Gender Stereotyping: Let’s Begin by Changing the Minds of Our Youth

Gender-based parental restrictions and a passive gender stereotyping that seemed to have started in the family-nucleus has made its way to our societies, provoking an unintended negative effect on the way that many women feel in our society.  

One of the many words that have a dislike effect on women is stereotyping women as a “minority” group. Especially when many times, the word minority has been used without the intellectual significance or origin of the world. While many in our society use to label women as a minority group, it has been conveniently interchangeably. The unmistakable true is that the word minority refers to social groups that “cannot engage and is not regarded as capable of engaging, the majority in a creative and constant dialogue,”[i] which women have countless demonstrated they are not.   

What does it mean for women?

It means that women have been stereotyped with subjective and objective discriminations, allegedly powerless characteristics, labeling women as “subordinated” members of our societies.[ii] Unfortunately, modern societies are engraved with the sociocultural patterns of normative behavior that persuades and encourages women to feel like a minority group in our society. Well, I am resistant to believe that we cannot change the fact that women still feel chronically less powerful than men. While it seems almost impossible to change our core-culture, the key word here is “almost.” I think we can start making a real difference if we start changing the culture of new generations at home. 

Through restrictive culturalism, I argue that the unconscious biases and preconceived distinctions that we found in our own cultural settings are cognitively linked to our distinctive family nucleus. Many moons ago, Polish-American Philosopher and Sociologist Florian Znaniecki (1919) explored the comprehensive framework grounding the foundation and meaning of culturalism. Znaniecki suggested that culturalism was “constructed on the ground of the implicit or explicit presuppositions involved in reflection about cultural phenomena.” Nuclear culturalism is a phenomenon that has unexpected intentions and sometimes, unwanted meanings. How many of us have heard in our family-nucleus, at least once someone said phrases such as, “only boys—or girls—can do that!” or “that’s not for boys—or girls!” or “you are not a boy—or a girl to do that,” without thinking that we might be starting some form of social restrictions.  

Culturalism explores the agglomerate habits and traditions forming our human’s affairs. It centralizes our social nucleus, straightening bonds, and systems of shared values, including common territories, religion, language, descent, cultural traditions, economic interest, and political idealism.[iii] As members of our social groups, we create connections through sharing a collective consciousness, similar values, emotional attitudes, sentiments, desires, traditions, knowledge, and moral values.[iv]  While within our cultures, may of our thinking and behaviors are culturally similar, there is no mistake that we still have “undeniably problems with culturalism” that can trap us into preconceived manifestations of common tendencies, limited determinism, and the essentialism of our cultural traits.[v] 

Cultural restrictions enforce social, professional, and personal limitations. The conceptualization of restrictiveness was found in the work of many scholars who explained that restrictiveness was expected in the common cognitive behavior originated on specific social environments.[vi] In many societies, cultural restrictions and cultural taboos limit the expansion of women’s knowledge, discouraging women from speaking in public, vocalizing their ideas and needs, restricting women’s socioeconomic mobility, and other fundamental needs, such as access to public health.[vii] A patriarchally or matriarchally accepted philosophy behind cultural restrictions may explain the constructions that initiate gender distinctions, inducing the enforcement of boundaries and limitations, based on the preconception of social representations.[viii]  

A great deal of research has shown that women’s cultural restrictions are predominant, influencing women’s conduct, social behavior, and their quality of life. Many have suggested that women internalized social norms, due to lack of perceived alternatives, provide a sense of limitations that ground the basis of women’s cultural restrictions.[ix] Family barriers and negative attitudes that hinder women’s empowerment, frequently limiting the support women need to success starts at home. My argument is that there is a cognitive likelihood that a gender-based parental restrictive multiculturalism and the constant socially stereotyping have an unintended effect on women’s feeling of powerlessness. 

I interviewed more than 120 women from diverse cultural backgrounds, family origins, professional backgrounds, educational levels, sexual preferences, financial stability, different generations, conservatives, and modernistic. I asked each woman the same question: Why would you think a woman would feel chronically less powerful than men? I found that restrictive multiculturalism has a negative effect on the socioeconomic and sociopolitical development of women in American societies. Social restrictions against women not only have an adverse impact fon women’s advancement in the workplace, but also on women’s perception, mindset, and personal growth. Unfortunately, social and cultural gender-based restrictions seem to have set the boundaries for women’s social and professional failures. While many women believed that there are many social factors influencing women’s feeling of powerlessness, within my interviewees, there was a unanimous consensus that women’s feeling of chronical powerlessness was a cognitive, organic issue that most likely started at home. Their first life lesson included many social and cultural taboos, from playing with gender-specific, sometimes stereotyped toys, to the resentment fallacy that women are physical, intellectually, and occasionally endurance-based emotionally less capable than men just because of the nature of being a woman. 

Family gender predisposition seems to be embedded in women and men since childhood. Family restrictions based on preconceived social demarcations seems common norms in all societies. What may appear to be an insignificant gender distinction in the family nucleus, frequently it can turn into a mentally restrictive gender stereotype, which is a problem commonly found at the family core in most cultures.[x] For example, some scholars believe that society in general, including parents, “accurately apply common gender stereotypes to toys, by the time they [the children] are three and readily predict their parents’ opinions about gender-typical and cross-gender play.”[xi] Many studies also showed that gender stereotyping, and differential vulnerabilities start during infancy, derives from parents, and most likely continue as an adult.[xii]

In some cultures, from childhood, women are denied the opportunity for development, inheriting their “mother’s disadvantages” during womanhood, including lack of education, illiteracy, and ignorance.[xiii]  

It is the responsibility of new generations to start making changes in the way that family culture stereotype children, specifically, women. Women are physically and mentally capable of enduring the same challenges as the opposite gender.  But first, women have to believe that they are as powerful as men. “Behaviour is not only the product of rational, deliberative and individual evaluation. It is also based on habit and cultural tradition, emotional impulses, the influence of family and friends and social norms as well as wider trends.”[xiv] Culture, belief, and traditions are passed from parental figures to childhood, into adulthood. Gender-specific culture is also transferred and perpetuated into adulthood.[xv] 

Cultural restrictions based on gender-specific limitations must stop.

The social constructivism associated with learning theories, knowledge structure, and social interactions show that common cross-cultural learning patterns, mirroring gender stereotyping, and gender discrimination during childhood learning is carried into adulthood and social stream. Cultural restrictions based on gender-specifics should not be implied in the mind of the children. The moral values, cultural traditions, social ethics, stereotyping, bias, judgments, and gender-difference seems to be passively transmitted to our children. Family restrictive culture seems to be one a relevant, influential factor on women’s feeling of powerlessness.

Social stereotyping, profiling and gender-labeling status are likely to have an adverse effect on women’s feeling of powerlessness, as well as in women’s professional and personal development.

Many of those cultural feelings are carried-on in the workplace with the mindset that what we hear is what we believe. Those cultural restrictions not only have a damaging effect on women’s empowerment, but those restrictions also contribute to professional inequality and gender gap issues. 

The time to start changing the mentality of future generations is now. At home.

Societies are changing and so should we. Women, as well as men, need to reset their mental approach to gender to completely comprehend that cultural changes require common collective and cooperative social strategies.[xvi] Now is the time to start changing the mind of our children. Let imprint in our kids an “equality-mentality” and a “gender-neutral approach” to future professional development. Now is the time to stop vandalizing our gender-based culturalism and stop thinking about any social group as a “minority group.” Now is the time to stop gender stereotyping, along with the sociocultural restriction that limits the personal and professional parameters of women in our society. We, together are one cross-functional social team where each gender has a unique characteristic essential for the growth and development of societies around the world. Let begin by re-setting our minds. Let start by respecting and appreciating each other, regardless of the gender, as an important member of our society.

Iberkis Faltas

---

[i] Addis, A. (1991). Individualism, communitarianism, and the rights of ethnic minorities. Notre Dame L. Rev., 67(3), 615-676

[ii] (Addis, 1991)

Christiano, T. (2015). Democracy. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/democracy/

Hacker, H. M. (1951). Women as a minority group. Social Forces, 30(1), 60–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2571742

Prati, G., Marín Puchades, V., & Pietrantoni, L. (2017). Cyclists as a minority group? Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, 47, 34-41. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.trf.2017.04.008

Song, S. (2017). Multiculturalism.The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.) (Spring 2017). Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/multiculturalism.

[iii] Barker, C. (2004). The SAGE dictionary of cultural studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Inc. & Znaniecki, F. (1939). Social groups as products of participating individuals. American Journal Of Sociology, 44(6), 799-811.

[iv] (Znaniecki, 1935)

[v] Chemla, K., & Fox, E. F., (2017) (Eds.) Culture without culturalism: The making of scientific knowledge. Durham, NC: Duke University Press

[vi] Garritson, S. (1987). Characteristics of restrictiveness management of the mentally ill. Journal Of Psychosocial Nursing & Mental Health Services, 25(1), 10-43.

[vii] Harchandani, N. (2012). Oral health challenges in Pakistan and approaches to these problems. Pakistan Oral & Dental Journal, 32(3), 497-501.

Jewitt, S. (2000). Unequal knowledges in Jharkhand, India: De-romanticizing women's agroecological expertise. Development & Change, 31(5). Retrieved from www.ebscohost.com.

MacKian, S. C. (2008). What the papers say: Reading therapeutic landscapes of women's health and empowerment in Uganda. Health & place, 14(1), 106-115.

[viii] Gentile, F. R. (2017). Marketing the talented tenth: WEB Du Bois and public-intellectual economies. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 47(2), 131-157.

[ix] Wilkens, E. A. (1997). A gender analysis of perceived quality of life: some theoretical and methodological observations from villages in the Garhwal, India. University of Calgary. Retrieved from http://dspace.ucalgary.ca/bitstream/1880/26913/1/24629Wilkens.pdf

[x] Campenni, C. E. (1999). Gender stereotyping of children's toys: A comparison of parents and nonparents. Sex Roles, 40(1-2), 121-138.

[xi] Freeman, N. K. (2007). Preschoolers’ perceptions of gender appropriate toys and their parents’ beliefs about genderized behaviors: Miscommunication, mixed messages, or hidden truths?. Early Childhood Education Journal, 34(5), 357-366.

[xii] Wood, Desmarais, & Gugula, 2002). Sheeber, L., Davis, B., & Hops, H. (2002). Gender-specific vulnerability to depression in children of depressed mothers. Children of depressed parents: Mechanisms of risk and implications for treatment, 253-274. Retrieved from www.researchgate.net

Wood, E., Desmarais, S., & Gugula, S. (2002). The impact of parenting experience on gender stereotyped toy play of children. Sex Roles, 47(1-2), 39-49

[xiii] Abioye, T. (1999). Examining the mass literacy programme in Zaria local government area of Kaduna state implications for women empowerment. A Journal of the Reading Association of Nigeria. 8(1 & 2), 201-213.

[xiv] Uzzell, D., & Räthzel, N. (2009). Transforming environmental psychology. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 29(3), 340-350. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2008.11.005

[xv] Chamlee, E. (1993). Indigenous African institutions and economic development. CATO Journal, 13(1), 79.

[xvi] AlSaqer, L. (2008). Experience of female public relations practitioners in Bahrain. Public Relations Review, 34(1), 77-79.

My Friend Was Raped: Now What?

This is a true story. It did not happen to me, but it happened to a dear friend.

I am sharing her story because I believe our society as whole, has the responsibility to help and protect everyone who has been a victim of a sexual assault.

An early evening, a young lady left a bar where she was enjoying a couple drinks with friends. I will call her “Margi”.

Margi walked out of the bar laughing, appreciating live as most 25 years-old women would do. She was thinking about tomorrow. She was making plans for her future. As she walked under the moon, a few steps away from the bar, a demonic hand pulled her into the seventh circle of hell. In a split of second, she went from a normal life, to a meeting with evil, face to face. She was raped.

She screamed. She fought. She resisted her attacker knowing that her life depended on it. She continued screaming until her throat burned, scorched by her cries. But her petrifying cries were interrupted by something bigger, something darker, capable of causing harms beyond belief. She was forced to fight death to remain alive.

What is left after burning in hell?

Margi was consumed by rage. Her skin burned to the bones. She was in unimaginable pain. There was not a single cell in her body that did not hurt. She felt as if every nerve in her body was simply destroyed. She felt her world collapsing right at her side, and there was nothing that she could do to stop it. She dialed 911.

Only another person who has been forcibly raped can identify the pain, the hurt, the agony, the anguish, the torment, and the suffering that is felt after a horrifying sexual assault. The rest of us can only imagine it. Even so, what we feel and what the victims feel would never be the same. All we can do is provide them with emotional support and personal space for them to grieve. Margi called 911 because she needed help. She was bleeding. She was bruised and badly hurt, not only physically, but more so emotionally.

The guilt.

After a person have been raped, the victim is hunted by one question: Was the sexual assault my fault?

No Margi, the sexual assault was not your fault. 

I am writing this statement with clear and absolute convention that the sexual assault was not your fault. There should not be one victim on this earth who should believe that being raped or sexually assaulted is her or his fault. No one victim should feel guilty for being forcefully raped. Rape is an act of evil and we all should stand and fight against sexual assaults.

It does not matter if the rape was done by someone you know, someone closed to you, someone dear to your heart, or by a complete stranger. Being raped is never the victims fault. Rape is an unlawful, dreadful, awful action committed against you, without your consent. The most important words that you should keep in your mind are, if you did not consent to the sexual action, it was a sexual assault, and therefore, it was not your fault. It was the fault of evil.

It’s been a couple months since she was raped. The physical pain left behind after she was raped is gone. But her soul is damaged forever. Being raped is something that Margi has to learn to deal with. However, it is the guilt of being raped that is killing her. The guilt takes her to darker places where she feels she is drowning alone. Thinking that the sexual assault was her fault. Making her life a living hell.

After Margi called 911, a police officer showed up at the crime scene. While she was grateful for the much-needed physical support, Margi still battles the emotional damage caused by the first responder. The police officer who suggested that the sexual assault was her fault. That subtle underlying accusation destroyed what was left of her confidence, dignity, self-respect, and self-esteem.

Police officers responding to a sexual assault crime scene must remember that first, the victim of a sexual assault is a human being who has been deprived of her/his dignity. Second, “One of the most sacred principles in the American criminal justice system, holding that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty. In other words, the prosecution must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, each essential element of the crime charged.” (Cornell Law School, 2017). 

A police officer responding to the cries of the victims of a sexual assault should never make the victims feel that the sexual attack was their fault. I highly recommend that any police officer who responds to the desperate call of the victim of a sexual assault to be first human and then become an investigator. Making the victims feel the sexual assault was their fault may cause deeper damage than the physical ones. Those subtle accusations can brand the victims’ soul for the rest of their lives and almost certainly interfere with the victims’ ability to recover from their traumatic experience. 

Some of the skills that the victims of sexual assault need from the police officers responding to their desperate cries for need and help are respect, compassion, understanding, calmness, discretion, dependence, perception, empathic, tolerance, humility, open-mindedness, non-impulsiveness, patient, reasoning, and strong work ethics.

I respect and appreciate the dangerous work of police officers. I understand it is a stressful job and they are constantly putting their lives on the line to prevent us from danger and harm. I thank all of you for protecting us, protecting our society, and promoting peace and security. 

At the same time, I also have the moral responsibility to remind all police officers that there is time to be human, there is time to be a hero, and there is time to be an investigator. Responding to the call of a victim of a sexual assault is the time to be human. Margi was already hurt. She did not need your accusations. At that particular moment, what she needed the most was your moral support and your protection.

Margi had unforgettable damage to her self-esteem, self-respect, morale, and trust of people. But she is still recovering. She still is a strong, beautiful special woman. Your family and friends love you unconditionally.

Iberkis Faltas, MSIA, PhD (ABD)

Sources:

Key Traits and Characteristics Sought in Police Officers. (2012). City of Bainbridge Island. Retrieved from http://www.bainbridgewa.gov/DocumentCenter/View/1834

Presumption of Innocence. (2017). Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute. Retrieved from https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/presumption_of_innocence

Statement Analysis: Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber

This statement has 247 words, 18 lines, 1385 spaced characters, and 1631 non-spaced characters. Approximately 20% of the paragraph are adjectives, 25% verbs, 46% nouns, 7% adverbs, and 49% functions words, which according to research, functions words are words that provide little lexical significance or have little ambiguity to the meaning its meaning or the sentence.

The word count showed that James’s most used word was women, writing it 12 times in one paragraph. “Women” count for a 7.59 % of the paragraph structure. This, according to research on language and words usage indicates that James might have additional personal issues with the opposite gender than those expressed in this paragraph. Additional studies are required to determine the nature and extent of those issues. See Figure 1 Word Cloud, and Table 1 Word Weight Percentage for a broader idea of the structure and word use in this paragraph. 

Additional analysis indicates that only a 15.81% of the words imply to the content of the paragraph. James used too many ‘big words’ which research shows it is a self-conscious way of expression and in many situations, it indicates that the person has social/workplace issues due to the nature of his/her behavior.

James used 53 words to explain why he perceived that women prefer their professional development in social and artistic areas, which according to the Department of Labor (2017) it is not true. His argument is debatable. See the table below. In fact, statistics show that men also favor arts as their professional fields, as much or maybe more than women. Also, line and six of the statement, the ones highlighted in pink, those are two standalone sentences. Line eight explains James’s perceived assumption and judgment. Lines nine and ten contradict themselves: “Note that these are just average differences (on what is he basing this average?), and there’s overlap between men and women (I would like more information on where what, or how men and women overlap before making an assessment) but this seen “solely as a women’s issue” (By the end of the sentence it is not an overlap anymore. Now is just a women’s issue?)

For lines 13, 14, and 15, highlighted in pink, I would suggest requesting more information to determine its validity. Lines 17 and 18, also highlighted in pink are also debatable. Academic research showed that there are no significant gender-specific differences associated with personality or emotions between men and women.

Further, emotional intelligence research also showed that there is not gender-specific difference defining the individuals’ emotional intelligence competencies, or the way that individuals manage their emotions.

According to the evaluation of this statement, James “needs to stop assuming that gender gap implies sexism” and evaluate his own perception of the overall situation. How is it affecting him? How responsible is James of his own situation? What is bothering the most? How emotionally aware is James? How satisfy is James with his choices? Is James suffering from some form of depression? Does James feel that he is not advancing enough in his professional environment? Those are questions that will help us to explore the motivations behind James’s manifesto.

Moreover, according to research, the gender gap is an existing cultural problem. However, it is less likely that the gender gap is directly associated with racism against sex or sexism which is an entirely different topic. See Figure 3 Pew Research Center for additional information on the gender gap.

Word Cloud 

Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber

 

 Data by Area and Occupation

DHS S&T Awards $645K to Northeastern University to Develop Systems for Auditing and Controlling Personal Information Leaks

WASHINGTON—The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) has awarded Northeastern University (NEU) $645,229 to develop a system that organizations and individuals can use to audit and control personally identifiable information (PII) leaks from connected devices. The award was made through the S&T Cyber Security Division’s (CSD) Data Privacy project. CSD is part of the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency. CSD’s Data Privacy project seeks architectures, tools, applied models and other solutions across the research-and-development (R&D) lifecycle along three primary contexts: connected devices, mobile computing and sensor platforms; large-scale and heterogeneous data and algorithms; and the delivery of digital services.


Read More: https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/news/2017/08/07/news-release-dhs-st-awards-645k-northeastern-university

Statement Analysis

We can apply statement analysis to any documents. A VP of a magazine wrote the below statement. I couldn’t resist to review the statement and provide my recommendations on what should not be done in a statement letter when it will target millions of people. My suggestions are not perfect, but it is a start.