Playing with Gender: Understanding Our Gendered Selves

Part Four of Applied Final Project: Playing with Gender: Understanding Our Gendered Selves
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Part Four of Applied Final Project: Playing with Gender: Understanding Our Gendered Selves
Section one: Purpose: Act Analysis
Our community aspects are frequently gendered. Various facets of society involving socio-economic and political realms are entrenched with practices, norms, attitudes and perceptions that are understood and applied along gender lines. Existing social institutions are driving forces behind the predominant socialization of gender in terms of gender identity, gender roles and responsibilities. For instance, families overwhelmingly allocate responsibilities along gender lines. This paper will focus on family as a gendered social institution, where I will apply gendered acts. This proposed gender act challenges the conventional gendered expectations in terms of gender roles. The gendered allocation of responsibilities in family social setups has culminated in widening gender disparities and iniquities. The unequal distribution of responsibilities such as household chores in families is indisputable and has been perceived as one of the sources of work-family conflict (Cerrato & Cifre,2018). In American families, recent data shows that men are increasing the time they spend on housework and caring for family members, but women are still doing more - about twice as much as men (Schulte,2019). According to Schulte (2019), the disproportioned roles apportioned to women are consistent even when women working full-time are primary breadwinners, and whether children are available or not.
It should be noted that the presence of a man in given family unity significantly increases the roles of a woman. More often, the extra responsibilities accorded to women are considered as “invisible work”. Thus, women appear to carry the additional burden of carrying home chores and caring for children. Based on this perceptive, I present a gendered act to address the disparities in family responsibilities allocation and implementation.
The experiences I underwent while implementing the gendered act unravels the realities surrounding the uneven distribution of home-based responsibilities. My parents are both working, but home-based chores are overwhelmingly burdening my mother. My gendered act involves expanding the role of man in the implementation of family-related duties. I prepared myself by informing my mum that I would relieve her of some responsibilities. I carried out tasks that would ordinarily be done by my mother and sister in our home. On the first day, I told my mum to clean the house, to which she happily agreed. The next day, I relieve her of taking my younger siblings to school and getting them back. The third was a public day, and I told my mum that she could relax since I could help her take care of my younger siblings, play with them and prepare meals for the whole family. My mum and sisters were quite surprised and pleased with my act of assisting with home responsibilities. However, while doing this act, outdated views regarding gendered family roles continuously struck my mind. My mother praised me for helping her and hi...