Gender identity

Question 1

What are the types of femininity?

Answer 1

• Passive (traditional)
• Ladettes ( Jackson (2006)) / normative
• Exaggerative (waiting to be saved by a man
• Assertive femininity which challenges passive femininity
• Questioning femininity (Seidler (2006)) where you question your femininity that is forced upon you because of your religion

Question 2

What are the types of masculinity?

Answer 2

• Hegemonic
• Marginalised where young or working class men feel a loss of identity
• Complicit masculinity promotes gender equality by taking a shared role in the family
• subordinate (gay men)

Question 3

What is Witt (1997) view on the family’s role in reinforcing gender identities?

Answer 3

Within 24 hours of a child being born, parents expect their babies to act differently depending on the gender

Question 4

What is Wood (2002) view on the family’s role in reinforcing gender identities?

Answer 4

They found that fathers would parent differently depending on the child’s gender due to rigid gender expectations. Fathers would be more physically punishing towards their sons but they would be more gentle with daughters often using skin to skin contact

Question 5

What is Fuller (1984) view on education’s role in reinforcing gender identities?

Answer 5

1 - Middles class and ethnic minority girls value school and are strongly encouraged at home
2 - White working class girls see education as a way to pass time and they would act like nonacademic boys to gain social status

Question 6

What is Frosh et al (2001) view on education’s role in reinforcing gender identities?

Answer 6

1 - Boys who are academic and strongly value school and relationships with their teachers. They work hard to obtain academic success
2 - Boys who reject academic study as they see it as feminine. They believe in status and respect which is achieved through “laddish,” and anti - school activities

Question 7

What is Miller and Church (2002) view on education’s role in reinforcing gender identities?

Answer 7

Gender stereotypes are reinforced within the classroom. For example noisy girls are more likely to be punished than noisy boys as girls are expected to be quiet but boys are expected to be boisterous and assertive

Question 8

What is Skelton and Francis (2003) view on education’s role in reinforcing gender identities?

Answer 8

• They looked at peer groups in primary schools in both the classroom and playground
• They saw that boys dominated more space than girls whilst playing as girls did separate activities like skipping

Question 9

What is Johnson (2002) view on media’s role in reinforcing gender identities?

Answer 9

TV adverts reinforce gender identities as adverts aimed at boys promote more masculine traits like action, competition and destruction. Adverts aimed at females emphasisied traditional female traits like nurturing, beauty and emotion. This is usually done through language and images

Question 10

What is Kilbourne (1999) view on media’s role in reinforcing gender identities?

Answer 10

Women in magazine have size 0 bodies, long legs and have perfect teeth and hair reinforcing impossible beauty standards. There are impossible beauty standards for men but they aren’t stereotypically as heavily forced upon the youth

Question 11

What is Wilson (1975) view on gender identity?

Answer 11

Men are more sexually prominent and they need to spread their seed whilst women have the need to nurture children forever and stay faithful to the father of their child so he has a distinctive role in her child’s life

Question 12

What is Parsons (1955) view on gender identities?

Answer 12

Men have an instrumental role in the family acting as sole protector and breadwinner and women have an expressive role in the family as a childbearer.

Question 13

What is Ann Oakly’s view on gender identity?

Answer 13

Feminist Oakly argues that gender roles are socially constructed through socialisation in four ways:
- manipulation
- canalisation
- verbal appellation
- different activities

Question 14

What is Jackson (2006) ‘ s term “ladette,”?

Answer 14

It refers to when stereotypically masculine activities such as smoking, risk - taking and skipping school are displayed by women to appear cool

Question 15

What is Denscombe (2001) view on gender identity?

Answer 15

Women portray masculine behaviors especially smoking in order to be seen as anything but the stereotypical woman

Question 16

What is Connell (1995) view about gender identity?

Answer 16

There are many types of masculine identities available today however hegemonic masculinity is the most common and most reinforced

Question 17

What is Mac an Ghail (1994) view about gender identities?

Answer 17

The term “crisis of masculinity,” was developed to define how working class men feel insecure as the breadwinner role has been lost and there has been a severe decline in traditional masculine industries such as mining and ship building

Question 18

What is Stanley and Wise (2002) view on gender identity?

Answer 18

That females are associated with pink

Question 19

What do Osler and Vincent (2003) argue about gender identity?

Answer 19

Boys are expected to value physical toughness whilst girls are expected to value their appearance

Question 20

What do feminists believe about identity?

Answer 20

Gender is most likely to intersect with other aspects of idenity