Professional Documents
Culture Documents
INTRODUCTION
Gender is determined socially it is the societal meaning assigned to male and female. Gender
is used to describe those characteristics of women and men. Gender is the division of people
into two categories. The cultural norms about gender also make an inequality in much aspect
such as education, politics, economic and many more. Societies and cultures are not static. It
always being changed and renewed. Culture is mostly raised in relation with gender.
Furthermore, the concept of gender is not a binary system. The different religions and culture
of Malaysia have many effects. Culture is usually describe the belief and practice system of a
society, particularly are seen as closely linked with tradition or religion. Culture is the whole
complex of many elements that include distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and
emotional features. Gender is a function as an organizing principle for society because of the
cultural meaning. Gender differences and inequalities have a major impact on people lives
and interaction this is because of the cultural behaves in our community. Culture also include
following of life such as language, arts and science, thought, spiritual, social activity and
interaction. This is mean when culture is the ways of life. The cultural practice of ancestors
also has giving a big impact in gender. This is due to cultural heritage from a generation to
another generation. Cultural practice will be difficult to leave. This is because the culture in a
community could become their belief system. Gender equality and the empowerment of
women are among the top of development. But culture and the social norms are arising from
it. This show that the significant role in people and how it effect the women. Culture is not
some sort of special mystical things but it is how we negotiated relationships of power begin.
There are many causes that the effect of gender differences and inequality in multi culture.
Gender identities and gender relation are critical aspect of culture because it shapes daily life.
For example, this phenomenon can be seen in many developing countries. The greater
emphasis is given to the son because of several factors. This is also a part of the culture
assumes that man is more powerful and have many advantages than a women. However,
these cultural changes occur along with changes in current globalization. We can see that
education has a lot to change old beliefs system for the pillar in the community especially in
developing countries. In this study we will discuss the relation between cultures in relation to
gender.
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OBJECTIVES:
1. To understand gender in various culture.
2. To understand gender differences in various aspect in society.
3. To identify the causes of gender inequality based on multicultural.
4. To identify the effects of this problems.
PROBLEM STATEMENT:
Genders differences are often become a problem in the community. People
do not realize how much important for us to understand the gender
differences. This difference is not seen in terms of genetic or biological,
but gender differences were seen in all aspect of life. What is the causes
of gender inequality based on multicultural and what the effect that we
get if the problem happen among us?
METHODOLOGY:
The instrument is an essential element in the implementation of study.
Through this research, researchers can gather and collect data. There are
three type of instrument that can be used like questionnaire, interview
and observation. There are two type of methods; quantitative and
qualitative.
In this study, the researcher has used quantitative method with reference
such as book and website. Most of book referred to Tuanku Bainuns
Library and Google books online. In addition, researcher also using online
journals and thesis to gathered the information. We also use a few main
referenced such as gender journal and another journal that related to this
topic.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Gender roles develop through internalization and identification during childhood. Based on
what Sigmund Freud suggested, biology determines gender identity through identification
with their parents. Freud argue that the development of the gendered self is not completely
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determined by biology based around ones relationship to the penis, but rather the interactions
that one has with the primary caregiver. From birth, parents interact differently with their
children based on their sex. Their parents will instill different values or traits in their children
based of what is normative for their sex.
Besides that, based on study at Uganda, gender inequality is reviewed in the context
of capabilities in health and education, opportunities (employment access to economic
services and time) and levels of empowerment (ownership of productive assets, participation
in governance and access to justice). Over the last two decades, government of Uganda has
actively promoted womens empowerment and gender equality in both regal and policy
arenas. The pervasive gender inequalities despite these noble efforts indicate the need for
effective solutions. The solutions has takes by Ugandas government are, revising and
enacting the Domestic Relations Bill, establishing the Equal Opportunities Commission and
focus on economic empowerment of women.
According to the Gender Management System, gender is a set of characteristic or
criteria, roles and behavior patterns that distinguish women from men. It was builds in social
and cultural. Sex can be determined by the individual instead of biological features built in
the social gender is a product of upbringing, social, cultural norms and expectations. These
characteristics change over time and from one culture to another culture. Gander is also
referred to the sketch of cultural symbols, normative concept (subjective), and institutional
structures of internal self through the process of social construction. Hence the Islamic
feminist view of injustice and inequality of rights granted to men and women who lead their
backwardness and dropout arising from misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the
teachings of the influence of patriarchy understood. For them, the social revelation that made
the Prophet Muhammad as a leading Islamic Feminists is not internalized as a whole.
Based on Arusha Cooray and Niklas Potrafkes study in Gender inequality in
education: Political institutions or culture and religion, they investigate empirically whether
political institutions or culture and religion underlie gender inequality in education. The
dataset contains up to 157 countries over the 1991-2006 period. The results indicate that
political institutions do not significantly influence education of girls: autocratic regimes do
not discriminate against girls in denying educational opportunities and democracies do not
discriminate by gender when providing educational opportunities. The primary influences on
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gender inequality in education are culture and religion. Discrimination against girls is
especially pronounced in Muslim dominated countries.
the
leader
builds
morale,
relationships,
satisfaction,
and
experienced
women
managers
show
no
differences
in
dominance
and
control
style
of
leadership
may
have
Because
masculine
violates
stereotypical
expectations
for
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socialization.
Emotion
can
be
considered
part
of
the
socialization into roles that men and women commonly occupy. For
example in Western industrial societies women are more likely than men
to have domestic and nurturing roles, which taking emotional care of
others is their main task. Men, however, are more likely than women to
provide the material resources and assume a role in paid economy.
Moreover, these roles suggest differences in power and status with female
roles providing less power and status than male roles. To perform these
social roles successfully, distinct emotions and emotion expressions are
required.
A variety of theorists have proposed that men and women generally
differ in the type of emotion they experiences in their close love
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relationships, the intensity of those emotion and they hoe readily they
express those emotions. Firestone (1983:126-127) for example, observed:
That women live for love and men live for work in a truism Men were
thinking, writing and creating because women were pouring their energies
into those me; women are preoccupied with love
ability,
women
tend
to
express
emotion
through
facial
Furthermore,
research
has
uncovered
fairly
reliable
sex
evidence shows that women are more likely to be sad and engage in more
interpersonal communication about their problems
men are working in the field and the women will be at home and take care of the child. The
men also need to support the family in the traditional time. While the women community will
have to make domestic work and finished work at home. The element of convention or
tradition seems to play a dominant role in deciding which occupation in gender roles. In the
traditional most of inequality occur in education. This is because they believed that women
do not need particular knowledge and family think that if the girl gets a higher education it is
waste time. Here can be stated that in the past only men will go to work and earn money to
give full support to family and the women will take care of household.
Poverty
The poverty also one of the causes that become gender inequality. This is a fact situation
because when the family is crowding of poverty of a family they will become to choose only
one child to give education. Most of the parent wills chose to give an education for boy
children. This is because they belief the boy children have responsibility to take care of them.
While the daughter will get married and follow her husband. The daughter will not giving any
benefits for them. Other than that, the daughter are encouraged to learn how to managed the
house because after married she supposed to managed her work doing household alone
without anyone help. Due to the poverty the girls will miss the education and much aspect.
This is also indicates gender in equality in society. For example, in many family in
developing country they are giving education to the boys child only because the boys can
support the parent when he grown up. This is also happen when poverty dominate life. The
parents also hope that son could change the family poverty and bring luck to them.
EFFECT OF GENDER INEQUALITY IN VARIOUS CULTURES
In many part of the world, women receive less attention and health care than men, and
particularly girls often receive very less support than boys. As a result of this gender bias, the
mortality rates of females often exceed those males in these countries. The concept of
missing women was devised to give some idea of the enormity of phenomenon of womens
adversity in mortality compared with male mortality rates. We could expect to see if the
gender pattern of mortality were similar in these countries as in other regions of the world
that do not have a significant bias against women in terms of health care and other attentions
relevant for survival. For example, if we take the ratio of women to men in sub-Sahara Africa
as the standard there is relatively little bias against women in term of health care, social status
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and mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa, even though the absolute numbers are quite
dreadful for both men and women.
Some economic models have tended to relate the neglect of women to the lack of
economic empowerment of women. While Ester Boserup, an early feminist economist,
discussed how to status and standing of women are enhanced by economic independence
(such as gainful employment), others have tried to link the neglect of girls to the higher
returns for the family from boys compared with the girls. He believe the former line of
reasoning, which takes fuller note of social considerations that take us beyond any hardheaded calculation of relative returns from rearing girls and boys, is both appropriately
broader and more promising, but no matter which interpretation is taken, women's gainful
employment, especially in more rewarding occupations, clearly does play a role in improving
the deal that women and girls get.
A large number of studies including Klasen (1999), Dollar and Datti (1999) and King
and Mason (2001) confirm that the gender inequality impedes the economic growth. Gender
inequality in education has a direct has a direct impact on economic growth through lowering
the average quality of human capital. In addition, economic growth is indirectly affected
through the impact of gender inequality on investment and population growth. Gender
inequality in education has a significant negative impact on economic growth and appears to
be an important factor contributing to Africas and South Asias poor growth performance
over the past 30 years. In addition to increasing growth, greater gender equality in education
promotes other important development goals, including lower fertility and lower child
mortality.
Undernourishment of girls over boys: At the time of birth, girls are obviously no more
nutritionally deprived than boys are, but this situation changes as society's unequal treatment
takes over from nature's non-discrimination. There has, in fact, been plenty of agentive
evidence on this for quite some time now. But this has been accompanied by some
anthropological skepticism of the appropriateness of using aggregate statistics with pooled
data from different regions to interpret the behavior of individual families. Often enough, the
differences may particularly arise from the neglect of health care of girls compared with what
boys get. Admissions data from two large public hospitals in Bombay, it was very striking to
find clear evidence that the admitted girls were typically more ill than boys, suggesting the
inference that a girl has to be more stricken before she is taken to the hospital.
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Undernourishment may well result from greater morbidity, which can adversely affect both
the absorption of nutrients and the performance of bodily functions.
Traditionally patriarchal societies have viewed violence toward wives as a male prerelative, stemming from the idea that women is property of men (Dobash and Dobash, 1998).
There is inconsistent evidence about any direct correlation between the status of women and
violence against women cross-culturally. Issue that complicated research in this realm are the
many spheres and indicators of women's status, failure to measure women's status at the
cultural or ethnic group level rather than in individual couples, and the possibility of a
curvilinear relationship between violence and women's status.
Gender inequality among the women resulting in physical, emotional, mental, social,
and spiritual deficits in women and children who experience it. For example, when men use
their power to control women (wives), they will try to get everything they want without
thinking about the potential effects suffered by the wife who always stressed the quality
control performed. Epidemiological surveys have shown that one in three American women
will experience physical, emotional, or sexual abuse by family member or intimate partner at
some point during their lifetime. Intimate partner violence (IVP), also known as domestic
violence and spousal abuse, takes a variety of forms, including physical violence, emotional
abuse, and sexual violence, threats of violence and risk of homicide. Women exposed to
violence and trauma experience a wide range of long-term health problems, as do men,
although the prevalence of IPV and IPV-related injury is significant risk factor for
psychological and emotional health problem for women, including depression, substance
abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder.
CONCLUTION:
We can conclude that gender in various cultures still exist in Malaysia and other development
country. Most developing countries even change their perception again women according of
globalization but gender discrimination still practice by the community. For example in
Malaysia, many changes have been made and women are given the opportunities to be the
same level with the men and discrimination against women reduced although not to
impressive like other developed country like United State of America and so on. We know
that 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
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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. What should we do? The question is not whether we intervene in local culture, but how.
For all development initiatives, the challenge is to gain a better understanding of the context
and in particular to identify opportunities for positive steps in support of gender equality and
be informed about and work in co-operation with change efforts by governments and civil
society organization in partner countries. These challenges are particularly relevant to
initiatives that do not focus specifically on womens rights and gender equality. Most
development resources are directed to sectors such as education, health, infrastructure, or to
issues such as economic reform, poverty reduction, or capacity development. Given that such
initiatives account for most development investment, they will also account for most of the
impact on people and the impacts, both intended and unintended, on culture and on gender
equality. Firstly, we must establish a constructive dialogue with partners, build on gender
analysis and be innovative. For example, we must establish a constructive dialogue. A
constructive dialogue with partners on gender equality issues is best established when an
initiative is first being contemplated. This requires professionalism and a long term view. Not
all partner agencies, or all officials within an agency, will be knowledgeable about the
equality commitments in law and government policy or the perspectives of womens
organizations. Some will be ambivalent or opposed to the changes implied by the pursuit of
equality. Too often, discussions of gender equality are dropped when partners show a lack of
understanding or enthusiasm. However, development workers have a professional
responsibility to support state commitments to gender equality and to reinforce the human
rights and development perspectives on which they are based.
REFERRENCE:
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David Gelman, John Corely, Eric Gelman, Phyllis Malamud, Danny Foote,
and Joe Canteros, (1981) Just How the Sexes Differ, Newsweek, (May
18).
Hall, J. (1979). Gender, Gender Roles, & Nonverbal Communication Skills.
Ch. 5
Martha J. M. Kelley (1997). Gender differences and leadership. Alabama,
Maxwell air force base. A approve for public released; distribution is
unlimited.
Mary Lou Kendrigan (1991). Gender Differences; Their Impact on Public
Policy, Greenwood Publishing Group Inc.
Kay E. Payne (2001). Different but equal: communication between the
sexes. Greenwood Publishing Group. USA.
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