gender role

[jen-der rohl]

noun

1. the culturally determined set of behaviors, attitudes, and traits that are considered acceptable for a person based on their gender.

   A woman earning her own living cuts against the traditional gender role where men expect to provide for women.

2. the outward image of being a particular gender that a person presents to others.

   The hospital houses people according to the gender role they live as rather than their legal gender.

Word History and Origins

Origin of gender role¹

First recorded in 1950–55

Example Sentences

Rapidly expanding war-related industries upended gender roles and affected almost every New Yorker.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Having grown up in a deeply evangelical community where strident gender roles managed to scrub the fun out of almost everything, I’d never been particularly invested in looking domestic, per se.

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And there’s a lot of cultural stigmas that she looks at when it comes to female and male gender roles.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

One expectation that she finds she has to constantly bat away is about marriage and fulfilling a gender role.

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They seem to view such tragedies as a price to pay to uphold a right-wing values system that is obsessed with ideas of purity and traditional gender roles.

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When To Use

What are gender roles?

A gender role is a way of appearing and behaving that meets cultural expectations based on an individual’s gender. Traditionally, people have been expected to fit into either a male or female gender role.Gender is an individual’s identification as male, female, or another identification that exists between or beyond the spectrum of strictly male or female (such as people who identify as nonbinary). A role is a function or expected behavior pattern. The term gender role is used (especially in the plural form gender roles) to specifically refer to societal expectations of engaging in either stereotypical masculine behavior or stereotypical feminine behavior.Gender roles have become a source of controversy and criticism, and many people have sought to eliminate the need to adhere to them. This is due to the perception that they limit personal freedom, especially as the cultural understanding of gender has moved away from a strict separation between male and female.