Learning Gender Roles: Ann Oakley

It's important to note that the following observations are a rather "idealised" picture of the socialisation process - not all families conform to the various stereotypes involved, for example. In addition, the descriptions that follow relate to a dual-parent, nuclear family where the parents occupy "traditional" gender roles. I've organised things this way simply to describe the basic mechanics of the socialisation process, so it's important to keep this in mind as you work your way through the information...

Following Ruth Hartley, Oakley indentifies a number of aspects to the primary socialisation process for males and females.

1. Imitation:

One of the earliest ways a child starts to become socialised into the culture of any society is through the observation and imitation of the people around it. Children's play activities, for example, tend to reflect the imitation of adult life and these involve such "traditional" role playing activities as "mothers and fathers" and the rather less traditional imitation of television characters.

Girls have a ready source of imitation within the family group because they are able to identify with their mother. At an early stage in their social development, girls tend to imitate the form of their mother's life (cooking, cleaning, washing and so forth) without particularly understanding the content (why these tasks have to be done, the purpose of such tasks and so forth).

The idea of normality is significant here, since girls tend to learn the norms of female behaviour through the constant repetition of this behaviour (the mother, for example, "always" doing the cooking). In this we can see the way in which norms of behaviour become internalised (by both males and females). The world of family life becomes a sort of "taken for granted" world in which it is the task of the female to work inside the home and the task of the male to work outside the home.

For boys, whilst it is evident that a male child will still attempt to imitate the world of his father - something he will be readily encouraged to do, just as girls are encouraged in different ways to imitate the world of their mother - it's more difficult for boys, since for long periods of time the father is absent from home "at work". Since boys have no experience of "work", as such, they also tend to adopt more readily images of masculinity from other sources, such a television.

2. Identification:

The process of gender identification within a family group is one that appears to evolve "naturally". Girls identify with their mother and males with the father because they are of the same biological sex. However, this process is actually the result of subtle - and not so subtle - process of gender identification encouraged by a child's parents (consciously and unconsciously).

As girls look for role models to identify with, so the earliest model is their mother (it need not, of course, be their natural mother). Similarly, for boys their earliest role model will be their father and it is generally true that children are encouraged to act out the adult roles they see around them.

By identifying herself with her mother, a girl starts to acquire the norms associated with this role. Parents encourage gender identification through words and actions - encouraging girls to "help their mother in the kitchen", for example. At a very early age, gender identification tends to be encouraged and reinforced in many subtle ways - girls attracting praise for being "neat", "helpful", "pretty", (that is, for displaying the "feminine" traits that her parents associate with being female).

Conversely, girls may attract criticism for behaving in ways that are not "ladylike" - shouting, screaming, biting, fighting and so forth. Again, this is a form of gender socialisation - controlling a child's behaviour through punishment rather than through rewards.

Boys, on the other hand, are similarly encouraged to identify with their father, again through words and actions. The norms associated with male adult behaviour tend to include relatively long absences from the home (something which the child is unlikely to be able to understand since the concept of work is one they will not have experienced). However, boys rapidly make the connection between "absence" (work) and power, since the person with most power and authority within the home is likely to be the father.

3. Role Learning:

All children have to learn about role playing since it represents a means whereby our lives achieve some sort of structure. Within the family group, children are able to experiment with different roles - some of which reflect real social roles (mother, father, milkman) and others which give expression to fantasies (He-Man, She-Ra, Superman, Ninja turtles, etc.). These fantasy roles also reflect male / female roles, of course, but in ways that tend to be less-direct than their "real-life" counterparts.

All roles in our society represent socially-created ideas about how it is normal for men and women to behave. Through their own socialisation process parents develop fairly explicit ideas about the right and wrong ways for their children to behave in relation to gender. If you think about it, parents must use their socialisation experiences as a guide for the socialisation of their children - which, in turn, helps to explain why fairly rigid forms of "traditional" gender roles manage to persist over time.

Female roles in our society still tend to stress the idea that the main female role is that of a mother - someone who assumes primary responsibility for child care. Girls are actively encouraged to develop role play that mirrors adult expectations of their child's future adult role(s). Toys, in this respect, represent an important learning tool - the toy vacuum cleaner and washing machine, the doll and so forth. Adult expectations are also communicated more directly, with girls being praised for displaying what their parents believe to be correct role orientations. Typically, we find that girls are encouraged to behave passively, especially in the company of boys.

Males, on the other hand, quickly learn that their major role in life is going to be as a provider for a family - the person who goes out into the wider social world to earn a living. Male toys similarly reflect this active approach to male socialisation. Boy's toys reflect such social attributes as the manipulation of objects (building sets, for example), exploration and, above all, doing things.

Glenys Lobban "Data Report on British Reading Schemes", TES 01/03/74). for example, has illustrated the way books represent a readily-available source of sex-role socialisation for males and females.

4. Conditioning:

All socialisation is an attempt to condition and control children - to raise them in ways that are acceptable to adults (their parents and those in wider society). Conditioning, at root, involves systems of rewards and punishments and children quickly learn through experience (both their own and that of others) which behavioural characteristics bring rewards and which attract punishments.

Following the lead of writers such as Hartley and Oakley, there are four basic areas of gender conditioning at which we can briefly look:

a. Manipulation:

Typically, parents spend greater amounts of time with the "manipulation" of girls than with boys - where, by "manipulation", is meant such things as stressing the importance of appearance in girls, brushing their hair, etc.

b. Canalisation:

By this is meant the channelling of attention onto different things, depending upon the sex of the child. Girls helping their mother or boys being encouraged to play football with their father, for example, helps to enforce and reinforce gender differences. In this way, by channelling their children's behaviour into specific activities, children come to learn that some activities are considered appropriate for boys and others are appropriate for girls (activities, in effect, become "gendered" - associated with one or other of the sexes).

c. Language:

The way adults use language towards children reflects adults' experiences of male and female roles. Not only does praise encourage children in their respective role play, it also implicitly reinforces ideas about gender correctness. This is important when we remember that children are constantly looking to the approval of others as confirmation that what they are doing is right. This is because it takes children time to learn, through experience, the various norms involved in behaviour.

Praising a girl for being pretty, for example, not only rewards the girl, it teaches her that if she wants to continue to receive praise then she must continue to reproduce the behaviour that produces such social approval.

d. Activity Exposure:

An important way in which children learn is to observe their parents and so forth. In such observation, of course, children are led towards conceptions about what is "normal" behaviour for both men and women. Although both girls and boys are equally exposed to "normal" male / female relationships and activities, each sex is encouraged to identify with these norms in different ways.

Household chores, for example, are frequently allocated to children on the basis of their sex. Although males may be praised when they "help their mother", it tends to be made fairly explicit that this is something exceptional and not necessarily the normal way in which boys are expected to behave