culture and gender roles

• cultural differences - nurture

  • Mead - cross cultural studies of gender roles on cultural groups in Papua New Guinea
  • Mundugumor
  • Tchambli
  • Arapesh
• Mead - cross cultural difference MUNDUGUMOUR

  • aggressive and hostile - similar to stereotype of masculinity in industrialised societies
• Mead - cross cultural differences - ARAPESH

  • gentle and responsive - similar to stereotype of feminity in industrialised societies
• Mead - cross cultural differences - TCHAMBULI

  • women = dominant and they organised village life
  • men = passive and considered decorative
  • reverse stereotype of industrialised societies
• Mead - cross cultural differences

  • research suggests there may not be a direct biological relationship between sex and gender - gender roles culturally determined
• cultural similarities - nature

  • Buss - consistent patterns in mate preference in 37 countries across all continents
  • women = men who offer wealth and resources
  • men = women who had youth and physical attractiveness
• cultural similarities - nature

  • Munroe and Munroe - in most societies division of labour is organised along gender lines
• AO3 - culture and gender - strength

  P: supported by evidence

  E: Hofstede - in industrialised cultures the changing status and expectations of women are a function of their increasingly active role in the workplace

  • led to a breakdown of traditional stereotypes in advanced industrialised societies
  • traditional societies = women still occupy role of house-maker

  L: gender roles are very much determined by cultural context
• AO3 - culture and gender - limitation

  P: Mead's cross-cultural research has been criticised

  E: accused of making generalisations based on a short period of study

  E: Freeman - follow-up study of people from Papua New Guinea and argued Mead was flawed as she misled some of her ppts and that her preconceptions of what she would find influenced her reading

  • observer bias and ethnocentrism

  L: may not have been objective and calls into question the conclusions that she drew