[GPC-ANTH] Discussion Topic for Chapter 6 - Gender, as a Cultural Construct

Discussion topic for Chapter 6
Margaret Mead's cross-cultural research on gender relations suggests that male dominance is a cultural construct and, consequently, that alternative gender arrangements can be created. Looking at your grandparents, parents, and siblings, do you see any changes in your own family? What about your own community? Do you think such changes are positive?

Student Response

Changes in socio-cultural trending are such a tricky thing to define when the society being asked about is in the middle of the change. Trends, and changes within those trends, occur on all levels – seeming simultaneous and at odds with itself all at once.

“Women are knocking holes in the glass ceiling and coming through.” “Men are letting women take their rightful place as equals in the workforce.” These are the sort of things we hear on the news all the time. Words are pretty, but they speak of a deeper reality for our current culture. The underlying tone of these words is all too often silently interpreted as, “If you were supposed to be here, the ceiling wouldn’t exist” and “the only reason you’re standing where you are is because we LET you stand here”. I see evidence of this every day in watching the businessmen and women with whom I interact. The glances they give when backs are turned and the things they say when they feel they are unobserved tell such a vastly different story than the sugar-coated future-as-now hope our media would like us to believe.

We live the change in several areas of our personal lives – matriarchal dominance of extended family units in various ethnic groupings, fathers choosing to become the primary caregiver in select suburban families – but we, as a society, do not support it in our entertainment or in our self-governance. Even the words of other students on this topic show that we are still closed-off from accepting gender equality on a societal level. For example: the idea that a mother’s love is somehow more pure or beneficial than the love a father could give. Direct nutrition? Yes, only a biological female can supply that, but parents of both sexes are capable of cultural nurturing.

We want change because we can logically see it as beneficial to our society as a whole, just as our society would benefit from an acceptance that “race” does not scientifically exist, but we have yet to embrace that change so it becomes an intrinsic part of our daily lives.