Summary

The past decades have produced many changes in gender relationships derived partly from the feminist activism and laws mandating gender equality in the West. These changes have had positive consequences for girls and women as they have provided more equal opportunities and better treatment in the workplace. Still sex roles remain ubiquitous in the world defining the distinct and common activities of the two genders. Gender roles reflect biological differences that emerged from the separate reproductive functions of males and females as based on our biological inheritance. A division of labor between the genders developed due to evolutionary pressures to survive. Today that division is less rigid since many women are now in the workforce, and labor does not just require physical strength. In fact men can also perform many of the household duties in two-earner families.

Sex roles are supported by gender stereotypes and largely explain differences between the sexes in emotional expression. Men typically express anger more easily, whereas women seeking harmony express more sadness or fear. The large gender differences in emotional expression are accepted by both genders as valid reflections of underlying variations in male and female psychology everywhere in the world. However, the sharpness of the distinction in sex roles depends on cultural values. Cultures that are conservative, hierarchical, with lower socio-economic development, and where women’s education is not valued produce stronger demarcation between genders.

Women continue to bear the disproportionately larger burden in maintaining family life. In countries where both genders work women still do nearly all the housework. This unfairness is the result of the influence of sex roles and social expectations. Also contributing to the unfairness is the value that women place on motherhood as the main source of identity and therefore their role in childcare and domestic responsibilities. Men are still looked to for financial support. The double burden of home and work makes it difficult for women to play significant roles in the economic sector and therefore provide them with less opportunity for advancement and equity in remuneration.

Sex role identity refers to the commonly accepted values or beliefs about how men and women should behave. A basic conflict in many parts of the world is between the traditional perspective and egalitarianism that favor equal treatment of the genders. Girls are more in favor of egalitarian sex roles because of the negative consequences of traditional sex role ideology. Globalization is having an impact on how sex roles are viewed particularly in traditional societies. However, research on the Larsen-Long sex ideology scale show that the conflict between tradition and egalitarianism is far from over even in advanced Western cultures.

Gender stereotyping is related to discrimination toward women. The stereotypes provided in the media often serve as unhealthy models causing women to be obsessed with their bodies and the state of their attractiveness. Women compare themselves upward toward a high Western standard of thinness and beauty that causes permanent dissatisfaction. In particular preoccupation with thinness is responsible for the large increase in eating disorders we now find among young women including anorexia and bulimia. There is a strong need for society to correct this problem emerging from the modeling in the visual and printed media by including women of all types as role models in magazines, movies and on television.

Another serious form of discrimination is the ubiquitous pay inequities as women are only paid a fraction of men’s remuneration for equal or equivalent work. However, here again the values of egalitarianism affect outcomes as women from Northern Europe, particularly Scandinavia (and the U.S.), are approaching equity in pay and opportunities.

Violence against women is a dirty page of both history and contemporary society. The victimization of females occurs with regrettable frequency in a variety of cultures. Rape as an extreme form of violence is ubiquitous in the world and is also used as a sadistic weapon in wartime. Women are especially at risk for intimate violence in societies that emphasizes male dominance and enforces the strict separation of the sexes. The most extreme form of violence against women are honor killings in traditional societies, a form of male control of women who are seen as transgressing propriety in relations with men not approved by the family. Sexual exploitation is ubiquitous in the world using hundreds of thousands of girls and women each year. The trafficking of women to serve the sexual pleasure of men is supported by cultural norms that define women as property. Another chapter in the sexual exploitation of women is pornography that humiliates women and is also ubiquitous in nearly all societies.

The struggles of feminists against all forms of gender injustice and for positive programs to empower women have produced better conditions for girls and women in recent years. Changes in law and in the workplace that mandate equal opportunities and treatment have improved the conditions for women the past several decades in the Western world. Political power is seen as unfeminine by many people and is achieved by relative few women. Women can however achieve success as leaders by emphasizing the communal and altruistic motivations of their leadership.

Research has over the years focused on various intellectual abilities of the two genders. The general stereotype about males supports the idea of their superiority in spatial and mathematical tasks. At the same time women are seen as superior in verbal fluency and comprehension. Some researchers believe these differences to be hardwired outcomes of how male and female brains develop. However, current research suggests that cultural expectations play a large role and relative superiority in any area of accomplishment depend on the type of culture. Evidence for different hardwiring abilities can also be observed in the ratio of superior male test outcomes in mathematics to female results. However, these differences have significantly decreased in the past few years as girls have had more educational opportunities.

Research has also examined gender differences across salient social behaviors. Social stereotypes supported by many early studies found that females were more conformist. However, with gender relations in a flux in many cultures and with a less rigid division of labor in society overall conformity differences appear to be small today. Males are more likely to conform in female areas of expertise, for example in how to handle childrearing, and females more likely to yield in what is considered male areas of superiority. The main factor in cultural conformity appears again to be the traditional cultural organization. Males are consistently more aggressive in all societies investigated. Reasons for the higher aggression levels point to hormonal differences particularly in testosterone that are hardwired biologically. The ever present violence in the media also has a relationship to violence, particularly by the social learning provided in the male modeling of violence. In some societies aggressive behavior is also viewed as a form of gender marking and assertion. Women are less likely to be victims of aggression in individualistic cultures that empower girls and women. However, in many cultures violence is an accepted behavior used by males in solving problems.

An understanding of attitudes toward sexual behavior is basic to conflict within society, but also between cultures. Real differences exist within and between societies about the value of chastity, particularly for girls and women. These different sexual values are at the root of conflict between Muslim and more globalized cultures. In traditional societies sexual behavior is connected to the concepts of family honor which in the extreme case justify so-called honor murders by male relatives. Genital mutilation is another means of male control over female sexuality. To a Western observer that practice appears to be a particular brutal suppression of natural female sexuality and enforcement of male control. Actual gender differences in sexual behavior are difficult to determine as females do not always give truthful answer for reasons of embarrassment or shame.

Males and females are confronted in all societies with the issue of mate selection. Research support the differential criteria used by the genders in finding an acceptably mate and these gender differences appear to be cross-culturally consistent. Selective adaptation and motivation to achieve successful reproduction put different pressures on males and females. Women are interested in the welfare of offspring and therefore look for stable and financially promising partners, whereas males are more likely to seek a variety of fertile and attractive women for reproductive success. Of course the male reproductive strategy through promiscuity is circumvented by society that emphasizes monogamy or creates other forms of social pressures. The varying reproductive strategies between the genders also produce different types of jealousies in men and women. Women tend to be more threatened by emotional infidelity and men more by sexual infidelity.

Physical attraction is the stimuli by which the two genders make initial approaches to one another. Although there is some evidence for marginal differences in the criteria of attractiveness in women, the stronger result is the universality of physical attractiveness. The model for female beauty is converging along with the increasingly globalized world. The many changes in gender relationships in recent decades make the future of love and marriage uncertain. In all cultures men and women live together and the large majority has a desire for marriage. Recent decades have however produced many changes in gender relationships in the Western world. Many partners now live together without marriage and sexual satisfaction is not dependent on social sanction. This libertine atmosphere that co-evolved with the ability of women to control reproduction has a dark side. A very large proportion of children are now born to mothers without the assurance of fathers taking responsibility. Still the majority of people eventually marry although what constitute marriage is culturally dependent. Intercultural marriages produce special challenges because of different cultural expectations of marriage itself and childrearing. For such relationships to be successful would require patience and careful planning in order to cope with the different expectations.

Chapter 12