Breaking Gender Norms In Society


Natalia Cullins, Contributor

As Women’s History Month comes to an end, we have seen how women have broken boundaries and gender roles one obstacle at a time. Gender roles play a huge part in our society, unfortunately, and it’s usually very harmful to women all around the world. Many people don’t know how broad gender roles can be, but the official definition is, “how we’re expected to act, speak, dress, groom, and conduct ourselves based upon our assigned sex” (Sciencedirect).

Every day, we try to slowly break these harmful stereotypes and there are six ways you can do so. 

The first way is to let kids play with whatever toys they want. Typically, little girls play with dolls and Barbie Dream Houses, while boys play with trucks and superheroes. Kids are carefree people that don’t really care about what they are doing if they are playing and having fun, so the only people worried if a little boy is playing with a Barbie are their parents. Leave the playing to the kids, and let them play with whatever they want to play with.  

The second way is exposing your kids to all types of people in many different paths of life. Exposing your kids to many different types of people will ensure your kids are more accepting when they get older and have a better understanding of the world around them.  

The third way is talking with your kids about respect of everybody at an early age. Teaching anything young will make it stick in their mind better, and they will carry it with them for the rest of their lives. Teaching kids young that gender roles don’t exist will help to ensure they’re not biased when they get older.  

Lastly is remembering that chores have no gender and that boys can wash dishes and girls can walk the dog or clean the backyard. Gender roles in doing basic roles has never made sense to me because it honestly makes no sense. Why should a boy not do dishes because he’s a boy? You must teach both boys and girls how to survive on their own and not knowing how to do basic tasks will probably hinder their ability to do so.