Gender Role
Gender role – a socially and culturally defined set of expectations, norms, behaviours, activities, rights, responsibilities, and social positions associated with a particular gender.
Gender roles are learned through socialization and are shaped by cultural ideas about masculinity, femininity, and other gendered forms of behaviour. Individuals may internalize, reinterpret, negotiate, resist, or reject these expectations.
A gender role should not be equated with gender identity: gender identity refers to a person’s internal sense of gender, whereas gender roles refer to socially constructed expectations about how people of different genders are expected to behave.
See also: Gender, Gender Identity, Gender Socialization, Gender Norms, Gender Stereotype, Masculinity, Femininity.
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