Gender roles

C.T.P. Jesús Ocaña Rojas

12-3
Accounting
Gender roles
Adrián Céspedes Hernández Kevin Medina Altamirano
Patricia Corrales Rojas

Boys and Gender Roles
Research into the differences between girls and boys is relatively new and is politically charged. Some researchers fear being labeled "anti-female" by delving into the study of boys and gender roles. Butover the last three decades, gender roles have changed dramatically, and the impact on boys needs to be examined.
Some researchers maintain that boys may not develop their full capacity for emotional depth because of a combination of factors, including parenting, education, biological and genetic factors, and the messages they receive from popular culture. As a result, some boys are less ablethan girls to deal with the emotional upheavals that accompany adolescence; recent statistics show that teenage boys commit suicide at five times the rate teenage girls do. Ultimately, a lack of emotional development as a boy makes it difficult for the adult man to develop healthy relationships.
As gender roles have changed, they have opened greater opportunities for females. But men face adilemma. The old model of the "macho man" is less acceptable in today's world than it was even three decades ago, and men are struggling to reinvent themselves. Some men are so dependent on the old roles for their identity that they find themselves at a loss when confronted with new expectations. For example, some men cannot adjust when they discover that their wives or girlfriends earn more money thanthey do, and end the relationship. Silly? To some, perhaps. But plainly, for such men the new options they have regarding gender roles are limited and limiting.
What does it mean to be a man? That's a question many of today's men are wrestling with. In his book Reaching up for Manhood, author Geoffrey Canada wrote, "The image of male as strong is mixed with the image of male as violent. Male asvirile gets mixed with male as promiscuous. Males as intelligent often get mixed with male as arrogant, racist, and sexist." Small wonder that so many men in western society are flailing about for a new definition. However, today's parents have the opportunity to show their sons that they don't have to be violent to be strong. Rather than taking the attitude that "boys will be boys" if their songets into a fight, parents can take the chance to teach their child new ways to solve conflicts without using fists.

Women and Gender Roles
Just as men's gender roles have changed, women's gender roles have changed in the last few years, opening new opportunities. However, opportunities have their price, and some things are slower to change than others.
Women can no longer be discriminatedagainst in the workplace. If a woman is qualified for a job, she is by law able to have it. However, few women hold top positions at large companies. A 1995 survey found that among five hundred Fortune companies, only 90 had women as their chief executive officers. About 65 percent of Americans believe that women are discriminated against in getting such well-paying positions a phenomenon called the"glass ceiling," in which a woman rises only so far in management and no further.
However, women are looking more and more at the tradeoffs involved. Even though they may be able to get ahead in the workplace, things at home remain remarkably the same as they did in their parents' generation.
Due to gender roles, women even if they work full-time outside the home are still perceived as having theprimary responsibility for taking care of home and family. Generally, if a child is sick and both parents work, it is the mother who leaves the office, picks the child up, and stays home until the child is well enough to return to school. Researchers have also found that the woman is still the primary doer of housework (although today's men tend to do more housework than their fathers did)....