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Gender Stereotypes And Gender Roles

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Gender roles are defined as the “widely accepted societal expectations about how males and females should behave” (Rathus, 2010). From gender roles, we, the people of society, are able to determine whether someone identifies as a male or a female. Both biological and social factors tend to determine what gender roles a person takes on. However, there are also gender stereotypes, which are “the fixed and oversimplified beliefs about the ways in which men and women ought to behave” (Rathus, 2010). Often times, gender stereotypes are related back to the traditional beliefs of when women were responsible for staying home and being the caregivers and men were responsible for going out to work and bringing home the food, supplies, and money that the family needed (Rathus, 2010). There are four main differences between the genders: physical, cognitive, personality, and behaviors. Physical differences are the most obvious differences between genders. Those differences come from the primary and secondary sex characteristics. The primary sex characteristics of females are their ovaries and males have testes. As far as secondary sex characteristics, females tend to have wider hips and smaller bodies and males tend to have more facial hair and deeper voices. Some cognitive differences between males and females are that males are often more superior in visual-spatial abilities used in math, science, and map reading, and females are often more superior at writing, reading, and foreign

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