History
Gender Roles in 1950s
In the 1950s, traditional gender roles were prevalent, with men typically being the primary breadwinners and women expected to focus on domestic duties and caregiving. This era saw a strong emphasis on conformity to these roles, with societal expectations shaping the behavior and opportunities available to individuals based on their gender.
Written by Perlego with AI-assistance
Related key terms
1 of 5
5 Key excerpts on "Gender Roles in 1950s"
eBook - PDFOn Norms and Agency
Conversations about Gender Equality with Women and Men in 20 Countries
- Ana María Muñoz Boudet, Patti Petesch, Carolyn Turk, Angélica Thumala(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- World Bank(Publisher)
For their part, women continue to be held to strict account for the large majority of household work and care, no matter what other roles they may play beyond the household. Depending on the neighbor- hood or village, the relaxation of gender norms was portrayed as either incremental or a somewhat faster blurring of women’s and men’s roles and responsibilities. But these changes are generally happening more quickly in urban contexts. Finally, the focus groups conveyed idealized notions about good wives and good husbands who enjoy harmonious and cooperative relations, but their ensuing discussions of how marital relations have changed over the generations suggested a more stressful picture. The men expressed a particular concern that the good husband is losing control over his life and his family, and their testimo- nies seem to question their present roles in society. Their frustrations cannot be taken lightly. In general, the discussions about a good wife and good husband display the same patterns that we find elsewhere in the dataset: women perceive that they are gaining more independence and freedom, while men often expressed a growing sense of powerlessness. The Good Girl, the Good Boy Girls and boys learn at an early age how they are expected to behave according to their sex. Gender norms are passed on by parents, school teachers, and peers. Furthermore, when they reach adolescence, any flexibility that the girls and boys may have had while growing up tends to disappear, and compliance with gender norms is tightly enforced. In adolescence, at the same time that the physical changes of puberty appear, gender role definition intensifies. Girls move from childhood to adult roles, such as wife, mother, and worker; and boys become workers, providers, and fathers. 5
eBook - PDF- Paul A M Van Lange, Arie W Kruglanski, E Tory Higgins, Paul A M Van Lange, Arie W Kruglanski, E Tory Higgins, Author(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
Cecilia Ridgeway, a sociologist working within this tradition and Wendy’s colleague for a few years, demonstrated how beliefs about men’s greater worth and value, which are based on men’s greater access to societal resources and power, produce sex differences in influence in small task-performing groups (Ridgeway, 1981, 1984). These psychological and sociological ideas, although very different in form, provided frameworks to understand how cultural beliefs about gender guide individuals’ behav-ior to yield confirmatory evidence of sex dif-ferences in the context of social interaction. During the years in which we developed our theory, vivid experimental demonstrations of the power of gender roles cumulated in the research literature. For example, Zanna and Pack’s (1975) experiment showed that female students shaped their self-presentations to fit the preferences of a highly eligible male inter-action partner. When this man reported pre-ferring women who were traditional (versus nontraditional), these young women presented themselves as conforming to his preferences and furthermore scored worse on a test of intellectual aptitude given that these scores were to be shared with this male partner. In an experiment by Skrypnek and Snyder (1982), task partners negotiated a more traditional division of labor when they believed that their (unseen) partner was of the other sex, regard-less of their partner’s actual sex. Yet another catalyst of social role theory was research showing that people’s self-concepts tend to have gender-stereotypic content (e.g., Bem, 1974; Spence and SOCIAL ROLE THEORY 463 Helmreich, 1978). Researchers had turned to gender stereotypes to choose items for meas-uring instruments that assess the ascription of agentic and communal attributes to the self. It thus appeared that, to varying extents, people internalize gender roles as personal gender identities.
eBook - PDF- L. McKie, S. Bowlby, S. Gregory, L. McKie, S. Bowlby, S. Gregory, Kenneth A. Loparo, Jo Campling(Authors)
- 1999(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
These beliefs provide a simple but idealis- tic notion of what the family 'should' be, and disguises the complex and dynamic realities of social life (Bemardes, 1985). It is also the case that notions of gender and understandings of how to define and understand family life are inextricably linked (Morgan, 1996). Food and eating practices provide a significant pivot upon which many assumptions about family life balance and are made real. The family and the roles assumed by its members are demonstrated and reinforced through day-to-day activities. Within the private world of the family, it is in what women do, and to an extent in what men do not do, that these gender roles are evident (Graham, 1985; West and Zimmerman, 1991; DeVault, 1991). The activity which takes place most significantly, although not exclu- sively, within the family and which to a large part defines the setting and prescribes the roles, is that of caring (Graham, 1983; Ungerson, 1983; Leonard and Speakman, 1986). Caring in its various forms could be said 62 Gender, Power and the Household to have two aims: to complete a necessary and practical activity, whether cooking a meal for the family or bathing an elderly relative, but also to establish and endorse gender and other roles. The popular conflation of the product of the female reproductive system (pregnancy and childbirth) with the activities assigned to the home (domestic work and childcare) place the responsibility for 'caring' firmly in the hands of women. The interrelationship between gender and the family is embodied in the responsibilities undertaken by women through domestic and childcaring tasks. The responsibility for domestic tasks has been well documented (for example Oakley, 1985; Morris, 1992) and many have made the point that responsibility for household tasks does not imply control over its form or content (Charles and Kerr, 1988).
eBook - PDFCurrent research in sociology
Published on the occasion of the VIIIth World Congress of Sociology, Toronto, Canada, August 18–24, 1974
- Margaret S. Archer, 1974, Toronto> World Congress of Sociology World Congress of Sociology <8(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
Jean Lipman-Blumen [67, 68], on the other hand, hypothesizes, and has supporting evidence to indicate that crises generally permit loosening of sex-role definitions. She suggests that during wartime and other such disrupting periods, women have been able to expand their roles into male-dominated spheres; she has not explored, as yet, whether definitions of male roles become loosened as well. It seems to me that crises may coagulate male sex-role stereotypes in traditional male-role activities; but this is surely part of a set of empirical questions which careful examination might explain Although sociologists have become increasingly interested in employing historical research, the past two decades have actually witnessed an in-crease in the number and percentage of papers that utilize data from one time point only. Most studies of male attitudes toward women working are one-time studies, and few researchers have explored national polls (such as Gallup) over time to see whether the attitudes expressed are indicative of trends. It may be useful to direct support to work which would bring together the substantial body of data gathered over the past several decades on the attitudes of male and female college students regarding role expectations, provided that scrupulous attention is paid to consistency and comparability of the data. We ought to note here that the census provides excellent sources for gross indices of change. These, of course, have been used. Such subjects as women's labor force participation (Valerie Oppenheimer [79], Edward 298 Sociology of sex roles Gross [44]), women's changing levels of education, fertility (Karen Oppenheimer, Paula Hass [45], Kingsley Davis and Judith Blake [24]), have been analyzed. Abbott Ferris [32] has contributed interesting work on indicators of trends in the status of women in a volume put out by the Russell Sage Foundation.
eBook - ePub- Yoko Tokuhiro(Author)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
4 Gender roles The roles of wife and mother Introduction This chapter focuses on female gender roles, particularly the roles of wife and mother. There are two main reasons for this. First, the role of mother is the one that determines gender role most decisively in Japan and at the same time heavily restricts women’s behaviour (Ehara 2000; Okamoto 2000). Despite rapid technological improvements, which have reduced women’s housework hours (Ministry of Health and Welfare 1996), child-rearing still remains overwhelmingly in the hands of mothers (Jolivet 1997; Funabashi 2000; Ministry of Health and Welfare 1998). Not only men but also women strongly adhere to, or are pressured into, the idea that mothers should be the ones to raise their children, and this limits their behaviour. Second, we are inclined to believe that more Japanese women advanced into the labour force after the war. However, this is a fallacy. As Ochiai (1997: 14) points out, the female labour participation rate, in fact, decreased for three decades after the war. The idea of a strict household division of ‘men as breadwinners and women as homemakers’ actually became more popular and acceptable in the era of rapid economic growth – the late 1950s to 1973. One of the main contributing factors to this could be the break-up of the household as a production unit, which restricted the role of the female to either worker or housewife, whereas before they could perform both duties within the household unit (Ochiai 1997). I would argue that the nature of the productive labour that women engage in has changed, and that this has forced them to select between the mutually exclusive roles of worker and housewife. 1 This may suggest another reason for the increase in delay or avoidance of marriage because women foresee difficulties in carrying out both productive and reproductive labour
Index pages curate the most relevant extracts from our library of academic textbooks. They’ve been created using an in-house natural language model (NLM), each adding context and meaning to key research topics.
