Gender Notes :Socialization

The social construction of gender is therefore the social making of gender through the process of gender socialization. The social institutions that are responsible for gender construction are called socialisation forces like the family, the school, the media, language, music religion among others. The people who carry out the socialization are socialisation agents like the parents, the teachers, pastors, peers and many others. Some institutions like the family are primary socialization institutions in the sense that they are the first that any child comes into contact with. Murdock in Haralambos and Holborn  says the family is the child’s first window to the world and no other gender socialisation institution rivals it in gender socialisation. Such prime gender socialisation institutions are called primary socialisation forces, while those institutions that the child comes in contact with after primary socialisation are called secondary socialisation forces like the school, the peer group, and others. Both the primary and secondary forces create, reinforce, maintain and perpetuate gender differences but the primary forces are the chief creators, while the secondary forces are the chief maintainers, reinforcers and perpetuators.

The Family

The family constructs gender through the way family members:

·       interact with and treat the child

·       talk to the child

·       dress the child,

·       the types of toys they give to the child

·       assignment of roles and the roles they give

·       accord the child benefits and opportunities and the type of benefits and opportunities they accord

·       position the child within the family

·       give the child the name and the name given and even the other pseudo names given

As can be gleaned from the above data, adults provide infants with clothes of appropriate colors and styling, according to whether they are a boy or a girl. They also equip them with an appropriate stock of toys. Such adults also act as role models and children imitate their behavior. The children are also encouraged to conform to roles and behavior appropriate to their sex through a system of rewards and punishments operated by adults eg, girls are praised for being clean, for wearing a pretty dress and their house keeping diligence and yet they are discouraged from playing soccer or participating in tyre-changing even for a bicycle. Boys are also praised for so-called masculine tasks but are regarded as odd if they like housework or playing with dolls.

In the process, children themselves begin to internalize appropriate behavioral norms and characteristics and thereby unconsciously regulate their own behavior in line with the masculine and feminine roles into which they are socialized.

Secondary socialization

1.    The School

This is a secondary socializing force and the teachers are the chief socialising agents. The school operates on two levels, that is, the intentional and official and the unintentional and none official both of which are gender differentiated (Dekker and Lemmer 2003.)Gordon (1995) says that teachers may not explicitly teach gender, but gender emerges on its own in the perspectives teachers bring to school from home and importantly in the curriculum. This shapes what the school pupils’ eyes see, what their ears hear and what their minds in turn believe in through:

·       the school management structure

·       the ways teachers talk ,organize and treat the pupils

·       the portrayal of men and women in the texts and reading books or the learning media

·       the subject allocations

·       the teachers’ teaching methodologies

·       the teachers’ attitudes and expectations

·       The extra curricula activities and the sort of carrier guidance offered among other things, imparts a gender social code on the pupils.

Therefore you see that, the exclamations ‘it’s a boy! Or it’s a girl!’ upon delivery sets a course of action that from that moment on, influences multiple facets of a person’s life. The answer ‘boy or girl’ carries significance in the child’s entire life in terms of the individual’s:

·       opportunities

·       associations and relationships

·       benefits

·       societal roles and responsibilities

·       value in society

·       social identity

·       expected behavior

The Peer Group

On reaching school age, children begin to interact more intensively outside the family, especially with others of their age (the peer group).Within the peer group, the male and female worlds are further developed.

Children’s games provide important cultural lessons. Lever cited in Macionis (1989) concluded that the peer group activities of boys and girls differ considerably, providing in each case a distinctive type of socialization. Lever found out that boys engage in team sports that involve many roles and complex rules, and clear objectives like scoring a goal. These games are almost always competitive, producing winners and losers. Such activity among boys reinforces the characteristics of masculinity, notably aggression, competition, and remaining in control.

Lever postulates that girls on the other hand, tend to play games such as jump rope in small groups, or simply sing or dance together. Such activity tends to be spontaneous, involving few simple rules. Just as important, since these games rarely have ‘victory’ as their ultimate goal, girls rarely oppose one another. However, female peer groups do serve to teach the interpersonal skills of communication and cooperation that are the basis for life within the family.

Gilligan cited in Giddens (2004), noted that boys and girls learn to use distinctive patterns of moral reasoning. Boys tend to reason according to rules and principles, that ‘rightness’ is largely a matter of ‘playing by the rules’. Girls however, understand morality more in terms of responsibility to other human beings, so that ‘rightness’ lies in maintaining close relationships with others. Clearly then, these distinctive patterns of moral reasoning are encouraged by the different kinds of peer group activity common   to boys and girls.

The Mass Media

Mass media are channels of communication directed to vast audiences within a society (Macionis, 1989).The mass media include both electronic and print media such as the television, radio, newspapers and magazines. All of these constantly present us with information of all kinds and, as a result, have an enormous effect on our attitudes and behaviour. The mass media are a powerful force in the socialization process. Films, magazines, literature and especially the television, have a significant effect on the ways we think and act.