently and intertwined with one another, have fundamentally contributed to the construction of gender roles from the beginning of creation. Biologically women are generally shorter, smaller and weaker than men with some exceptions. Women have been labelled as nurturing, because they have physical capabilities to carry a fetus and breast-feed, thereby providing for their baby’s basic needs during the first life stages. Because a woman’s body has this potential, women have been expected to get married, have children and little or nothing else. Aristotle was a very influential philosopher and writer in 4th Century B.C., who set the stage for the mistreatment of women, claiming that mentally and physically, women were the lesser of the sexes by nature. Aristotle claimed that women are mutilated or incomplete men, who provide only the necessary nutrition which preserves health, and that men are solely responsible for the creation of a child’s life (Agonito, 1977). This statement reflects the societal views of this time which suggest that the mother’s part in conception is only of physical input. Aristotle devastatingly described that women were biologically inferior to men, because they instinctually behaved in a

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