Does gender really matter? Society’s distinction of man and woman has created some blatant forms of inequality and prejudice. Women frequently are paid less, overlooked for promotions, underrepresented in congress, given the unequal burden of household duties, sexually exploited, and subjected to physical abuse, to name a few.
The famous Anchorman, Ron Burgundy, once said:
I’m a man who discovered the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn. That’s what kind of man I am!
You’re just a woman with a small brain. With a brain a third the size of us. It’s science.
Even though this is a hyper-masculine, over exaggerated example of prejudice against women, I’m not too sure if it strays too far from the truth. Growing up in the ultra masculine environments of athletics and fraternal brotherhood jokes like these were plentiful. We usually just laugh off Will Ferrell’s ridiculous humor, but his influence is without a doubt permeating, especially in the minds of young high school and college men.
The mass media and entertainment industry are definitely influential institutions that perpetuate these sorts of ideas, but Dr. Barrie Thorne argues that gender roles and biases are created much earlier in life. Dr. Thorne took her research to the schoolyard, playground, and classrooms of elementary schools to see if gender roles are apparent.
Usually we view parents as the socializing agents for children, but Thorne found that children are socializing agents themselves. In her book, Gender Play: Boys and Girls in School, Thorne was able to distinguish gender role formations, confirmations, and even contradictions through the way kids play.
Just think back to your childhood: boys chasing girls giggling hysterically like they’ve been bit with the tickle bug, girls playing patty cake as boys watch in astonishment, or calling over your current love crush during Red Rover, Red Rover. Some may say that all these activities are just “boys being boys, and girls being girls,” but Thorne begs the differ.
She suggests that these acts of play creates unequal gender distinctions, promotes heterosexuality as the hegemonic structure, and forms a social hierarchy. For example, boys chasing girls seems like an innocent act of play. In actuality, the girls that are chased are endowed with a certain higher social status that only the boy chaser can initiate. Girls’ social status is then dependent on a popular boy’s willingness to chase them creating a patriarchal system in which boys are privileged.
The point here is that gender is a social construction, and in turn, gender inequality is also socially constructed. We are all the same species and should not be given differential treatment. Women don’t biologically have smaller, less capable brains as Ron Burgundy suggests, they have the same potential for greatness as any man has, and they are entitled to the same privileges that men have.
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Tags: anchorman, barrie thorne, dr. thorne, feminism, feminist theory, Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School, gender roles, ignorance is bliss, inequality, injustice, masculinity, ron burgundy, social construction of gender, social inequality, sociological perspectives, sociology, sociology of gender, theory
