CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1

BACKGROUND

Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity
and femininity. Depending on the context, these characteristics may include biological sex (i.e. the
state of being male, female or intersex), sex-based social structures (including gender roles and other
social roles), or gender identity.
The term gender refers to the socially-determined and culturally-specific differences between
women and men as opposed to the biologically determined differences. The concept 'gender' is an
important analytical tool in the planning, management, monitoring and evaluation of development
programmes or cooperative projects as requires that women are considered in relation to men in a
socio-cultural setting and not as an isolated group.
One refers to gender issues as opposed to women's issues because the issues concern both
men and women. In regard to cooperatives it is important to analyse the role and position of men and
women in their socio-economic environment in order to identify and address their different needs, to
be able to develop their strengths and potentials and to ensure an equitable distribution of the benefits
of cooperative development.
Because women and men have different gender roles, they also have different needs.
Practical gender needs are those which address women's and men's immediate needs in relation to
their roles in society. Strategic gender needs on the other hand, refer to the need to change the
existing gender roles and to address equality issues. Although cooperative organizations (and
governments) have policies of equity and equal opportunity and express the need to improve the
status of women, special intervention is often required to correct the existing imbalances in society
and to improve the status of women.
1.2

1.3

FORMULATION OF PROBLEMS
1.

What do gender and gender issues mean?

2.

What is definition of gender role and differences between mens and womens role?

3.

What are differences between mens and womens in culture and communication?

4.

What are gender issues in other fields?

PURPOSES
1.

Explaining the meaning of gender and gender issues.

2.

Clarifying the gender role and the differences between men and women.

3.

Understanding about gender issues between mens and womens in culture and
communication.

4.

Knowing about examples of gender issues in other fields

CHAPTER II
DISCUSSION

2.1

GENDER AND GENDER ISSUES

2.1.1

GENDER

DEFINITION
Generally Gender is defined as a set of characteristics or traits that are associated with a
certain biological sex (male/female). These characteristics are generally referred to as masculine or
feminine. Definition of gender based on sociologist is "Gender" refers to a person's perceived or
projected social location within culturally established designations between masculine and feminine
behaviors (e.g., gender refers to a person's attempt to signify a masculine or feminine self as well as a
person's attempt to categorize someone else in terms of their presentation (intentional or otherwise)
of masculine or feminine selfhood). Based on Psychology Dictionary Gender refers to the personal
sexual identity of an individual, regardless of the person's biological and outward sex. How people
define masculinity and femininity can vary based on the individual's background and surrounding
culture. Differing societal expectations in different cultures establish the behavioral, psychological
and physical attributes that are associated one gender or another.
GENDER VS SEX
Sex refers to the biological distinction between males and females; by contrast, gender
concerns the social differences between males and females. Research in sociology focuses on gender
rather than sex; sociologists distinguish between sex and gender to study differences between human
males and females with greater precision. Whereas sex is based on physical differences, gender is
based on social factors such as values, perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes. For example, men and
women have different genitalia; this is a difference of sex. Men and woman also face different social
expectations, as when women are expected to be more nurturing than men; this is a difference of
gender. Gender varies across time and culture, as different groups have different beliefs about
appropriate behavior for males and females.
2.1.2

HOW IS GENDER RELATED TO CULTURE?

Expectations about attributes and behaviours appropriate to women or men and about the
relations between women and men in other words, gender are shaped by culture. Gender

identities and gender relations are critical aspects of culture because they shape the way daily life is
lived in the family, but also in the wider community and the workplace.
Gender (like race or ethnicity) functions as an organizing principle for society because of the
cultural meanings given to being male or female. This is evident in the division of labour according
to gender. In most societies there are clear patterns of womens work and mens work, both in
the household and in the wider community and cultural explanations of why this should be so. The
patterns and the explanations differ among societies and change over time.
While the specific nature of gender relations varies among societies, the general pattern is
that women have less personal autonomy, fewer resources at their disposal, and limited influence
over the decision-making processes that shape their societies and their own lives. This pattern of
disparity based on gender is both a human rights and a development issue.
2.1.3 GENDER ISSUES
DEFFINITION
Gender Issues is interdisciplinary and cross-national in scope focusing on gender and gender
equity. The journal publishes basic and applied research examining gender relationships as well as
the impact of economic, legal, political, and social forces on those relationships across four domains:
1. Understanding gender socialization, personality, and behavior in a gendered context.
2. Exploring the wide range of relationships within the gender spectrum, such as
acquaintances, friendships, romantic, and professional relationships.
3. Assessing the impact of economic, legal, political, and social changes on gender identity,
expression, and gender relations.
4. Interpreting the impact of economic, legal, political, and social changes on the aspirations,
status and roles of people internationally.
HISTORY
Gender equality, also known as sex equality, gender egalitarianism, sexual equality or
equality of the genders, is the view that men and women should receive equal treatment, and should
not be discriminated against based on gender.This is the objective of the United Nations Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, which seeks to create equality in law and in social situations, such as
in democratic activities and securing equal pay for equal work. The related topic of rights is treated
in two separate articles, Men's rights and Women's rights.
3

The concept of equality of the sexes is a relatively new phenomena. Until the end of the
nineteenth century, women were treated as the inferior sex and were excluded from taking part in
public life, especially in areas pertaining to politics, education and certain professions. Resistance to
the idea of gender equality drew its strength from Stoic and Platonic misogyny, which was reinforced
and justified under different intellectual movements, from early Christianity through to the
Enlightenment. The history of the movement for gender equality is therefore an intellectual, political,
social and economic history of the changing relationship between men and women, rather than how
it is often distortedly represented as a pro-woman movement.

2.2

GENDER ROLES AND THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WOMEN AND MEN

2.2.1

GENDER ROLES

As we grow, we learn how to behave from those around us. In this socialization process,
children are introduced to certain roles that are typically linked to their biological sex. The term
gender role refers to society's concept of how men and women are expected to act and behave. These
roles are based on norms, or standards, created by society.
gender roles are perceived behavioral norms associated with males and females within a
given social group, culture or system. Moreover, the ideas of masculinity and femininity exist only in
comparative relation to one another. In other words, femininity does not exist independently of
masculinity and vice versa. Gender affects and is affected by social, political, economic, and
religious forces. Migration represents a drastic life change and gender roles and relations often shift
in this process. At the same time, gender permeates many of the practices, identities, and institutions
involved in the processes of immigration and assimilation.
Gender roles are cultural and personal. They determine how males and females should think,
speak, dress, and interact within the context of society. Learning plays a role in this process of
shaping gender roles. These gender schemas are deeply embedded cognitive frameworks regarding
what defines masculine and feminine. While various socializing agentsparents, teachers, peers,
movies, television, music, books, and religionteach and reinforce gender roles throughout the
lifespan, parents probably exert the greatest influence, especially on their very young offspring.
As mentioned previously, sociologists know that adults perceive and treat female and male
infants differently. Parents probably do this in response to their having been recipients of gender
expectations as young children. Traditionally, fathers teach boys how to fix and build things; mothers
teach girls how to cook, sew, and keep house. Children then receive parental approval when they
4

conform to gender expectations and adopt culturally accepted and conventional roles. All of this is
reinforced by additional socializing agents, such as the media. In other words, learning gender roles
always occurs within a social context, the values of the parents and society being passed along to the
children of successive generations.
Gender roles adopted during childhood normally continue into adulthood. At home, people
have certain presumptions about decisionmaking, childrearing practices, financial responsibilities,
and so forth. At work, people also have presumptions about power, the division of labor, and
organizational structures. None of this is meant to imply that gender roles, in and of themselves, are
good or bad; they merely exist. Gender roles are realities in almost everyone's life.
2.2.2

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WOMEN AND MEN

Are women and men really as different as pop psychologists would have us believe?

Certainly, there are some differences between the sexes that we need to understand. There is also
substantial variation within each sex as a result of diversity in experience, heredity, sexual
orientation, race, culture, and class. And there are many similarities between women and menways
in which the two sexes are more alike than different (Barnett & Rivers, 2004; Wright, 2006).
There are similarities between the sexes and variations within each sex, it is difficult
to find language to discuss general patterns of communication. Terms such as women and men are
troublesome because they imply that all women can be grouped together and all men can be grouped
together. When we say, Womens communication is more personal than mens, the statement is
true of most, but not all, women and men. Certainly some women dont engage in personal talk, and
some men do. Many factors, including race, economic class, and sexual identity, shape how specific
women and specific men communicate (Zinn, Hondagneu-Sotelo, & Messner, 2007).

MASCULINE VS FEMININE
MASCULINITY
Dominant values in society are achievement and
success.
A preference for heroism, assertiveness, and
material reward for success. Society is more
competitive.
Performance ambition, a need to excel,
admiration for the successful achiever
Tendency to polarize
Big and fast are beautifulfd

FEMINIITY
Dominant values in society are caring for others,
serving others, and quality of life.
A preference for cooperation, modesty, caring for
the weak. Society at large is more consensus
oriented.
Work in order to live
Sympathy for the unfortunate
Small and slow are beautiful
5

Decisiveness oriented

Intuition oriented
MEN VS WOMEN
MEN

active,
strong,
critical,
and adult like with needs such as :
dominance,
autonomy,
aggression,
exhibition,
achievement
and endurance.

WOMEN
passive,
weak,
nurturing,

adaptive with needs such as :

abasement,
deference,
nurturance,
affiliation

2.3 DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN IN CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION

2.3.1.

COMMUNICATION
That there are differences between men and women is hardly a matter of dispute.

Females have two X chromosomes whereas males have an X and a Y; this is a key genetic
difference and no geneticist regards that difference as unimportant. On average, females have
more fat and less muscle than males, are not as strong, and weigh less. They also mature
more rapidly and live longer. The female voice usually has different characteristics from the
male voice, and often females and males exhibit different ranges of verbal skills. However,
we also know that many of the differences may result from different socialization practices
(see Philips et al., 1987). For example, women may live longer than men because of the
different roles they play in society and the different jobs they tend to fill. Differences in voice
quality may be accentuated by beliefs about what men and women should sound like when
they talk, and any differences in verbal skills may be explained in great part through
differences in upbringing. (It has often been noted that there is far more reading failure in
schools among boys than girls, but it does not follow from this fact that boys are inherently
less well equipped to learn to read, for their poor performance in comparison to girls may be
sociocultural in origin rather than genetic.) There is also an important caveat concerning all
such studies showing differences between groups, and the two genders are just groups like
any other; it is one I made earlier (p. 158) and will repeat here. For many in the two groups
under comparison there will be no difference at all: the next person you meet on the street
6

may be male or female, tall or short, long-lived or short-lived, high-voiced or low-voiced, and
so on, with not one of these characteristics being predictable from any other. (Given a
thousand or more such encounters some Tendencies may emerge, but even knowing what
these are would not help you with the very next person you meet.)
Numerous observers have described womens speech as being different from that of
men (see Baron, 1986, Arliss, 1991, pp. 44112, and pp. 162207 of this book). I should also
observe that there is a bias here: mens speech usually provides the norm against which
womens speech is judged. We could just as well ask how mens speech differs from that of
women, but investigators have not usually gone about the task of looking at differences in
that way. For example, in discussing language change in Philadelphia, Labov (2001, pp. 281
2) deliberately recasts his statement that Women conform more closely than men to
sociolinguistic norms that are overtly prescribed, but conform less than men when they are
not to read that men are less conforming than women with stable linguistic variables, and
more conforming when change is in progress within a linguistic system. He does this so as to
avoid appearing to bias his findings.
Any view too that womens speech is trivial (see the denial in Kipers, 1987), gossipladen, corrupt, illogical, idle, euphemistic, or deficient is highly suspect; nor is it necessarily
more precise, cultivated, or stylish or even less profane (see De Klerk, 1992, and Hughes,
1992) than mens speech. Such judgments lack solid evidentiary support. For example,
apparently men gossip just as much as women do (see Pilkington, 1998); mens gossip is
just different. Men indulge in a kind of phatic small talk that involves insults, challenges, and
various kinds of negative behavior to do exactly what women do by their use of nurturing,
polite, feedback-laden, cooperative talk. In doing this, they achieve the kind of solidarity they
prize. It is the norms of behavior that are different.
In the linguistic literature perhaps the most famous example of gender differentiation
is found in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies among the Carib Indians. Male and female
Caribs have been reported to speak different languages, the result of a long-ago conquest in
which a group of invading Caribspeaking men killed the local Arawak-speaking men and
mated with the Arawak women. The descendants of these Carib-speaking men and Arawakspeaking women have sometimes been described as having different languages for men and
women because boys learn Carib from their fathers and girls learn Arawak from their
mothers. This claim of two separate languages is now discounted.

What differences there are actually do not result in two separate or different
languages, but rather one language with noticeable gender-based characteristics (Baron, 1986,
pp. 5963, and Taylor, 1951b). Phonological differences between the speech of men and
women have been noted in a variety of languages. In Gros Ventre, an Amerindian language of
the northeast United States, women have palatalized velar stops where men have palatalized
dental stops, e.g., female kjatsa bread and male djatsa. When a female speaker of Gros
Ventre quotes a male, she attributes female pronunciations to him, and when a male quotes a
female, he attributes male pronunciations to her.
Moreover, any use of female pronunciations by males is likely to be regarded as a
sign of effeminacy. In a northeast Asian language, Yukaghir, both women and children have
/ts/ and /dz / where men have /tj/ and /dj/. Old people of both genders have a corresponding /
7j/ and /jj/. Therefore, the difference is not only genderrelated, but also age-graded.
Consequently, in his lifetime a male goes through the progression of /ts/, /tj/, and /7j/, and
/dz/, /dj/, and /jj/, and a female has a corresponding /ts/ and /7j/, and /dz/ and /jj/. In Bengali
men often substitute /l/ for initial /n/; women, children, and the uneducated do not do this.
Likewise, in a Siberian language, Chukchi, men, but not women, often drop /n/ and /t/ when
they occur between vowels, e.g., female nitvaqenat and male nitvaqaat. In Montreal many
more men than women do not pronounce the l in the pronouns il and elle. Schoolgirls in
Scotland apparently pronounce the t in words like water and got more often than schoolboys,
who prefer to substitute a glottal stop. Haas (1944) observed that in Koasati, an Amerindian
language spoken in southwestern Louisiana, among other gender-linked differences, men
often pronounced an s at the end of verbs but women did not, e.g., male lakws he is lifting
it and female lakw. What was interesting was that this kind of pronunciation appeared to be
dying out, because younger women and girls do not use these forms. That older speakers
recognized the distinction as gender-based is apparent from the fact that women teach their
sons to use the male forms and men narrating stories in which women speak employ female
forms in reporting their words. This practice is in direct contrast to the aforementioned
situation in Gros Ventre, where there is no such changeover in reporting or quoting.
There is also a very interesting example from English of a woman being advised to
speak more like a man in order to fill a position previously filled only by men. Margaret
Thatcher was told that her voice did not match her position as British Prime Minister: she
sounded too shrill. She was advised to lower the pitch of her voice, diminish its range, and
speak more slowly, and thereby adopt an authoritative, almost monotonous delivery to make
8

herself heard. She was successful to the extent that her new speaking style became a kind of
trademark, one either well-liked by her admirers or detested by her opponents.
In the area of morphology and vocabulary, many of the studies have focused on
English. In a paper which, although it is largely intuitive, anecdotal, and personal in nature, is
nevertheless challenging and interesting, Lakoff (1973), claims that women use color words
like mauve, beige, aquamarine, lavender, and magenta but most men do not. She also
maintains that adjectives such as adorable, charming, divine, lovely, and sweet are also
commonly used by women but only very rarely by men. Women are also said to have their
own vocabulary for emphasizing certain effects on them, words and expressions such as so
good, such fun, exquisite, lovely, divine, precious, adorable, darling, and fantastic.
Furthermore, the English language makes certain distinctions of a gender-based kind, e.g.,
actoractress, waiterwaitress, and mastermistress. Some of these distinctions are
reinforced by entrenched patterns of usage and semantic development. For example, master
and mistress have developed quite different ranges of use and meaning, so that whereas Joan
can be described as Freds mistress, Fred cannot be described as Joans master. Other pairs of
words which reflect similar differentiation are boygirl, manwoman, gentlemanlady,
bachelorspinster, and even widowerwidow. In the last case, whereas you can say Shes
Freds widow, you cannot say Hes Sallys widower. Lakoff cites numerous examples and
clearly establishes her point that equivalent words referring to men and women do have
quite different associations in English. A particularly telling example is the difference
between Hes a professional and Shes a professional. Other investigators have
documented the same phenomenon in other languages, for example in French uses of garon
and fille.
One of the consequences of such work is that there is now a greater awareness in
some parts of the community that subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, distinctions are made
in the vocabulary choice used to describe men and women. Consequently, we can understand
why there is a frequent insistence that neutral words be used as much as possible, as in
describing occupations e.g., chairperson, letter carrier, salesclerk, and actor (as in Shes an
actor). If language tends to reflect social structure and social structure is changing, so that
judgeships, surgical appointments, nursing positions, and primary school teaching
assignments are just as likely to be held by women as men (or by men as women), such
changes might be expected to follow inevitably. This kind of work does two things: it draws
our attention to existing inequities, and it encourages us to make the necessary changes by
9

establishing new categorizations (e.g., Ms), and suggesting modifications for old terms (e.g.,
changing policeman to police officer and chairman to chairperson). However, there is still
considerable doubt that changing waitress to either waiter or waitperson or describing Nicole
Kidman as an actor rather than as an actress indicates a real shift in sexist attitudes.
Reviewing the evidence, Romaine (1999, pp. 31213) concludes that attitudes
toward gender equality did not match language usage. Those who had adopted more genderinclusive language did not necessarily have a more liberal view of gender inequities in
language. One particular bit of sexism in languages that has aroused much comment is the
gender systems that so many of them have, the hesheit natural gender system of English
or the lela or derdiedas grammatical gender systems of French and German. The
possible connections between gender systems (masculine, feminine, neuter) and gender
differences (male, female, neither) are various.
See Romaine (1999) for some observations and claims concerning these connections,
e.g., her claim (p. 66) that ideological factors in the form of cultural beliefs about women . . .
enter into gender assignment in [grammatical] systems that are supposedly purely formal and
arbitrary. In English such connections sometimes create problems for us in finding the right
pronoun: compare the natural Everybody should hand in their papers in five minutes to the
apparently biased No person in his right mind would do that. Again, heshe distinctions can
often be avoided sometimes clumsily, to be sure so it probably does not follow that
languages with gender distinctions must be sexist, which would also be a clear argument in
support of the Whorfian hypothesis (see pp. 2218). It is the people who use languages who
are or who are not sexist; Chinese, Japanese, Persian, and Turkish do not make the kinds of
gender distinctions English makes through its system of pronouns, but it would be difficult to
maintain that males who speak these languages are less sexist than males who speak English!
There certainly are gender differences in word choice in various languages. Japanese
women show they are women when they speak, for example, by the use of a sentence-final
particle ne or another particle wa. In Japanese, too, a male speaker refers to himself as boku
or ore whereas a female uses watasi or atasi. Whereas a man says boku kaeru I will go back
in plain or informal speech, a woman says watasi kaeru wa (Takahara, 1991). Children learn
to make these distinctions very early in life. However, Reynolds (1998, p. 306) points out that
the use of boku . . . by junior high school girls has recently become quite common in Tokyo.
Girls who were interviewed in a TV program explain that they cannot compete with boys in
classes, in games or in fights with watasi. . . . The use of boku and other expressions in the
10

male speech domain by young female speakers has escalated to a larger area and to older
groups of speakers. In polite conversation a female speaker of Thai refers to herself as
dchAn whereas a man uses phom. In Thai, too, women emphasize a repeated action through
reduplication, i.e., by repeating the verb, whereas men place a descriptive verb, mak, after the
verb instead.
Different languages do seem to prescribe different forms for use by men and women.
To cite another example, according to Sapir (1929a), the Yana language of California contains
special forms for use in speech either by or to women. however, very few are like the
language of the Dyirbal people of North Queensland, Australia, who have a special language
which is gender-differentiated in a rather novel way (Dixon, 1971). The normal everyday
language, Guwal, is used by both genders; but, if you are a man and your mother-in-law is
present, or if you are a woman and your father-in-law is present, you use Dyaluy, a motherin-law variety. This variety has the same phonology and almost the same grammar as Guwal
but its vocabulary is entirely different. However, both genders have access to both varieties.
Another Australian aboriginal language, Yanyuwa, spoken by approximately 90 to
150 people, has gender-differentiated dialects. The dialects use the same word stems but there
are different class-marking prefixes on nouns, verbs, and pronouns. According to Bradley
(1998), men use one dialect among themselves and women use the other. Men also use mens
dialect to speak to women and women use womens dialect to speak to men. Children are
brought up in womens dialect with boys required to shift not always done easily to mens
dialect as they are initiated into manhood. Bradley adds (p. 16) that: If individuals wish to
speak Yanyuwa then they are expected to speak the dialect which is associated with their sex
there is no other alternative. A person can use the other sexs dialect only in very welldefined circumstances such as story-telling, joking, and certain singing rituals. The Yanyuwa
find all of this perfectly normal and natural.
In the Dyirbal example cited above we may find an important clue as to why there are
sometimes different varieties for men and women. One variety may be forbidden to one
gender, i.e., be taboo, but that gender is apparently nearly always the female gender. (See pp.
23840.) This phenomenon has been noted among the Trobriand Islanders, various aboriginal
peoples of Australia, Mayans, Zulus, and Mongols, to cite but a few examples. The taboos
often have to do with certain kinship relationships or with hunting or with some religious
practice and result in the avoidance of certain words or even sound in words. They derive
from the social organization of the particular group involved and reflect basic concerns of the
11

group. Such concerns quite often lead to women being treated in ways that appear inimical to
egalitarian-oriented outsiders.
When we turn to certain grammatical matters in English, we find that Brend (1975)
claims that the intonation patterns of men and women vary somewhat, women using certain
patterns associated with surprise and politeness more often than men. In the same vein,
Lakoff says that women may answer a question with a statement that employs the rising
intonation pattern usually associated with a question rather than the falling intonation pattern
associated with making a firm statement. According to Lakoff, women do this because they
are less sure about themselves and their opinions than are men. For the same reason, she says
that women often add tag questions to statements, e.g., They caught the robber last week,
didnt they? These claims about tag questions and insecurity have been tested by others
(Dubois and Crouch, 1975, Cameron et al., 1989, and Brower et al., 1979) and found
wanting: experimental data do not necessarily confirm intuitive judgments. The latter
investigators did find, however, that the gender of the addressee was an important variable in
determining how a speaker phrased a particular question.
We have already seen at other places in this book instances of language behavior
varying according to gender. Many of these are quantitative studies in which sex is used as
one of the variables that are taken into account. As Milroy and Gordon (2003, p. 100) say,
Strictly speaking . . . it makes sense . . . to talk of sampling speakers according to sex, but to
think of gender as the relevant social category when interpreting the social meaning of sexrelated variation. I will remind you of a few of these studies. Fischers work (see pp. 1623)
showed how very young boys and girls differ in certain choices they make, as did Cheshires
work in Reading (pp. 1702) in an older group. Labovs studies in New York (pp. 1648) and
Philadelphia (pp. 20911) also revealed noticeable gender differences in adult speech. These
led him to make some interesting claims about what such differences indicated, e.g., about
womens role in language change. The Milroys study exploring network relationships (pp.
1813) showed certain characteristics of mens and womens speech: how they were alike in
some ways but different in others. Jahangiris study in Teheran (pp. 17980) is of interest
because of the very clear differences he reported between the speech of males and females.
Finally, Gals study in the Oberwart of Austria (pp. 2056) showed how it is not only what
women say but who they are willing to say it to that is important. We have also noted that
there are often different politeness requirements made of men and women.

12

Still other gender-linked differences are said to exist. Women and men may have
different paralinguistic systems and move and gesture differently. The suggestion has been
made that these often require women to appear to be submissive to men. Women are also
often named, titled, and addressed differently from men. Women are more likely than men to
be addressed by their first names when everything else is equal, or, if not by first names, by
such terms as lady, miss, or dear, and even baby or babe. Women are said to be subject to a
wider range of address terms than men, and men are more familiar with them than with other
men. Women are also said not to employ the profanities and obscenities men use, or, if they
do, use them in different circumstances or are judged differently for using them. (However,
the successful American television series Sex and the City might seriously challenge that
idea!) Women are also sometimes required to be silent in situations in which men may speak.
Among the Araucanian Indians of Chile, men are encouraged to talk on all occasions, but the
ideal wife is silent in the presence of her husband, and at gatherings where men are present
she should talk only in a whisper, if she talks at all.
Some writers are not impressed with the kinds of findings reported in the preceding
paragraphs. These findings come from quantitative, variationist studies of the kind I
discussed in chapters 68. For example, Cameron (1998a, pp. 9456) says that these findings
belong to the tradition of empirical sex difference studies that do no more than set out to find
statistically significant differences between womens and mens behavior. This research
formula has proved as durable as it is dubious (not to say dull). She adds that this kind of
work deals in arcane sound changes presented through complex statistics. In this view,
merely to observe, count, and graph linguistic phenomena is not enough. An investigator
needs some kind of theory about such behavior and some ideas to test before beginning an
investigation. And, possibly, as we will see, some kind of ideology to suggest the right
theory.
In setting out a list of what she calls sociolinguistic universal tendencies, Holmes
(1998) does offer some testable claims. There are five of these:
1. Women and men develop different patterns of language use.
2. Women tend to focus on the affective functions of an interaction more often than men do.
3. Women tend to use linguistic devices that stress solidarity more often than men do.

13

4. Women tend to interact in ways which will maintain and increase solidarity, while
(especially in formal contexts) men tend to interact in ways which will maintain and increase
their power and status.
5. Women are stylistically more flexible than men. It is through testing claims such as these
that we are likely to refine our understanding of those matters that interest us.
There are differences in gendered speech, some undoubtedly real but others almost
certainly imaginary. Any differences that do exist surely also must interact with other factors,
e.g., social class, race, culture, discourse type, group membership, etc. In the next section we
will look more closely at some possible explanations for them.
2.3.2 CULTURAL GENDER ISSUES
1.

Forbidden in driving
In Saudi Arabia, women arent allowed to drive, or even ride bikes, and men arent

allowed to drive women theyre not closely related to. The kingdom is currently dealing with
the dilemma of how to get 367,000 girls to school on buses that can only be driven by men.
The logical question at this point is this: If no men are allowed to come in contact with
schoolgirls, and women arent allowed to drive, who will be driving the school buses? The
Ministry of Education is currently recruiting Al-Ameen or trustworthy men for this
initiative. It may be hard for some to take this term seriously considering the way Saudi
Arabias religious police infamously broke the trust of 15 girls parents in 2002 when a girls
school was on fire. The police forbade them from leaving the building, and in some cases
beat them to keep them from leaving, because the girls heads werent properly veiled. The
girls all died in the fire. One has to wonder how the Ministry of Education plans to handle
school-bus breakdowns near similarly inclined men.
2. Clothing Requirement
In 2001 a militant group called Lashkar-e-Jabar demanded that Muslim women in
Kashmir wear burqas, head to toe garments that cover their clothes, or risk being attacked.
Men threw acid in the faces of two women for not covering up in public. The group also
demanded that Hindu and Sikh women dress so as to identify themselves: they said that
Hindu women should wear a bindi (the traditional colored dot) on their foreheads, and Sikh
women should cover their heads with saffron-colored cloth.
3. Forbidden to Travel
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Husbands in Egypt and Bahrain can file an official complaint at the airport to forbid
their wives from leaving the country for any reason. In Syria, a husband can prevent his wife
from leaving the country. In Iraq, Libya, Jordan, Morocco, Oman and Yemen, married women
must have their husbands written permission to travel abroad, and they may be prevented
from doing so for any reason. In Saudi Arabia, women must obtain written permission from
their closest male relative to leave the country or travel on public transportation between
different parts of the kingdom.

2.4

GENDER ISSUES IN OTHER FIELDS

1. Education
In many areas of Afghanistan, girls are often taken out of school when they hit puberty.
Cultural factors related to the correctness of sending girls to school, reluctance to send girls and
boys to the same school after third grade, as well as the perceived and real security threats related to
girls walking to school and attending classes all contribute to slowing down the enrollment of girls in
schools. Likewise, the enormous lack of female teachers, who are fundamental in a country where
girls cannot be taught by a man after a certain age, is having a negative impact on girls education.
While progress has been made since the fall of the Taliban, women are still struggling to see their
rights fulfilled. Literacy rates among young Afghan women are disturbingly low: only 18 per cent of
women between 15 and 24 can read. While the total number of children enrolled in primary schools
is increasing tremendously, the percentage of female students is not.
Pakistan suffers from low literacy levels especially among women, since one-third of adult
women are literate and the male literacy rate being around 57%. The low level of literacy reflects the
low attainments in female schooling among the countrys older generations. Even though throughout
the 1990s the literacy rates increased, the gender gap in literacy persists. Males Female enrolment in
schools continues to be lower than that of the boys with only around 46 percent of primary schoolaged girls being enrolled in primary school. Even though the gender gap among enrolment in schools
has reduced, the appreciation for attaining such an outcome deteriorates as it is due to a decline in
male enrolment rather than a rise in female enrolment.
2.

Political Participation

Reservation of seats for women in local governments, provincial and national assemblies has given a
boost to women in terms of political representation. The adoption of the 33% quota mandate by the
Local Government Ordinance (2001), women competed for reserved and open seats on the union,
15

sub-district (Tehsil), district council and for posts of Nazim and Naib Nazim. The implementation of
the quota has provided women with a strategic opportunity to set and implement local government
agendas, though effective political participation at all levels continues to witness set-backs such as
the women being significantly less informed than men concerning political matters due to lower
access to political information.
3.

Economic Empowerment:
Elimination of Poverty is a persistent national concern and strategic objective reinforced by

beijing platform of Action and MDGs required specific affirmative actions to address the womens
inequality in rural area.
4.

Health:
According to the 1998 population census, the sex ratio is 108 males per 100 females2.

Pakistans sex ratio thus indicates excessive female mortality and surpasses even South Asias
already high rate of 1063 when compared to other low income countries.
The prevailing sex ratio reflects relatively poor treatment of girls after birth, rather than female
infanticide. This phenomenon has been called extended infanticide, where girls have an elevated
mortality rate in childhood because they may be denied inputs like food, nutrition and health care.
Indeed, female child mortality exceeds male child mortality in Pakistan. Most recent estimate of
child mortality show the female rate between ages 1 and 4 to be 24 per 1,000 births, while the male
rate in this age group is only 15 per 1000 births4. Among infants, male mortality rates exceed those
for females, a pattern consistent with biologically expected sex-based differences in mortality rates.
In Pakistan, life expectancy (other than mortaility rate at very young age) rose to 63 years by the late
1990s.Prior to the 1980s, male life expectancy exceeded female life expectancy at birth.
5.

Citizenship
Most countries in the region-with the exception of Iran, Tunisia, Israel, and to a limited extent

Egypt-have permitted only fathers to pass citizenship on to their children. Women married to nonnationals are denied this fundamental right.

16

CHAPTER III
CONCLUSION

Sex refers to the biological distinction between males and females.

gender is based on social factors such as values, perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes.
Expectations about attributes and behaviours appropriate to women or men and about the
relations between women and men in other words, gender are shaped by culture. Gender
identities and gender relations are critical aspects of culture because they shape the way daily

life is lived in the family, but also in the wider community and the workplace.
Gender roles are cultural and personal. They determine how males and females should think,

speak, dress, and interact within the context of society.

there are some differences between the sexes that we need to understand. There is also
substantial variation within each sex as a result of diversity in experience, heredity, sexual
orientation, race, culture, and class. And there are many similarities between women and men
ways in which the two sexes are more alike than different (Barnett & Rivers, 2004; Wright,

2006).
In communication, The female voice usually has different characteristics from the male

voice, and often females and males exhibit different ranges of verbal skills.
Below are example of gender issues in culture:
1.Forbidden in driving
2. Clothing Requirement
3. Forbidden to Travel

Gender issues also happen in other fields, such as

1. Education
2.Political Participation
3.Economic Empowerment:
4.Health
5. Citizenship

Bibliography
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