Masculinity And Femininity In Modern Day

In the modern day it is communal to describe an individual’s identity as a male or female. The terms gender and sex are often mistaken and used under the same context as they are usually associated as the same thing even though this is technically incorrect. The term gender is the state of being male or female. It is a social construct and is based upon society’s assumptions on the way a male or female should behave. The term sex on the other hand is based on the combination of biological and physiological factors, this is based on their genetic makeup and whether a person is born with a male or female genitalia.

Whilst looking at the difference between masculinity and femininity in the modern day, people perform this according to the typical …show more content…
Education for instance plays a main role in this. School allows girls and boys to freely socialise, make friends, craft interests in topics and to be able to learn to the best of their ability. In the midst of all this, teachers unintentionally feed in to the bubble of creating the character of a boy and a girl. For example, most of the time the class clown would be a boy, as they would seek attention and be silly. This would mean all the focus from the teacher would be on the boys, in comparison to the girls who go unnoticed because of their quiet and innocent behaviour. Instantly, from a young age the difference of gender would begin to show. The boys would copy the other boys when messing around and the girls would copy the girls when getting on with their work. Due to the lack of concentration from the boys, they are encouraged to focus on subjects such as mathematics and science. Such subjects require less writing and are not essay based, in comparison to girls who show more of an interest in humanity subjects. The lack of concentration shown by boys eventually showed a real effect on the performance between girls and boys. By 1998/9 research shows that the percentage of women receiving first-class degrees was 55 percent compared to 46 percent of men. (Bilton, 2002) However, it can be argued that there are number reasons as to why the boys are underperforming. Feminism for one, this raises expectations and self-esteem for girls, allowing them to become more ambitious and to be able to step outside their comfort zone. In a sense girls work better because they are motivated to spend more time when it comes down to coursework compared to boys whom may have less patience when it comes to writing essays. Girls from a young age mature earlier than boys, thus puberty is another factor which could explain the division of school performance. The male anti-learning