Gender Roles
Senior 2 · English
Gender Roles
Lesson 1 of 4
22 min
Who cooks in your home? Who fetches water, who looks after the cows, who pays the school fees? The answers were once almost automatic in many Rwandan families. Today they are changing. Rwanda's laws and schools promote equality between women and men, and many families now share work in new ways.
In this unit you will learn to talk and write about these changes with respect and fairness. This first lesson gives you the key idea, gender roles, and the vocabulary to discuss it. You will also learn how to use the present simple and the present continuous to describe customs and changes.
This text is adapted from the Simple English Wikipedia article Gender role, with examples added by Ganzaa.
A gender role is the idea that people should behave in certain ways, or do certain jobs, because they are men or women. In many societies in the past, for example, men usually hunted and women usually gathered food. Later, when people began to earn money, it often became the man's role to bring money home and the woman's role to look after the home and bring up the children.
These roles are not fixed by nature. They are learned. From early childhood, people learn from their family, school, religion, friends and the media how a "good" boy or girl is expected to behave. This learning is called socialisation. Because gender roles are learned, they are different from one culture to another, and they change over time.
When an expectation is applied to everyone in a group without thinking, it becomes a stereotype: "girls are not good at mathematics", or "boys should never cry". Stereotypes can stop people from doing what they are good at. For this reason, the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which almost every country in the world has joined, asks governments to work to remove stereotyped roles for women and men.
In your own words, what is a gender role?
An idea about how people should behave, or which work they should do, because they are men or women.
Why do gender roles differ from one culture to another?
Because they are learned through socialisation, not fixed by nature, and each culture teaches different expectations.
Look at the photo. How does it challenge the idea that heavy outdoor work is only for men?
Women and men are doing the same heavy digging together on the same site.
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| gender (n) | being male or female, especially the roles a society links with each |
| gender role (n) | the behaviour and work a society expects from women or men |
| stereotype (n) | a fixed, over-simple idea about everyone in a group |
| socialisation (n) | the way children learn the behaviour their society expects |
| equality (n) | being equal in rights, chances and treatment |
| discrimination (n) | treating a person unfairly because of the group they belong to |
| breadwinner (n) | the person who earns the money a family lives on |
| household chores (n) | regular work at home: cooking, cleaning, washing, fetching water |
Word families: equal → equality → equally; discriminate → discrimination; empower → empowerment; stereotype → stereotyped.
Use the present simple for customs, habits and general truths:
Use the present continuous for situations that are changing now, often with more and more, increasingly, these days, nowadays:
Choose the better verb form: Nowadays, the number of women in business (grows / is growing) quickly.
The word nowadays and the idea of change tell us this is a trend happening now → is growing.
Verbs like get, become, change, increase, rise are often used in the continuous to show a trend: Roles at home are becoming more equal.
In groups of four, discuss: Which household chores are done by whom in your home, and is this changing? Everyone must speak at least twice. Use the language of polite agreement and disagreement:
Model exchange
Umutoni: In my home, my brother and I both wash the dishes. My mother says chores have no gender.
Gatete: That's a good point, but in my village most boys still don't cook.
Keza: I see your point, but I think that is changing. My uncle is a chef at a hotel in Musanze!
Tip
Custom → present simple (she cooks). Change happening now → present continuous (more fathers are cooking).
A stereotype puts every member of a group in the same box. Spot the words all, never, always, every: they often signal one.
Which sentence is a stereotype? (a) Boys are bad at cooking. (b) My brother burned the rice yesterday.
Solution: (a). It judges all boys as a group. Sentence (b) is a fact about one person on one day.
Complete with the correct form: These days, more women ___ (become) engineers.
Solution: are becoming. These days and the idea of change call for the present continuous.
Complete with the correct form: In Rwandan tradition, the family ___ (welcome) visitors with a drink.
Solution: welcomes. It is a custom, so we use the present simple. Family is singular here, so the verb takes -s.
Give the noun form of equal and use it in a sentence.
Solution: equality. Example: Our school club promotes equality between girls and boys.
What is the word for the process by which children learn how their society expects them to behave?
Solution: socialisation (also spelled socialization).
Remember
Sources and credits
This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
