The presentation discusses how gender identity is acquired through socialization.

1. Gender and Socialization
Socialization
how an infant develops into a functioning
social being and emerges with a personality.
The process of becoming a full member of
society

2. Functions of Socialization
1.Transmits values, customs and beliefs from one
generation to another
2. Enables the individual to grow and develop into a
socially functioning person
3. It is a means of social control by which members are
encouraged to conform to the ways of the group by
internalizing the group’s norms and values

3. Types of Socialization
1. Deliberate or Conscious – when persons are
explicitly and directly taught the norms and values,
the social expectations and obligations of the group
2. Non-deliberate or Unplanned-when individuals learn
the norms and values by themselves from observations
in the various groups they come in contact with

4. Gender and Socialization
Gender socialization
the process of learning the social expectations
and attitudes associated with one's sex.
the tendency for boys and girls to be socialized
differently
Gendering- the process of a child’s learning of
his/her gender identity

5. Gender Role –
a set of behaviors, attitudes, and personality
characteristics expected and encouraged of a
person based on his or her sex.

6. Socialization Mechanisms
1. Child-Rearing Processes
a. Manipulation – the process of handling boys
and girls differently even as infants
boys = tossed up in the air
girls = handled like delicate porcelains

7. Boys = visual stimulation
Girls = verbal stimulation
b. Canalization – exposing children to gender
appropriate objects
example: toys
c. Activity Exposure - exposing children to gender
appropriate tasks or activities
Ex: girls = household chores
boys = mechanical
activities

8. •girls identify with their mothers; boys,
with their fathers
d. Verbal Appellation- the process of telling
children what they are and what is expected of
them
Example: Boys don’t cry.
Boys don’t hit girls.
Brave boy.
Pretty/beautiful girl.

9. Socialization Mechanisms
2. Institutions of Mass Socialization
a. Formal Education
b. Mass Media
c. Religion
d. Language

10. Institutions of Mass Socialization
Formal Education
As children enter the educational system,
traditional expectations for boys and girls
continue.
 In the past, much research focused on how
teachers were shortchanging girls in the classroom.
Teachers would focus on boys, calling on them
more and challenging them.

11. Institutions of Mass Socialization
Because boys were believed to be more
analytical, teachers assumed they would excel
in math and science. Teachers encouraged them
to go into careers that require a lot of math and
science, such as computer science or
engineering.

12. Institutions of Mass Socialization
 gender role stereotypes that schools help to reproduce include
the notion that girls are caring, nurturing, quiet, helpful,
considerate of others, and place others' needs before their own.
 Academically able girls' achievements are attributed to their
hard work, whereas successful boys are considered naturally
gifted. In contrast, underachieving male students are considered
lazy, whereas underachieving girls are regarded as not capable.

13. Institutions of Mass Socialization
 Boys are viewed as rational, logical, unemotional, and strong
and are also expected to be outgoing, smart, and naturally
academically talented. Thus in schools, gender role stereotypes
attribute males' academic success to innate intelligence and
girls' achievements to hard work.
 Moreover, these gender differences are explained through
biological differences without any consideration of the impact
of social environment on students' learning, achievement,
motivation and attitudes.

14. Institutions of Mass Socialization
 The accepted and encouraged assertive behavior in males
that produces target students also enables boys to
control other resources. For example, in science classes
boys dominate equipment and relegate girls to roles such
as data recorder, reading instructor, or cleaning up the
work area. Girls' stereotyped views of science as a
masculine endeavor may mean they prefer these passive
roles.

15. Institutions of Mass Socialization
 Sex-segregated schools

16. Institutions of Mass Socialization
RELIGION
Most organized religion teach gender
sub0rdination
Women and the Bible and Church History
The bible has been attributed to men, translated
by men, and taught by men for over 2000 years;
this male bias is used to perpetuate the
subordination of women

17. Institutions of Mass Socialization
Main message of the bible – the LIBERATION
AND INTEGRAL SALVATION OF HUMAN BEINGS
To justify female subordination, the following
texts are constantly referred to:
The Creation Story – Gen. 1:27

18. Institutions of Mass Socialization
Letters of St. Paul in the 1st century: “the head of the
woman is the man…for a man is the image and glory
of God…”
“I suffer not a woman to teach nor usurp authority
over the man, but to be in silence…”
St. Agustine ( a few hundred years later) “The
woman herself is not the image of God.”

19. Institutions of Mass Socialization
St. Thomas Aquinas : “As regards the individual
nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for
the active force in the male seed tends to the
production of a perfect likeness in the masculine
sex; while the production of woman comes from a
defect in the active force.”

20. Institutions of Mass Socialization
Jesus’ contrary attitude and action to
women, a radical deviation from the customs
of the Hebrew patriarchy. His apostles and
disciples didn’t seem to learn this important
value from him.

21. Institutions of Mass Socialization
Proof:
In church history, there was patriarchalization
of the new organization
The writings of the Fathers of the Church
The mysogynistic writings of the Doctors of
the Church

22. St. Clement of Alexandria (c150-c215), the
Greek Father of the Church, had such a
contempt for women that he believed such a
feeling must be universal. He wrote, in his book
Paedagogus that in women, "the consciousness
of their own nature must evoke feelings of
shame.”

23. That women is clearly inferior to men, Clement
has no doubt. As a form of exercise for this
"weaker sex", he suggested that, "Women
should also fetch from the pantry things that
we need.“

24. • Tertullian (c160-c225), the African Father of
the Church, called women "the devil's
gateway." His reasoning, based on the story of
The Fall in Genesis, is theologically
impeccable:

25. Do you not realize that Eve is you? The curse God
pronounced on your sex weighs still on the world. Guilty,
you must bear its hardships. You are the devil's gateway,
you desecrated that fatal tree, you first betrayed the law
of God, you who softened up with your cajoling words
the man against whom the devil could not prevail by
force. The image of God, the man Adam, you broke him,
it was child's play to you. You deserved death, and it was
the son of God who had to die!

26. • St. Ambrose (c339-397), a Doctor of the Church, and
Bishop of Milan reminded believers that the way
women was originally created confirms her second
class status: "Remember that God took the rib out of
Adam's body, not a part of his soul, to make her. She
was not made in the image of God, like man.”

27. • Like all Christian misogynists, Ambrose glorified
virginity. To him virginity was the Christian virtue. He
advised that marriage was to be avoided like a
burden. For those who do marry, he forbade
intercourse for any other reason except the
procreation of children. Naturally, Ambrose taught
that old couples, in which the woman can no longer
conceive, should not have sex at all.

28. • St. Jerome (c342-420), the well known Biblical scholar
and translator of the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate) have a
simple view of women. To him "woman is the root of all
evil." Like all the early Christian theologians, Jerome
glorified virginity and looked down on marriage.
• His reasoning was also rooted in Genesis: "Eve in
paradise was a virgin ... understand that virginity is
natural and that marriage comes after the Fall.”

29. • The marital act to Jerome cannot be good because it only
acts as a relief valve: "Thus it must be bad to touch a
woman. If indulgences is nonetheless granted to the
marital act, this is only to avoid something worse. But
what value can be recognized in a good that is allowed
only with a view of preventing something worse?"
Jerome wrote that the only good thing about marriage is
that "it produces virgins."

30. Institutions of Mass Socialization
This trend is crystallized in the:
1. Teachings (that are detrimental to women)
a. The insistence on her subordination as wife
b. The identification of her value with virginity if
she is unmarried
c. The shift of valuation to her reproductive
function once she is married

31. Institutions of Mass Socialization
d. Moral theology based on the dichotomy of
body and soul has identify woman with sex
and sin
e. On marriage, women’s secondary and passive
role in the family is emphasized
f. Gender differentiation and inequality is
ordained by God

32. Institutions of Mass Socialization
 Sacred symbolisms:
 Veil over the head of the woman
 Mary, the model of Catholic women, depicted
as “ever virgin”, meek and self-sacrificing,
passive, submissive plaster saint
 Mary- valiant woman who sang the Magnificat,
stood courageously at the foot of the cross

33. Institutions of Mass Socialization
g. Muslim fundamentalists practice purdah, or the
seclusion of women, and insists that no woman
venture into the public eye unless covered from
head to foot.
Church structure and practice
 Hierarchical and clerical
 Exclusion of women from major decision-making in the
Church and have no major role in its worship even if the
great majority who actually attend worship are women