Essay: Gender Roles
In his runaway success dubbed Sociology, John Macionis offers a comprehensive account on the development of social and behavioral norms that the society deems appropriate for each gender in respective cultural contexts.
He describes gender roles as a specific set of social and behavioral norms that the society considers appropriate for a particular gender (Macionis, 2002 p 24).
Gender roles develop through the socialization process aided by various agents of socialization such as family, peers, school and mass media. Socialization in this context refers to the process of dissemination and assimilation of certain norms, ideologies and values through social and cultural continuity (ibid).