Anja Zoric Professor Dunlap HMD 302 October 16 Service Learning In response to this weeks readings, I talked about

the social constructions theory and how it relates to gender role development. I decided that today at the senior center I would focus on gender roles to see if they still play out with older individuals as much as they do with younger people. The first thing related to this that I have never paid attention to is that in preparation for the exercise group, only male members get the chairs out of the closet and set them up in the proper arrangement. While this is being done, the women are usually sitting at the tables and drinking coffee. There are however more women that participate in the exercise group than there are men. I think that since it is more focused on breathing and relaxation men are not as inclined to do it. If it was maybe more movement based exercise there would perhaps be more male participants. The instructor actually often mentions how his whole life he spent time in the gym doing things like lifting weights (which I connected to the idea of masculinity meaning being physically built) and how he regrets not being told to do more relaxation exercises. When I think about advertisements for meditation-style activities such as yoga, they are usually directed towards women rather than men. The speakers that came in to give a presentation today are part of a neighborhood safety group that they formed themselves in order to join together as a community to patrol the streets of New London and report any unusual or criminal behavior. All five of the members were men, which I was expecting. Law enforcement in general whether it be official or unofficial like in this case tends to be male oriented. There is still a social stigma against women joining professions that are physically tedious or dangerous. I observed that there were more men than

usual at this presentation compared to other presentations in the past and that the men were more likely to ask questions because they were already somewhat more knowledgeable about the program than the women were. There is one man that comes to the senior center every Tuesday when I am there that has a nurses assistant helping him at all times. I was eager to observe the influence of gender roles in this case because the man is for the most part incapable of caring for himself at this point, and has a younger woman doing most of the work for him. Men are socialized to be the ones taking care of women, so when a woman takes care of a man I would imagine that it has a negative impact on the mans sense of self. The one way I believe this is true for this particular case is that the man sometimes resists help from the assistant, and gives up once he realizes that he cannot do something without assistance.