How do culture and

society shape and

reshape gender,
gender roles, and
gender
expectations?
•Culture, Society, and Gender

•Culture is largely involved in defining

gender in societies. The concept of
gender as a cultural construction tells
us that gender is a product of how
societies and their culture adapted to
the conditions of their natural and
social environment.

•Unlike sex, which is relatively

absolute and universal because of
biological structures, gender is more
malleable and changing across
societies.

•The cultural construction of gender

entails that different societies, having
different cultures, will have varying
definitions of masculinity and
femininity.
•Culture, Society, and Gender

•A particular culture’s own definition of gender

is still subject to change especially when a
social change in the society is in progress. As
norms, values, and ideas in a specific society
is modified, it is also a possibility that their
definitions of masculinity and femininity will
change.

•As culture dictates appropriate

characteristics for each gender, society is the
one to propagate these definitions and
characteristics.
•Through socialization among different social
groups, members of society are able to learn
and shape their conceptions and expectations
of what is feminine and what is masculine.
•In a larger perspective, it can be seen that
gender provides organization in society as it
dictates which roles are to be assumed by
males and females.
 To understand the problem of
gender subordination, one must first
understand two key concepts: sex and
gender. In common usage, the two
terms are often interchanged. Properly,
each has a meaning distinct from that
of the other. This distinc­tion has
important implications for how we view
existing inequality between women and
men.
The lesson aims to clarify this distinction and its
implications, both for the present situation and for
social and personal change. The paper will first
define sex and gender and explore the
connections between the two. This exploration will
include a discussion of how gender is manifested
in contemporary Philippine society, and how it is
commonly explained. This lesson will then discuss
the implications of gender on equality between
men and women. Next, it will attempt to trace the
development of gender to its present Philippine
context. Finally, it will briefly examine the social
institutions that maintain gender.
1. Sex: In the Realm of the Biological
a. What it is?
Sex is a biological term. We use it most
often to refer to the act of mating between
two organisms - an act that is part of the
process of biological reproduction. A more
technical term for this act is coitus. The
·concept of "sex" may also be expanded
to include other behavior associated with
the act of mating: animal courtship rituals,
and human "foreplay."
1. Sex: In the Realm of the Biological
a. What it is?
Human sex simply responds to a physical
urge. It is often used to express human
emotions and relationships: love, anger,
subservience or domination, affirmation,
or the need for affirmation. Thus, human
sex has acquired cultural dimensions;
human beings have a sexuality that is
influenced, but not dic­tated, by biological
circumstances.
1. SEX: IN THE REALM OF THE BIOLOGICAL
a. What it is? Sex also refers to the two categories of
animals - male and female - needed for
the act of mating to result in biological
reproduction. This categorization is made
according to repro­ductive function: the
female produces the egg cell or ovum; the
male provides the sperm that fertilizes it.
(A third category exists, the intersexed -
people born with both male and female, or
incomplete, genitalia - but these form a
very small proportion of the human
population.)
2. Men and Women according to biology

Male- sperm cell Female- egg cell

They have a different chromosomal

make-up; different internal arfd external
genitalia (sex organs); and different
quantities of various hormones. Most
male and female humans also have
different secondary sex characteristics,
such as patterns of body hair distribution,
voice pitch and muscular development.
2. Men and Women according to biology

Chromosomes are the first determinants

of sex. These elongated bodies of a cell
nucleus contain the genes that parents
pass on to their offspring. Each cell of a
female ovary or male testis contains
twenty-three chromosomes; one of these
is the sex chromosome.
2. Men and Women according to biology

There are two types of sex chromosomes:

X and Y. Female egg cells contain only
the X chromosome, while male sperm
may have either. An XX combination
produces a female; an XY com­bination, a
male. Sex chromosomes present in the
sperm deter­mine whether offspring are
genetically male or female.
2. Men and Women according to biology

Hormones are secretions of the

endocrine glands, which include the
pituitary, adrenal, thyroid, and primary sex
glands, and the pancreas. The main
function of hormones is to stimulate the
development of primary sex
characteristics so that individuals become
capable of reproduction: Hormones are
also responsible for the development of
secondary sex characteristics.
2. GENDER: IN THE REALM OF THE SOCIAL
a. What it is?
Gender refers to the differentiated
social roles, behaviors, capacities,
and intellectual, emotional and
social characteristics attributed by a
given culture to women and men -
in short, all differences besides the
strictly biological. There are two
genders: masculine, ascribed to the
male sex; and feminine, ascribed to
the female.
2. GENDER: IN THE REALM OF THE SOCIAL
a. What it is?

Almost all cultures tend to see

gender as a natural phenome­non,
deriving from the biological
differences between men and
women. However, definitions of
masculine and feminine often vary
from one race and culture to
another.
2. GENDER: IN THE REALM OF THE SOCIAL
a. What it is?

For instance, in one Brazilian tribe,

women - seen by most other
cultures as the sexually passive
partners - are as sexually
aggressive as the men; among the
Zuni Indians, women, not men, are
the sexual aggressors.
2. GENDER: IN THE REALM OF THE SOCIAL
a. What it is? Latin Americans and other Asians are
often surprised to note the number of
women working in middle-level
positions in government and
business offices in the Philippines;
Filipinos hardly notice. Similarly,
Filipinos view construction work as
"heavy" labor fit only for men; in
Thailand and India, it is low-wage
work viewed as suitable only for
women.
2. GENDER: IN THE REALM OF THE SOCIAL
a. What it is?
Gender expectations also vary in
degree among different social
classes within the same ethnic group.
In Manila, the pro­fessional woman
who walks home alone at night is
more likely to invite social
disapproval than the woman who
works the night shift in a food
processing factory.
2. GENDER: IN THE REALM OF THE SOCIAL
a. What it is? The religious teaching that a
woman's place is in the home also
finds more adherents among the
propertied classes than among the
working classes who need both
spouses' income. In many societies,
physical strength is less essential to
the definition of maleness among the
propertied and professional classes
than among the classes which
engage in manual labor.
2. GENDER: IN THE REALM OF THE SOCIAL
b. Men and Women According to Society
The most basic and common element in
contemporary gender systems is a difference
in gender roles: the assignment to women of
the primary responsibility for caring for
children and the home, and to men of the
task of providing the income on which their
families live. In most contemporary societies,
this sexual division of labor exists in the form
known technically as the production
reproduction distinction.
2. GENDER: IN THE REALM OF THE SOCIAL
b. Men and Women According to Society
The production here refers to social
production or the production of
commodities: that is, goods and
services for exchange rather than for
immediate consumption. Participants
in social production usually get a wage
or fee in return for their labor or the
product they produce. Production is
viewed as men's sphere.
2. GENDER: IN THE REALM OF THE SOCIAL
b. Men and Women According to Society
The sexual servicing of men
is an important task that
women perform within the
reproductive sphere. This
task is valued not simply, or
even primarily, for its part in
biological reproduc­tion, but
for the pleasure it gives to
men.
2. GENDER: IN THE REALM OF THE SOCIAL
b. Men and Women According to Society

Unfortunately, woman's role as

provider of sexual pleasure puts her
in a double bind. On the one hand,
she is expected to be desirable to
men; on the other, she must be
sexually available to only one man,
to whom she is both sexual and
reproductive property.
2. GENDER: IN THE REALM OF THE SOCIAL
b. Men and Women According to Society

If a woman has sexual relations

with any other man, or if her
desir­ability invites sexual
aggression from any other man,
society condemns her as evil,
the occasion for, if not the
agent, of sin.
2. GENDER: IN THE REALM OF THE SOCIAL
b. Men and Women According to Society
Filipino culture sees wifehood - the
binding of a woman in sexual and
reproductive service to one socially-
acknowledged male partner - as the
highest feminine achievement but has
only con­tempt for the woman who
services many men, and pity for the one
who services none at all. Such women are
considered un­natural, "unfeminine" and
somehow less worthy of respect.
2. GENDER: IN THE REALM OF THE SOCIAL
b. Men and Women According to Society

Sexual virility is as much a part of

our culture's definition of
masculinity as sexual
attractiveness is of feminity. This,
too, has its links with reproduction
in Asian tradition, for instance, the
more offspring a man has sired,
the more virile he is con­sidered.
2. GENDER: IN THE REALM OF THE SOCIAL
b. Men and Women According to Society
But a man's sexual activity is not
service, either sexual or
reproductive; it is considered to be
directed at his own pleasure rather
than at his partner's. Moreover,
masculinity is also measured by
one's ability to seduce many
women. Thus, while society
condemns promiscuity in women, it
implicitly encourages this in men.