Gender Role

A gender role is a set of social expectations about how people of a particular gender are supposedly meant to be, look, feel, or act. This includes ideas about behavior, clothing, body language, professions, personality traits, hobbies, family roles, sexuality, or ways of dealing with emotions. Gender roles are not natural facts, but social constructs: they arise within societies, are learned, passed on, and can change across history and cultures.

Which gender roles are considered “normal” depends strongly on the social environment, including culture, region, religion, social class, age, disability, racialization, and other social factors. Such expectations are often contradictory and can hardly ever be fulfilled completely. People may be judged at the same time for appearing too little or too strongly “feminine,” “masculine,” or gender-conforming.

People who do not, do not want to, or cannot conform to gender roles often experience devaluation, exclusion, or discrimination. This may affect feminine men, masculine women, trans, non-binary, and intersex people, as well as cis people whose behavior or appearance does not match expectations. A reflective approach to gender roles means not treating them as fixed truths, but respecting people’s self-determination, diversity, and individual ways of life.