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Gender Roles and Equality

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1. Summarize the findings of anthropologist Margaret Mead regarding cultural conditioning and gender roles.
2. What are the functionalist, conflict, symbolic interactionist, and feminist views on stratification by gender?
3. What distinctions are made by Talcott Parsons and Robert Bales in terms of the roles played by men and women in the United States?
4. How does institutional discrimination operate in the United States with respect to women? What conclusions can we make about women's equality worldwide?

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Solution Summary

This solution will outline topics related to gender, including gender roles, gender (in)equality, gender stratification, and institutional discrimination.

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1. Mead found that personality differences between men and women are due to cultural conditioning (socialization), rather than biology (heredity). Thus, gender roles are learned and not inherited. She concluded this after studying people in New Guinea. (http://homepage.smc.edu/delpiccolo_guido/Soc1/soc1readings/sex%20and%20temperment_final.pdf)

2. The functionalist perspective of gender roles suggests that gender roles exist to maximize social efficiency. Conflict theory suggests that men, as the dominant gender, subordinate women in order to maintain power and privilege in society. From a symbolic interactionist perspective, gender is produced and reinforced through daily interactions and the use of symbols. Feminist theory analyzes gender ...

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