Women's studies - Gender, Culture and Technology Essay

Women's studies - Gender, Culture and Technology - Essay Example Sex stereotypes are defined as â€Å"socially shared beliefs that certain qualities can be assigned to individuals, based on their membership in the female or male half of the human race† (Lips, 1993, pp. 2). The individual tends to conform to the roles defined or constructed by the society. Individuals are so influenced by the socially specified categories that they tend to organize themselves according to these categories. A woman speaks in one way when she is speaking to another woman, and in a different way when she is speaking to a man. She may behave differently when she is working with a group of men than when she is working with a group of females. This is because the woman has learnt through modeling, practice and reinforcement, to behave differently in situations that differ only in relation to the gender of the partner or the group. Her role vis-à  -vis to the gender she is interacting with has already been prescribed and defined by society. Bohan (1993, pp.6) suggests that the differences between boys and girls and men and women can be explained by two different perspectives – Essentialism and Constructionism. Essentialism locates the origin of the gender qualities within the individual whereas Constructionism locates these gender qualities outside the individual as a component of the acts and actions of the individualism. Gender is therefore made external to the self. It is not intrinsic. It is only in what the actions of the individual. Gender qualities, from this perspective, are not intrinsic characteristics based on biological sex. Bohan argues that gender is not something that the individual possesses but something that the individual does. Essentialism on the other hand locates gender within the individual as intrinsic. The constructionist perspective actually locates gender in the social realm. It defines gender in terms of ‘doing’. West and Zimmerman (1993, pp. 380) define gender itself as â€Å"a routine, methodical and