Gender Norms

From: Alexis

In the top two pictures you see a boy and girl both in sports uniforms, in the bottom pictures you see on the right is a picture of a boy and a girl in Halloween costumes.

Gender norms are a set of rules that majority of the society follow. Gender norms define what society considers male and female behavior, which leads to the formation of gender roles. Gender roles are the roles males and females are expected to take in society. In the top left picture, football is known as a “boy” sport where cheerleading is known as a “girl” sport or not considered a sport at all. Football is considered a boy sport because it is rougher and more masculine sport. A girl playing football is not a “model for little girls” or is not feminine like for a girl to play a rough sport like football. Cheerleading is a sport that supports football players at their games and if a man is a cheerleader on the team he could be seen as less than a man. Also, some stereotypically gay men were cheerleaders and parents don’t want their son to be gay, so they won’t do cheerleading. In the picture with the costumes you see on the left that the ninja turtles have the muscled chest, swords, and are posed in a fighting stance.  Whereas the power puff girl is in a more girly costume and isn’t posing in a fighting stance, nor is there any type of muscle to the costume and has an innocent look. These costumes go to show that men are more stronger and more powerful than women, even though PPG and Ninja Turtles are both powerful only one is considered strong. This is also the ideal image that society shows how children should grow up wearing or doing.

As stated in Rudman & Glick’s “Two Cultures of Childhood” Gender schemas associates maleness and femaleness with myriad different attributes, behaviors, and objects, defining “masculine” as rougher, tougher, and more active and feminine as nicer, softer, and more passive (Rudman & Glicks 60).



                                                                           Work Cited

Rudman, Laurie A., and Peter Glick. "The Two Cultures of Childhood." The Social Psychology of Gender:   How Power and Intimacy Shape Gender Relations. The Guilford Press, 2015, 59-63.