A couple of days ago I told you that girls can be like Beckham, no matter how much the environment, society, ourselves many times without realizing it, we are instilling the opposite. The learning of sexual roles, more or less stereotyped, it goes through different phases.
Williams JE, Bennet SM, and Best DL wrote an article entitled "Awareness and expression of sex stereotypes in young children", in the journal "Developmental Psychology" (1975) .
There they point six important aspects related to learning sexual categories, which some have called stages:
- Learn to identify the sex of people.
- Learn to identify their own sex and gender constancy.
- Gender role identity.
- Learn the characteristic differences in the behavior of fathers and mothers.
- Learn what games and what behaviors are linked to each sex.
- Acquire beliefs about what personality characteristics distinguish men and women.
As we can see, the first steps are related to gender and identity, and the following ones are rather stereotypes or beliefs associated with each sex.
The development of the different stages occurs in a socio-economic, cultural and political context that powerfully determines the differences observed in social stereotypes linked to male or female sex.
These aspects related to the man-woman categories they will influence the perception that the person has of others, and also in the image he has of himself, that is, in his gender identity.
This means that belonging to one or another sexual category will determine different social realities (in the interaction with other people), as well as differences in the identity of individuals.
Consequences of this differentiation can be found in the various behaviors and choices that the individual will make throughout his life, although borders are blurred (or not so much?) And mixing roles in recent years in certain societies: studies, work, leisure activities ... are for boys and girls, men and women, for people, in short.
The fact is that our society perpetuates roles / stereotypes, and in the stages in learning sexual categories This is how they confirm it.
It is clear that men and women are different, in what we are, and that's good. But if we are equal in so many things, why maintain differentiation, often associated with discrimination? I believe that contributing to our children grow up without stereotypes is positive and necessary.
