Concerned with being good parents, people are accumulating a lot of information on the subject. As the information can be very helpful, sometimes it can be destructive. That is the case when it comes to the problem of "tomboys" and "sissies." What are these two terms used for? The term "tomboy" is used when referring to a girl who is masculine, and the term "sissy" is used when referring to a boy who is feminine. We need to state what we

Sexism is the result of that bias imposed by our process of acculturation.

Gender roles in Western societies have been changing rapidly in recent years, with the changes created both by evolutionary changes in society, including economic shifts which have altered the way people work and indeed which people work as more and more women enter the workforce, and by perhaps pressure brought to make changes because of the perception that the traditional social structure was

The perception the public has had on the role of men and women is outdated and has been for some time, but public attitudes change slowly even in the face of overwhelming evidence. More than 40 years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead noted the way the West had developed its concept of male and female: There has long been a habit in Western civilization of men to have a picture of womanhood to which women reluctantly conformed, and for women to make demands on man to which men adjusted even more reluctantly. This has been a accurate picture of the way in which we have structured our society, with women as keepers of the house who insist that the man wipe their feet on the door-mat, and men as keepers of women in the house who insist that their wives should stay modestly indoors.

Gender can be defined as a social identity consisting of the role a person is to play because of his or her sex. There is a diversity in male and female roles, making it impossible to define gender in terms of narrow male and female roles. Gender is culturally defined, with significant differences from culture to culture. These differences are studied by anthropologists to ascertain the range of behaviors that have developed to define gender and on the forces at work in the creation of these roles. The role of women in American society was conditioned by religious attitudes and by the conditions of life that prevailed through much of American history. The culture of Europe and America was based for centuries on a patriarchal system in which exclusive ownership of the female by a given male was considered important, with the result that women were regulated to the role of property with no voice in their own fate. The girl-child was trained from birth to fit the role awaiting her, and as long as compensations were adequate, women were relatively content: "For Example, if in return for being a man's property a woman receives economic security, a full emotional life centering around husband and children, and an opportunity to express her capacities in the management of her home, she has little cause for discontent."

Those stuck in sexism, however, cannot grant even the simple request to ask why women are inferior. The reason sexism exists at all is because of an acculturation process which subtly creates it, and it is perpetuated in part for that reason and also because perceived changes in the roles and status of women create a backlash based on fear of change. Surveys have shown that identical resumes or scholarly articles are rated lower if the applicant is though to be a woman rather than a man"Man's success is more likely to be attributed to ability and woman's to luck." While advances have been made over the last decade, the challenge remains for the next, and "as long as women constitute small minorities in nontraditional employment contexts, substantial obstacles will remain." The women in the workplace must work harder to succeed than their male counterparts, and once they have succeeded they have to deal with the envy and anxiety this arouses. Women who do not advance only confirm the stereotype for others: The perception remains tha

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Approximate Word count = 2132
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)