Factors Affecting One's Gender Role Identity

One’s gender role identity and how one experiences it, is determined through the decisions one makes, one’s behaviour, and the company one keeps, rather than by the genetic and biological factors that determine sex and gender. Gender role identity is one’s perception of gender, behaviours and activities in order to express a particular gender, being masculine, feminine or neither. Through the influences of society, as well as through one’s own opinion and preference, one is able to develop one’s own gender role identity, which is determined by specific factors, which will be highlighted in the essay.
Decisions determine and reflect one’s gender role identity. An example of specific decisions can be the career and family decisions of people. …show more content…
“Gender role is manifested within society by observable factors such as behaviour and appearance.” (Dr Shuvo Ghosh, 2015) Certain gender behaviour of people is as a result of the reinforcement by society, while others are by choice. Feminine and masculine traits are ways of behaving that our society usually associates with a specific gender. Females are usually seen as compassionate, nurturing, and sympathetic and males usually strong, independent and courageous, as reported by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2014).Therefore, if a man is sympathetic, nurturing and emotional, while his wife is more tough and courageous, he is seen, according to society’s views, to have a female gender role identity in society. As reported by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2014) children are encouraged in behaviour which is associated with their sex while they may be discouraged in behaviour associated opposite to their sex, thus enforced with stereotypes.Behavior also results from attempts to attract the opposite sex, as reported by Oswalt (2005). Girls may spend time applying make-up and wearing nice clothing, while males may gym in order to enlarge their muscles to appear strong and attractive. Therefore, behaviour contributes to determining one’s gender role identity. Behavior is also linked to the company one …show more content…
Gender role identity develops at a young age with influences of parents, teachers, peers etc. According to Bem (1993) children do not understand society’s expectations and therefore express gender-role identities that they are most comfortable with. Some parents encourage this and want the child to explore in order to ‘discover’ him or herself. Other parents strongly influence children's interests and self-concept by organizing the environment for the child and exposing the child to activities which they think are appropriate for the child, according to Mcgraw-Hill Higher Education (2005). For example, some parents treat all of their children in the same way; while others grow up believing that it is the women’s job to wash the dishes, and the man’s job to do the repairs in the house. Therefore, most boys develop a primarily masculine gender-identity, and most girls develop a primarily feminine gender-identity. Children look up to their parents as role models, and tend to imitate their actions. This influences children’s gender role identity, as daughters wish to be like their mothers, while sons wish to be like their fathers. Therefore, an absence of a mother or father figure may also influence children’s gender role identity. According to Mcgraw-Hill Higher Education (2005), one’s peers act as an important source of gender-role standards, and their reactions typically result