Gender roles have conditioned society to influence males into playing sports through their familial ties (i.e. their fathers), their social class, and their positional identity throughout society, which reflects that males are dominant to females, and their sport identity helps them maintain this title and the notion that they are separate from everyone else. In essence, sports serve to maintain and reinforce the general cultural belief that males are the competitive, physically strong, and skill oriented gender when compared to …show more content…
However, arguably the most prevalent aspect of how gender roles affect these aspects of life is that gender roles define a person in regard to every single one of these aspects. Males and females are both taught that they need to have certain preferences, exhibit certain behaviors, attitudes, and maintain relations on different levels than their opposite gender counterparts. Females are taught to prefer shopping, exhibit polite, ladylike manners and always have a bright, sunny attitude, and to be the ones to put effort into relationships. Males are taught to prefer hunting, exhibit polite, but dominant behaviors and maintain their “top status” attitude, but in humble manner, and to keep a certain degree of distance in their relationships with others. From a young age, children are taught that they cannot step outside the bounds that tie them to their gender norms, or they are acting defiantly to society’s standards and there will be negative consequences, such as being seen as an outcast by other members of