Gender stereotypes
Even though pink became the stereotypical color for girls just some 70 years ago, gender role stereotypes have stuck for long enough, we think. The way we see gender as a binary opposition isnât just unhealthy for us: it can also hinder the way we perceive long-gone cultures, like that viking warrior grave that was thought to belong to a man because⊠women just donât do that, right?Â
The current gender stereotypes are treated as something thatâs set in stone, but in reality, they were much more blurred until the 19th century, when the result of the industrial revolution crystallized into Victorian cultureâs âSeparate spheresâ. The idea that men and women, because of their ânatural characteristicsâ, were strictly bound to two different spheres (the domestic and the public sphere) is what defined masculinity and femininity in a way that, unfortunately, still persists to this day. The âSeparate spheresâ idea is absurd today - so why do people still fall for it?
The answer is conditioning. Masculinity and femininity are the first stereotypes we come into contact with, even before we are born. Pink for girls and blue for boys, right? Things like clothes and toys all come gendered at a time when children are at their most impressionable. This paper on gender roles and stereotypes puts it into perspective: âGender stereotyping begins early in development and results in children holding rigid rules for gender-related behavior. Stereotyping is maintained by the illusion that more activities and characteristics are associated with gender than actually are.â So expectations are already set on a child because of their biological sex and a victorian-age philosophy - girls are supposed to be passive, emotional and usually bad at math, while boys are supposed to be tough, insensitive and possessing an inborn understanding of how a car works. While this statement isnât true, it holds its ground just because itâs the status quo. And abiding by the status quo is the easy way out of thinking. One is pink, the other is blue, and none can ever mix with the other - deviation is punished. God forbid youâre purple, or green, or maybe yellow. Generalizations like these confine people, while the truth is that gender doesnât actually limit a personâs capabilities.
The aforementioned paper continues: âChildren become flexible in applying gender rules as they approach adolescence, allowing themselves more exceptions for individual variation. The tendency to make exceptions increases with development toward adulthood. During childhood, stereotyping may serve to simplify cognitive processing and allow children to make easier decisions and judgments, but adults do not require such simplification. Nevertheless, stereotyping continues, and prejudice and discrimination are frequent consequences.â So one antidote to stereotyping is thinking.
Another thing that helps perpetrate negative stereotypes is a phenomenon known as âstereotype threatâ. âStereotype threat is a situational predicament in which people are or feel themselves to be at risk of conforming to stereotypes about their social group. Stereotype threat has been shown to reduce the performance of individuals who belong to negatively stereotyped groups. If negative stereotypes are present regarding a specific group, group members are likely to become anxious about their performance, which may hinder their ability to perform at their maximum level.â This is essentially a self-fulfilling prophecy mechanism, one that is way too easy to fall into.
We encourage you to look beyond the socially appropriate colors and see every person for what they are: a unique individual whose mind cannot be confined within one single sphere. Prevailing ideas should be questioned and questioned again, until their real value is exposed as true or false.
