What is the relationship of gender and society?
What is the relationship of gender and society?
Gender can be defined as socially created norms and ideologies that influence men and women's behavior and actions. Understanding gender relations and the power dynamics that underpin them is essential for understanding people's access to and distribution of resources, decision-making abilities, and how political processes and social development affect women and men, boys, and girls.
Gender norms in society refer to how we're supposed to act, talk, wear, groom, and behave, depending on our genders. For example, girls and women must dress in traditionally feminine styles and be respectful, welcoming, and caring. Men are typically thought to be strong, offensive, and courageous.
Gender role norms exist in any society, racial group, and community, but they can vary significantly from one group to the next. They can even evolve in the same culture. Pink, for example, was once thought to be a masculine color in the United States, while blue was supposed to be feminine.
Both informal and formal structural systems inherently practice societal gender norms, relations. "Long-lasting codes of behavior, norms, and customs that lead to gender disparity in all fields of life" is how informal structures are generally defined. Power economies and labor markets are examples of formal institutions (economic, political, legal, and social). Gender outcomes are determined by the interaction of these two realms with local societies. Discriminatory family rules, son bias, physical poverty, limited resource opportunities and entitlements, and cultural limits on women's movement and other freedoms are among the social constructs that have been described as especially harmful to women and girls.
Formal systems can negatively impact women in both intended and unintentional ways. For example, laws like Shariah that say that a man's and a woman's witness are of different importance have an expected discriminatory impact. Since land ownership is typically concentrated among male family members, a policy requiring land titles as a precondition for obtaining agricultural credit may have the unintended effect of excluding women. Allowing two names (a husband's and a wife's) to appear on land titles may help solve this dilemma.
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