Gender Socialization: Agents, Doing Gender, and Development

General
Socialization
Running Head: GENERAL SOCIALIZATION
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S t u d e n t N a m e :
S t u d e n t U n i v e r s i t y :
Sociology

GENERAL SOCIALIZATION 1
Introduction
Gender socialization, in the basic sense, refers to the process whereby the society
decides the norms to be followed by the individuals, based on their biological
differentiations. These norms are adopted irrespective of how the parents bring up their child;
and owing to the prevalent acceptance of these norms, it becomes engraved in the acceptable
practices for a male and female. Males and females are expected to act in defined ways from
their birth socially because of gender labels, which show their values, behaviors, beliefs, and
norms. It begins when the child starts to evolve according to the sex where it is easy to
characterize them throughout the process (Bos & Schneider, 2016). Before the birth of a
child some things are done which defines the norms such as coloring the room according to
the gender. This starts through parents or society where they expect girls to be clean and quiet
and boys to be messy and loud. The dressing differences, choices, activities are divided, and
the one who is not categorized to be male or female and identified as transgender have some
negative characteristics like low self-esteem. The types of biological identities like different
voices of males and females, structural differences as a gender identity through which the
norms are learned and accepted or rejected by society shows the gender division and labeling.
This changes the thinking of what males and females can or cannot do; which becomes
flexible after some time for an individual (Brutt‐Griffler & Kim, 2018).
Gender Socialization is a vast topic if related to society norms, but it is important to
know the need of “doing gender” and the agents that make this work like family, friends,
school and more. The examining of gender according to the society, people get to know about
the development of individuals with certain drawbacks in socialization which will be
discussed in this essay.
Doing Gender
The fieldwork and observation in the area of living are done to know the people
“doing gender” in society to understand it as a daily, systematic and returning achievement. It
is to find what they have in common and their abilities nature, presentation and performance
of how they act, speak, dress and carry themselves. Sexism is where society treats individuals
unequally and unfairly because of labeling, and this can be acknowledged through their
personality characteristics, natural behaviors according to the area they live in, and profession
and physical aspects. In Western culture, interacting with genders and noticing their actions

GENERAL SOCIALIZATION 2
are accepted socially where they are used and strengthen. This interaction is for new advance
understanding; although these norms are created by humans itself where everyone were
always in favor and no one corrected or went against through an act of social misdoing
(Plante & Mau, 2018). The norms are fixed by the society where every interaction is set
according to it and gender behavior is valued compared to the standards characterized and
conflicts do not affect the expectations as structured. If any individual fails to meet the
criteria, they are assigned and no need to follow strictness. Every individual uses genders to
interact which are visible in a wide variety of activities such as social discussion. This
concept challenges the thinking for genders as a feature currently, performance display of an
individual or a response that defines role expectations roughly (Fenstermaker & Budesa,
2015). The differences made by the society for genders is also based on the race and religion
which leads to biasness by treating them unequally and shows the gaps need to be worked on.
These are influenced by the existing structure and serves to re-establish the rightness of such
practices. The term doing gender also shows the variations between gay and straight
individuals and creates differences in transgender experiences. The structure valuation
includes the relationship strictly between gender and bisexuality. The achievement of trans-
femininity within a men’s guardhouse system reveals the universal and constancy of doing
gender (Medved, 2016).
Agents
There are many agents of gender socialization, and two of them are Family and
Colleagues.
Family
Gender socialization is done through agents who make individuals to follow the
norms and one of the most important agents is the family as values and behavior patterns puts
high impact on their child to learn and behave accordingly. To be clear, the child success and
failure do not affect their parents’ lives. Sometimes they found a similarity not only in
appearance but in other factors also. The family plays an important role in socialization so the
impact of the child’s personality is the reason of what their parents teach them which can be
worse or better (Collado, Evans, & Sorrel, 2017). The parent's teaching to their child
depends on their social class and own biological factors whereas the middle-class and
working-class parents socialize differently. Working-class are told to do and what not to do
on jobs, they decide whether to obey their primary values or they will get punished, which