Gender Biases As They Exist Across The Lifespan

5 Pages 1158 Words

Do gender biases exist? I am going to attempt to show that they do before a child is even born, when s/he is an infant, through their childhood and into adulthood. This is not to say that, in some instances they should not exist, only that they do. Let’s first think about how they begin, even before a person is born. A woman is be given a baby shower for her unborn child. The first question from any guest who will be in attendance is “Is she having a boy or girl”? Well, now we all know the reason for this is so then we know what to get for that unborn child. If it is a boy we will get anything and everything in blue and if it is a girl, well we know to buy pink. At least this is what seems to be the “society norm”, if you will. If the woman does not know what she is having, which I personally do not see as the case anymore, well then this poses a mini crisis. Now what color should we buy? So, the infant ends up in white and light green and yellow, because these are the colors that are excepted to be universal.
Before 1920-children under the age of six generally wore white. After approximately age six, children were dressed like miniature adults. In the 1920’s, a new interest in differentiating the sexes at an earlier age developed, it became fashionable for boys’ color to be pink (a more vibrant color) and girls’ to be blue (a more placid, serene color). The present fashion (pink for girls, blue for boys) came about in the late 1930’s. Pink for girls, and blue for boys is fashion, and like any other style, it comes and goes but it is sexist, (Crawford, p.81).

Children then enter into the educational institution, where gender biases continue to play a major role, although quietly, it is still present in a major way. It is sometimes more of a type of segregation. For instance, when children are told to line up for something, they are usually in two lines, one for girls and one for boys. “At a ver...