This video shows how gender roles and stereotypes are engrained in all of us from a young age. These children identify what they believe to be male and female roles such as men go to work and women cleaning and take care of babies and characteristics such as hair, clothing and masculinity.
Functionalist George Murdoch said that functional pre-requisites for the family such as sexual reproduction, economic and socialisation were necessary to reiterate and reproduce individuals in society. I am a mum that has played out the role of looking after the baby, cleaning the house while my partner worked. In my family, my expressive and his instrumental roles, in this instance maintained stability in my family.

There are some matriarchal communities in the world, where women are the head of the family. This shows the traditional stereotypes that the children have in this video are not innate but learned from their parents who learned from their parents and so on.

It was just a norm that girls and boys did different tasks. Our teachers always say ‘good morning/afternoon boys and girls’ so straight away we are identified by sex but I was not conscious of gender affecting me at the time.

Gender differences manifested themselves in the playground and and classroom and certainly became more apparent as we got older. The boys wouldn’t allow the girls to play football or red rover. It was too rough and the girls would end up crying whereas the boys would shrug injuries off. In the classroom it was always myself or someone from my friendship group who would take the notes other teachers or be asked to do administrative tasks. The boys in my class would be asked to help move chairs and tables and I remember thinking I could do that too, I was strong enough but we weren’t routinely asked to carry out those types of tasks.

My class stayed almost the same through my seven years at primary. The majority of us were exceptionally well behaved but there were a few problem students in my class and they were all boys, they used to sit at the naughty boy table. I always remember thinking none of the girls would end up sitting at that table and we didn’t! Most of the girls in my class were so eager to please our teachers and loved being the teachers pet.

This carried on in to my secondary school where the boys were more disruptive than girls. Gender specific subjects became more apparent too. Most of the girls chose to do subjects such as art and home economic whereas the boys chose techy and woodwork.

As a child at home I was a girlie girl and played with toys such as Barbies and dollhouses. I loved Disney princess films watched them over and over again. I played netball – a predominantly female sport. I also played cello in the school orchestra, (not a very delicate instrument I know) and there was not one boy in our orchestra. My cousin (a boy) used to play with cars and wrestling and was generally quite boisterous and I would shy from that type of play.