Social Construct of Gender.

WHAT is considered masculine or feminine? Since I'm taking a gender studies class this semester, I've learned a lot about the social construct of gender. We live in a society where we are constantly being evaluated by how we look or what we do and whether on not it is too feminine or masculine for whatever gender a person chooses to go by. As the reading notes, woman do more of the housework whenever they make a higher income than their male partner. Housework has been socially constructed as feminine work. Males feel like since they aren't financially the main income to the family, they can't do housework because it will "lower" their masculinity even more. Though this feminine and masculine scale are all socially constructed. As a society, we have labeled "housework" as a woman's job. Just like having a higher income is  associated with masculinity. Thanks to more woman empowerment movements and LGBT rights slowly becoming a part of our cultural norm, it is a start to breaking these ideas we have of what is feminine or masculine. Many people are trying to break away from these gender role norms, but currently, they are still a huge part of our culture. 

Claude Steele did a study about gender stereotyping that really relates back to the article. In his study, he had two groups of test takers taking the same test. Group one was given instructions about how he noticed a difference between genders on how they did one the exam. While in the other group, he gave no instructions discussing anything about gender differences. His results concluded that woman did worse in group one when they were told about the gender differences while in group two, there was no difference between the scores on the exams. 

Stereotype threat was a term used in the study to show that when the threat of being stereotyped is in the person's mind, they will basically fall within the stereotype. 

Just like when men just think about making these then their wife or female spouse (that masculinity vs femininity scale popping up in their head) , their behavior changes. 

Reference: Gender Studies : Professor Karen Prager