Question

How does society (parents, relatives, peers, teachers, media) impact and influence an individual’s perspective on their personal gender and their gender schema theory? Please elaborate

Answer 1

People are the result of their environment such as, parenting, family, friends, education, socio-economic status etc. This would mean that people’s attitude, personality, worldview etc. would be formed by their association with others in the society. Starting from building trust on the caregivers and developing a secure attachment till one learns to live in a pluralistic society without judging or discriminating others, people learn their behaviours from those around them. Particularly, gender norms and gender roles are picked up from one’s environment especially from the family. Children learn the way their parents execute their duties and treat each other and they try to treat others in the same way. However, as they grow, they would gain more worldview through their friends, media and education but they wouldn’t change much because they would try to belong to the majority. Media, especially movies and TV would play a major role in shaping the gender roles as most of the gender norms are projected through the media either agreeing to it while few also disagree to it.

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