Gender: What is a Man and what is a Woman?

What is the difference between sex and gender?

Sex and gender can be defined through personal interpretation and people identify as different variations of each.

Gender looks at the idea of 'what is a man and what is a woman' whereas sex looks at the biological determinant. Gender is more of a social construct and different people adapt and change it in different ways.

Cis - Biological sex and gender is aligned

Trans - Changes regarding biological sex and gender

VIDEO:

What are the social stigmas around sex and gender?

Traditionally, women were to stay at home and look after the children, cook, clean in the kitchen etc and men were to go to work and earn wealth for the household. The 'Power Complex' is still common nowadays with the men dominating in certain industries, widening the modern day pay gap. In some generations, this stigma still exists due to upbringing and even personal experience.

In terms of architecture, the design of homely features such as kitchens has changed over time. For example, in the 20s kitchens were made slightly smaller to accommodate space for the family and encouraging social interaction. In the 50s, kitchens were placed in front of TVs to create a 'kitchen dialectic' whereas in the 60s the island was introduced, reducing the size of the kitchen and responsibility to some extent.

Even in film, representation of all genders is lacking due to the lack of education and inclusion. For example, men tend to have the 'higher achieving' jobs and lifestyles where the women tend to have the 'lower achieving' jobs with an alternative lifestyle.

So what needs to be done about these stigmas?

Women's' Rights Protest

LGBTQIA+ Protest

There are a lot of questions, but very few answers...

More needs to be done to include ALL genders including both the LGBT community and men and women. For example, pay gaps, social stigmas (especially in industry and the work environment e.g. architecture is a very male-dominated industry with very few women in power), lack of inclusion and representation needs to be tackled.

Hopefully more questions will be answered in the near future...

References:

Psych2Go. (2018). Sex vs Gender vs Orientation [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN-wD8O9tRI.