In today’s society, a lot of people are unable to understand some aspects of the opposite sex, in my opinion this is caused because of the way that gender influences a person’s identity it is not as strict as it used to be. Gender can cause influence in multiple different ways from what children want to play with when they are young to what career a person might pick when they are older. Overall, in today’s society gender still does greatly influence a person’s identity and that is what can make it hard for people to understand someone of the opposite sex. Although not everyone allows it to identify them, it still causes a lot of uncontrollable influence over many aspects of a person’s life.
One way that gender influences the direction of a person’s life is by what they are expected to do in life. This can cause less understanding off the opposite sex because they can not relate to similar goals. It is known in society that the stereotype is set that the men go to work for example in Mallam Sile, mallam went and found work at a young age “he left home at age sixteen, and, all by himself, journeyed more than nine hundred miles in a cow truck to find work down south” (line 47-48).
On the other hand the women stay in the house to cook, clean, and do other household chores and responsibilities but they still are expected to have nice stuff for example clothes, shoes, makeup that is why in The Wife of Baths Tale it says “Women wanted wealth and treasure” (line 99). Even though this traditional stereotype is not true in all households, it still causes influence toward a lot of people and their life choices because of how deeply rooted it is in our society.
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Another way that gender influences a person’s identity and causes it to be harder to understand the opposite sex is that in our society or the way that person may function is with their emotions. In society, it is perceived as normal for girls to be emotional. It is widely accepted for women to let out their emotions. On the other hand, it is expected that men constantly act tough and keep their emotions hidden. This can cause them to not understand the opposite sex because they have been raised to deal with there emotions differently.
For example in My Fathers Sadness they talk about a guy wearing a “mask” to cover his emotions “ Fathers sadness masks my face it is hard to see through his tears” (Line 10-11). It is generally frowned upon for men to show emotion and the accepted idea is that men never cry, because that means they are showing their weakness. For example, research shows that when a male is texting another male, they do not usually use any emojis. On the other hand, women use them a lot more often when texting this shows that the influence of gender, even in the ways that a male vs a female expresses their emotions, is rooted so deeply that it can even be seen in how they communicate through text messaging.
Gender also causes influence when it comes to school. The trend in society is that more women enroll in college than men. In an online source, it shows data in the form of a graph and table that details college enrollment statistics. It shows that 65% of college graduates are females while the other 35% are males. This shows that it is greatly more common to see women in college. This trend in college enrollment is influenced by gender since some men do not even attempt to go to college. This is the trend because many men want to be able to go and work right after high school because they are expected to be able to provide for a wife and family and that causes them to not be able to relate to the opposite sex as easily due to their goals not being similar.
Another reason more girls go on to continue school, based on the influence of their gender, is because it has been widely known in society that when women that do work outside the home are still getting paid on average less than their male coworkers. The current desire women have to go further in their education is because they see a need to get better jobs in order to get paid as much or more than the men around them.
The strict gender roles of the current American society’s past are not as extremely influential as they have been throughout the years and that helps society to be able to understand the opposite sex. However, gender still plays a very large role in the influence and function of our society today and that does still make it more difficult to relate or understand someone of the opposite sex compared to someone of the same sex. The deep roots of influence based on gender can still be seen in many aspects of our society such as career paths, social and emotional behaviors, and educational choices.
All of these aspects of society still show that there are acceptable norms purely based on the influence of gender. Therefore, no matter how far this country has come in working to eliminate gender stereotyping, the American society still has work to do in correcting the deeply rooted influence that is still based on gender so everyone can have a better understanding of the opposite sex and what they go through.
