SEXISM AND THE SOCIETY

Sexism in a society is most commonly applied against women and girls. It is a topic that is often talked about in the society that women and men are opposite, with widely different and complementary roles: women are the weaker sex and less capable than men, especially in the realm of logic and rational reasoning. There is also a lot of talk in society about giving equal place to women and men.

SEXISM 

    Sexism, prejudice or discrimination based on gender, especially against women and girls. Sexism can be a belief that one sex is superior to or more valuable than another sex. It imposes limits on what men and boys can and should do and what women and girls can and should do. It functions to maintain patriarchy, or male domination, through ideological and material practices of individuals, collectives, and institutions that oppress women and girls on the basis of gender. Such oppression usually takes the forms of economic exploitation and social domination. Sexist behaviours, conditions, and attitudes perpetuate stereotypes of social roles based on one’s biological sex.

SEXISM AND FEMINISM

    A feminist study of gender in society needs concepts to differentiate and analyze social inequalities between girls and boys and between women and men that do not reduce differences to the notion of biology as destiny. The concept of sexism explains that prejudice and discrimination based on sex or gender, not biological inferiority, are the social barriers to women’s and girls’ success in various arenas. To overcome patriarchy in society is, then, to dismantle sexism in society. The study of sexism has suggested that the solution to gender inequity is in changing sexist culture and institutions.

    The feminist movement fought for the abolishment of sexism and the establishment of women’s rights as equal under the law. By the remediation of sexism in institutions and culture, women would gain equality in political representation, employment, education, domestic disputes, and reproductive rights.

SEXISM AND THE MEN’S MOVEMENT

    As the term sexism gained vernacular popularity, its usage evolved to include men as victims of discrimination and social gender expectations. In a cultural backlash, the term reverse sexism emerged to refocus on men and boys, especially on any disadvantages they might experience under affirmative action. Opponents of affirmative action argued that men and boys had become the ones discriminated against for jobs and school admission because of their sex. The appropriation of the term sexism was frustrating to many feminists, who stressed the systemic nature of women’s oppression through structural and historical inequalities. Proponents of men’s rights conjured the notion of misandry, or hatred of men, as they warned against a hypothesized approach of a female-dominated society.

SOCIAL ROLE THEORY

    Social role theory is a social psychological theory that pertains to sex differences and similarities in social behavior. Its key principle is that differences and similarities arise primarily from the distribution of men and women into social roles within their society.
    This is based on the assumption that in every community tasks are divided assigning different roles and responsibilities according to the sex/gender of the persons

GENDER SCHEMA THEORIES

The Gender Schema Theory by Sandra Bem (1981) proposes that gender identity stems from the scheme the individual has about the roles assigned to men and women. These schemes are the stereotypes which organize the knowledge about men and women, including physical characteristics and personality traits associated with men and women prototype, respectively.

    According to Bem’s proposal, persons identifying with their traditional gender role (women with feminine characteristics and male with masculine characteristics) tend to organize the information in dichotomous masculine-feminine terms. Later, Markus et al. (1982) made a change in this theory, highlighting that, irrespective of their biological sex, persons with masculine characteristics would process the information associated with the masculine stereotype from their own scheme, feminine persons would use their scheme with the information associated with the feminine condition, androgynous persons would do it with both types of information and “undifferentiated” persons would not process any information schematically.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WOMEN AND MEN

    

Men's brains are slightly bigger than women's, but this does not affect IQ test results, as was once thought. There is no significant difference between men and women on IQ tests.

    Different parts of the female brain are more interconnected than is characteristic of the male brain, and women involve more parts of the brain in carrying out certain tasks. Women tend to recover better from strokes than men, possibly because healthy parts of the brain compensate better for the impaired regions.

    Much of the handling of emotions by the brain is done in a part called the amygdala. Men have fewer connections than women between the amygdala and higher regions of the brain that handle language and other functions. This may explain why women are more likely to talk about their emotions than men.

    Studies of the developing brain show that most parts of the brain mature faster in girls than in boys, but some areas mature faster in boys. Parts of the brain that handle spatial and mechanical reasoning and visual targeting mature 4 to 8 years earlier in boys, whereas parts that handle verbal dexterity, handwriting and recognizing familiar faces mature years earlier in girls.

CONCLUSION

    Sexism refers to ideologies and practices that identify and denigrate certain capacities and dispositions as gendered attributes. Sexism was the new term to mark inequality for women and men in society. 

REFFERENCES: Robeyns, I.A.M., 2007. When will society be gender just?. Browne, J.(ed.), The Future of Gender, pp.54-74, Sibley, C.G., 2015. Julia C. Becker. Handbook of Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Discrimination, p.315, https://www.irishtimes.com, https://www.frontiersin.org