Discuss cultural influence on gender role (8 mark + 16 marks)

One trait of gender role that appears to be universal is division of labour. This is because in most cultures men are the breadwinners and women are the homemakers as they nurture the young and prepare food for the family. Munroe & Munroe did a cross-cultural study in which they found that every society has some division of labour between genders. This therefore suggest that gender role is biological rather than cultural as similar division of labour has been identified universally.
A second characteristic of gender roles is aggressiveness displayed by males compared to females. Mead found that in all three cultures she studied in Papua New Guinea, men were more aggressive than women. Nonetheless, women were still more aggressive in some cultures than in others; which suggests that there is a degree of cultural relativism in gender roles. This, indicates that some behaviours are innate and universal but the way and degree in which its expressed are shaped by the culture in which they take place.
Sex stereotype that each culture portrays affects gender roles. Williams and Best studies gender stereotype in 30 countries in a study containing 2,800 students as participants. They were given 300 adjectives and asked to decide whether each one was more associated with men or women. At a national scale it was conformed that there is a universal gender difference in which men were seen as “dominant, aggressive and autonomous” whereas women are viewed as “nurturing, deferent and interested in partnership”. This also suggests that gender role is purely biological rather than cultural.
However, this study has been criticized by the wider scientific community.one reason was that the questionnaire featured no ‘neural ‘option when rating the masculinity or femininity of each adjective, as participants were