Literature Review: Gender Roles, Gender Inequality, and Sexual Representation

Literature Review
Madeline Morgan
University of Texas at El Paso
Rhetoric and Writing Studies 1302
April 1, 2016
Liubov Shafirovich

Literature Review: Gender Roles, Gender Inequality, and Sexual Representation

A very popular issue that is being talked about nationwide and also being pictured in
different ways is gender roles, gender inequality, and sexual representation. The truth and
definition of Gender Studies as a topic is to recognize the ultimate and infinite levels of
importance that gender roles, gender inequality, and sexual representation play in todays society.
Not only this, but also how understanding these three are vital to explaining why people are who
they are and why people identify themselves in the ways that they do. With gender roles there are
issues constantly being faced with inequality, identity, and both inner and outer conflicts. The
significance that these three have on the outside world are crucial in having the abilities to
determine the physical and emotional meanings of the aspects surrounding gender and sex.
Gender roles in the mid 1950s were not highly spoken about like they are today. Now,
gender seems to serve as a very prominent issue and one that people cannot seem to stop talking
about. In earlier years, women were seen as more conservative and hidden whereas the men
could have been considered as all powerful beings whom could not be destructed. According to
Boundless, there has been significant variation in gender roles over cultural and historical
spans, and all gender roles are culturally and historically contingent. By this, Boundless means
that there has always been a constantly defined line between what is considered as traditional and
nontraditional. Traditional is seen as a baby being born as a male and living life as a male and a
baby being born as a female and living life as female. Any instance with gender that could
potentially be considered as nontraditional depending on who an individual is and their opinion
on this topic could be a baby being born as a male but instead of living life as a male, he wants to
live life as a female. That goes for the other way around as well. Today, the variation between
what can be considered as traditional and what can be considered as nontraditional have
completely blurred together. Society has begun to learn to respect individuals who do not

Literature Review: Gender Roles, Gender Inequality, and Sexual Representation

identify their gender with the sexes that they were originally born with. However, this is more
widely accepted in more liberal parts of the world rather than the parts that are considered to be
more conservative and closed off. Different beliefs come with different views and morals. For
example, my beliefs may not be relatively the same as someone else in my life because we are all
dissimilar. Yes, we as people do haves similarities, but these similarities are physical not mental.
Mentally, we all think differently especially when it comes to gender roles, gender inequality,
and sexual representation. Boundless states that there is no such thing as a universal,
generalizable statement about gender roles, which completely relates back to what was
previously said. Gender roles have an extreme importance in understanding present day society
and why we act in the ways we do and why we associate the ways that we do and how it allows
the world to continue to go around infinitely.
It has been clear since the world began to take face and communities began to take face
that men and women play completely opposite roles in society. Marked by Teachers discusses
this for themselves. In this excerpt, it is emphasized that men and women have different roles to
play when it comes to the job force. Despite women being employed, some of which doing very
well for themselves, women still lack the pay and wages that they deserve and therefore should
be given. This is simply a result of the sex and gender that they identify themselves as; women.
Identifying as a woman in the workforce automatically cuts out twenty-four cents of every dollar.
A dollar instead of seventy-six cents that she would make if she were a man working the same
job. In order to create equitable systems of work for all women, we as members of society need
to establish true equality and opportunity in an effort to pull families that face poverty out of that
low point. Yes, women were given equal rights, but that does not mean that women are truly
considered equals and they need to be. Womens unpaid labor in the home maintains systems of

Literature Review: Gender Roles, Gender Inequality, and Sexual Representation

oppression by women always being expected to cook, clean, and maintain the house. They are
expected to be housewives and stay at home moms. However, even though being a housewife is
a job, women do not receive any kind of payment for it. They do the work and most of the time,
it goes unnoticed and unacknowledged. The work that these women are doing without any form
of payment is hard on them. Because they do not make money, it creates a significant amount of
stress.
There are stereotypes about the gender roles and inequalities that women face in every
day life and how they are not provided with enough recognition for the work that they do.
Despite times changing and how much they have changed over the years, women are still
somewhat discriminated in the sense that they do not receive the proper types of compensation
for household work. Marked by Teachers portrays the fact that when both parents are actively
working and actively out of the home, that there is not one parent that takes on the role of raising
the child on their own. Or raising the child more than the other. Parents who both work have
equal opportunities to spend time around their children and raise them together. Taking into
account that there are some familial situations where there is only one parent, children raised by
two parents have a stronger support system. Having a designated father and a designated mother
completely emphasizes the stereotypical gender and roles that parents play in todays society.
Going back to the ideals of what is traditional and what is nontraditional is the idea of a
family. Families are not always considered traditional, especially now. There are families that are
multiracial, gay, lesbian, transgender, heterosexual, and many more. Traditions are beginning to
change as our world is beginning to change.
In Allison Lantagnes Gender Roles in Media, she talks about how social media
promotes the several roles that gender plays. Social media as a whole has begun to destroy all

Literature Review: Gender Roles, Gender Inequality, and Sexual Representation

face-to-face interaction among not only teenagers and young adults, but children as well. As
times continue to change and we as a society continue to develop, we begin to create social
media accounts (i.e. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Vine, etc.). These social media
accounts are promotions of the lives that people are living. Sex and gender play a vital role in the
importance and the popularity of these social media feeds and pages. Thus, diminishing the little
amount of contact we have with individuals outside of our small, digital screens. However, it is
increasing the overall interaction among peoples and different sexes. People reach out more
through the internet, which helps spread and distribute anything throughout the world. It is why
the United States has become so integrated as a nation, especially within the last century. The
interactions that people used to have before technology and the people that they interacted with
before social media are slowly beginning to fade. It is fading in the sense that people are not
allowing themselves to be as stingy as they were when it comes to communicating with gay,
lesbian, and transgender individuals.
Despite the loss of interaction, social media has proven itself to be beneficial in many
ways. It helps spread the word and start worldwide movements in the instance of only a few
moments. For the right person to retweet or repost something, it could create a worldwide
campaign. For example, on her Instagram account, Kylie Jenner posts often about certain people
and how they have overcome incidences with harassment because of their sexual and gender
identification. This allows millions of people to see her post and spread the story. Lantagne stated
that even on young children, gender roles are being pushed through advertisements. Not only
are gender roles pushed on adults, but now they are beginning to be pushed on children at
younger ages. It is the media that is causing children to be exposed to the shadows and spaces
that gender roles take up. Yes, at some point these gender roles should be fulfilled. However,

Literature Review: Gender Roles, Gender Inequality, and Sexual Representation

children need time to develop and figure out who they are before they can make any permanent
claims and decisions about themselves. Her article is all about how the media is promoting the
importance of gender roles and the roles that sex plays on modern day people.
In the Peace Corps article about gender equality, they summarize what gender equality is
and provide a definition. Their definition states that gender equality is a human right, but our
world faces a persistent gap in access to opportunities and decision-making power for women
and men. What this is saying is that women and men are given opportunities but not in the same
quantity. Men tend to be given more opportunities and are supposed to have this overall portrayal
of extreme power according to tradition. They provide the audience with examples on the
differences between mens empowerment and womens empowerment. The inequalities among
men and women are very common to the public eye. But it is the inequalities among other
genders that arent as highly and well-known such as gays, lesbians, and transgender individuals.
This has already been mentioned previously, and reasoning for reiterating it is to stress the
importance of the inequalities that the individuals who identify themselves under these titles
face. They face more inequalities than women do compared to men because they are not as
widely accepted.
Some myths about the normative U.S. family could be what people see as a traditional
family. Or even what some people would call a picture perfect family. A normative family in the
United states meets the traditional image, which is a mother and father and a couple of children.
A family where the father is considered to be the head of the house and the sole income source is
an example of this as well. The old-fashioned role that a man should play in their family blurs the
fact that times have changed and this is no longer the case. Men do not need to be in charge of
everything or have all of the power. Women have proven that they do indeed play larger roles

Literature Review: Gender Roles, Gender Inequality, and Sexual Representation

when it comes to economic stability in families as times continue to change. These myths
disadvantage most real families because in reality, there is a significant number of families where
there is only a mother or only a father and not both. There are single mothers and single fathers
taking care of any number of children on their own. It is much harder to live a life when you are
raising another one on your own. There are many factors that can be taken into account. Age is a
very important factor because of the teenage mothers out there. Women who have children at
younger ages generally have a harder time managing a job and taking care of a child.
Continuing on with the idea of gender inequality, it is a proven fact that woman are the
heart of society and societys not only need, but want to be successful and productive. Women
are the soul. They are extremely large contributors to every day living. It is women that bring life
into the world. It is true that men take part in this as well, but women are ultimately the ones who
decide whether or not they want to bring a life into the world and take on such a large
responsibility or in some cases, even give that opportunity to someone else. Again, despite all
that women do for men and all that they do for everybody else, women are still very much under
appreciated and acknowledged. Men and women are hard-wired to occupy different but
complementary roles, with little overlap, says The Guardian. The audience should take this to
mean that men and women were wired to compliment one another so that ones weaknesses can
bounce off the others strengths. It is a known statistic that female brains mature faster than male
brains do. Male brains develop at a slower rate than a female brain does due to environmental
and outside factors. The Guardian explains how girls tend to be more involved in economic
activity and men are more involved in academics. Its crazy to think that women are more
involved in economics and the workforce, but men are more involved academically and they
tend to do better in school compared to females. Despite the inequalities that women face

Literature Review: Gender Roles, Gender Inequality, and Sexual Representation

compared to men, there are some women that surpass men and exceed levels of succession and
build very comfortable lives for themselves.
In Gary Harpers article, he talks about all the misconceptions and misunderstandings of
gender roles and gender inequalities. Sexual orientation and representation are very important in
defining gender. Gender and sex are different but they tie into one another. Gender is the identity
that people take on whether it matches their sex or not. Sex is what an individual is born with
that gives them their sexual identity. Harper reassures the audience that people in todays society
do not see a difference in gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals. Even though people
think they may know, they ultimately do not know because they stereotype the genders and sexes
that they are not apart of. For example, people see transgender identities as disrupting the fixed
notions of sex and gender because defining ones sex is defining them as either male or female in
a biological sense. It does not mean that transgender individuals cannot be qualified in a different
way where they can define and identify their gender. It can be considered that in some situations,
transgender does disrupt the somewhat fixed notions of sex and gender because of the ways
that society views each concept. Although the two concepts similarly relate, they are very
different. Their differences are along the lines of traditional and cultural experience, as well as
societal opinion. Transgender individuals disrupt these fixed notions because of the confusion
and misunderstanding that they lead other members of their communities to believe.
Society has mainstreamed gender and all the topics surrounding gender, which in this
case are sex and inequality. Chatterjee Subhrajit wrote an essay on how people belonging to the
LGBT community face unwanted and unfair discriminations. People judge before they even
know based on appearances and the stereotypes that they have formed in their heads. However,
real life cannot live based off of stereotypes. It is the stereotypes that we as a society need to rid

Literature Review: Gender Roles, Gender Inequality, and Sexual Representation

of and forget about because they are only continuing to influence people in negative ways
creating thoughts in peoples heads that are not necessarily true.
The sociology of gender is another important factor of explaining the importance of the
differences of sex and gender. People are unaware and do not realize that there is a difference
between the two. The importance of knowing what sex is and the importance of knowing what
gender is helps eliminate the stereotypes that people have created and that live in every day
society. The differences between the two help distinguish between separate sexual orientations.
Knowing this helps explain what can be defined as masculine and feminine.
Gender roles have always been a topic of hot commodity and opinion. As society
continues to develop and views continue to change because of adverse situations and exposure,
the ways that people think and act have also begun to change. The world has made an effort to
start being more accepting of individuals who identify as gay or lesbian. Clearly, this is the case
because gay marriage has been legalized nationwide even though there is still the extreme
unacceptance from a majority of the United States population. However, gays and lesbians vary
from transgender individuals. Transgender has not yet begun to take face as something that can
be easily or widely accepted in any case. In some time, as social media continues to exemplify
and portray transgender individuals, stereotypes will become less of an issue and less apparent,
which will help society realize that there is a deeper, underlying emotional meaning behind
people and their transitions into understanding transgender individuals.

References

Literature Review: Gender Roles, Gender Inequality, and Sexual Representation

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Articles. (n.d.). Retrieved March 30, 2016, from http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/articles/globalissues-gender-equality-and-womens-empowerme/

Editorial, O. (2014). Gender inequality: The unjust gulf between men and women | Observer
editorial. Retrieved March 30, 2016, from
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/19/observer-editorial-genderequality-women
Gender Roles in the U.S. - Boundless Open Textbook. (n.d.). Retrieved March 30, 2016, from
https://www.boundless.com/sociology/textbooks/boundless-sociology-textbook/genderstratification-and-inequality-11/gender-and-socialization-86/gender-roles-in-the-u-s-4987851/
Harper, G. W. (n.d.). A Journey Toward Liberation: Confronting Heterosexism and the
Oppression of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered People. Retrieved March 31,
2016, from http://www.citationmachine.net/apa/cite-a-website/manual

Lantagne, A. (n.d.). Gender Roles in Media. Retrieved March 30, 2016, from
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/allison-lantagne/gender-roles-media_b_5326199.html
"Men and women have different roles to play in modern society." Discuss - GCSE Sociology Marked by Teachers.com. (n.d.). Retrieved March 30, 2016, from
http://www.markedbyteachers.com/gcse/sociology/men-and-women-have-different-rolesto-play-in-modern-society-discuss.html
Sociology of Gender. (2014). Retrieved March 30, 2016, from
http://othersociologist.com/sociology-of-gender/

Literature Review: Gender Roles, Gender Inequality, and Sexual Representation

Subhrajit, C. (n.d.). Problems Faced by LGBT People in the Mainstream Society: Some
Recommendations. Retrieved March 30, 2016, from
http://www.ijims.com/uploads/cae8049d138e24ed7f5azppd_597.pdf

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