Reaction Paper about Sex and Gender

On the two videos I watched, I learned that gender isn’t just about what you are as a man or woman. It tells us that it refers to the socially constructed roles and relationships and personality traits of a person. It is an acquired identity. It explains to us what gender really all about is. In other parts of the video “Challenging Gender Roles and Categories-Is Male Dominance Universal (2007)”, it was shown there that because of some assumptions about gender and behavior it had led to specific gender roles that nowadays are common from the western culture but these western gender roles are not universal because many others exist the world over. There are things that women do the same as what men do. And in some cultures there are more than 2 genders; it isn’t always man or woman. In “The Impossible Dream?” (UN 1983) video, it shows us story about the roles of a man or woman.

And there is a very huge bias for the wife because she’s the one who makes all the works at home and the daughter is expected to do so. But it doesn’t mean that if you’re the wife you should to the household task and what your husband doing is just lay on bed, watch tv, wait for the food and goes to his work but he’s spending his salary on unworthy things. It was what is expected to the man and woman to do because of the specific roles they have. But isn’t that fair that the wife does lots of things compare to the husband? We must consider that in order to have a wealthy and happy family, everyone must help each other. And that was the impossible dream at the video. There must be an equality of roles to each one of the family. We really expect some of these roles to man and woman to do because of what they really are, biologically.

In relation with my personal experience, as a daughter in our family, I am expected to help do chores in our house, organize my things and help my mom but I DON’T. Why? Because I don’t know how to do it and I’m simply not good at it. Instead of doing those things, I do what my brother needs to do and he’s doing what I am obliged to do. We exchanged roles because we just don’t know how to do what we are supposed to do. We are better at things we don’t normally do. My brother is the one doing the household chores and I do carpentry. He is more organizing than I am and we are comfortable to what we are doing and it makes work at home lighter and enjoyable. That is how gender is, we identify ourselves to things we want to do, our personal traits where we are more comfortable and that’s how it makes our life happy.