 socialization mechanisms that

maintain gender in our society.

Manipulation Verbal Appellation
Canalization Activity Exposure
 "Gendering," or the socialization of
persons into a given gender, begins the
moment a child is born. Almost the first
thing people want to know about a baby
is: "Boy or girl?" Hospitals and middle-
class parents emphasize the difference,
between dressing girl babies in pink and
boy babies in blue, and friends' and
relatives' responses to the baby take their
cue from this color code.
 notes four processes involved in a child's
learning of gender identity. In most cases
these processes are performed
unconsciously by those nearest the child:
they are seen as “natural" reactions to the
child's sex. The child, too, learns from
them unconsciously, and the learning is all
the more powerful for this.
 1.
 The first process, manipulation simply
means that people handle girls and
boys differently, even as infants. One
study in the West, for instance, showed
that a sample of mothers tended to use
more physical and visual stimulation on
male infants, and more verbal
stimulation on female infants. In our
own experience, we might notice that
boy babies are tossed into the air more
often than girl babies, who get more
delicate handling.
 2.
 The second process, canalization
means that people direct children's'
attention to gender-appropriate objects.
The most common example of this is
the choice of toys. Little boys are given
war toys, cars, and machines that they
can take apart or put together; little
girls are given dolls, tea sets, and toy
houses. These toys teach children
early on what their prescribed roles in
life will be and serve to familiarize them
with the tools of their trade.
 3.
 The third process, verbal
appellation, consists in telling
children what they are (e.g., "brave boy" or "pretty
girl") or what is expected of them ("Boys don't cry,"
"Girls don't hit their playmates," "Boys don't hit
girls [but other boys are fair game]"). The fourth
process, activity exposure ensures that children
are familiarized with gender-appropriate tasks: for
instance, in our culture, girls are expected and
encouraged to help their mothers with housework
and the care of younger siblings, while their
brothers are encouraged to play or work outside
the home.
4. ACTIVITY EXPOSURE

 The fourth process, activity exposure ensures

that children are familiarized with gender-
appropriate tasks: for instance, in our culture,
girls are expected and encouraged to help
their mothers with housework and the care of
younger siblings, while their brothers are
encouraged to play or work outside the home.
 This series of processes enables children to
identify which gender their parents think they
should belong to, and to acquire the
corresponding behavior and roles. Quite
early, before the age of three, children
develop a clear and often irreversible
gender identity; and this is reinforced
through their identification with parents of
the same sex, as well as through later
interaction with children with the same
gender identity.
 Institutions of mass socialization -those
which aim to ensure that whole groups of
people consent to and fit into the existing
social order -also play an important role in
promoting the dominant gender ideology
and inequality. In our contemporary
society, four institutions are crucial: formal
education, the mass media, religion, and
language.
 The education system itself is authoritarian in
orientation, with learning occurring largely as a
transfer of knowledge from teacher to student.
Discipline and obedience are important com-
ponents in this pseudo-learning process. Thus,
girls' superior performance might be at least
partly attributable to their greater propensity for
passive behavior which teachers consider right
conduct.
 Sex-segregated schools, or exclusive s.chools as
they are euphemistically called, are the rule for
the upper classes; these are mostly run by
religious congregations. The principle behind
sex-segregated schools is that women and men
have different roles in life, therefore the
education they require is different.
 Another philosophy behind · sex segregation in
education, though less openly admitted, is that
females and males must be protected from each
other until they are of marriageable age. (One
graduate of a sex-segregated school notes,
however, that segregation may in fact work for
female students to a certain extent, since it
removes them from exposure to discrimination
and the pressure to underachieve in order to be
less threatening to male classmates).
 Schools and teachers also channel boys and
girls towards gender-appropriate behavior and
activities. High schools used to teach boys
carpentry and electronics, and girls, cooking,
typing and child care. The content of textbooks
and visual aids reinforces gender stereotypes,
with females portrayed primarily as mothers and
well-behaved little girls, and males primarily as
workers and adventurous little boys.
 No wonder then that in tertiary institutions, girls
opt for training that suits their perceived roles and
characteristics as women - such as secretarial
courses, nursing, and education - while boys
choose more technical courses such as
engineering.
 Print media (newspapers, magazines, komiks),
broadcast media (radio and television) and films
carry the same gender stereotypes as school
textbooks, and more. A recent study on the
images of women in mass media found that
women in magazines, comic books, radio and
television dramas, and films are shown as
housewives or worse, emotionally dependent
martyrs and victims or scheming and sly
villainesses.
 The usual goal of both good and bad women
alike is to catch or keep a man, and whole plots
revolve around how this goal is frustrated or
achieved. Men have more positive images: they
are shown as courageous, principled,
determined, and assertive; but they are also
portrayed as violent and destructive.
 Advertising uses gender imagery to get people to
buy products; in so doing, it also convinces
people to buy the prevalent gender ideology.
They also appear as sexy come-ons to specific
male-oriented products, such as alcoholic drinks
and cigarettes. Males are shown engaged in
sports, professions, wars, camaraderie with other
men, or the conquest of women.
 As earlier mentioned, most dominant religions
teach that gender differentiation and inequality
are ordained by God. This teaching is conveyed
not just in doctrine or in a male-dominated
religious hierarchy, but also in sacred symbolism.
 Language is perhaps the most subtle and
pervasive institution of socialization, since we
use it everyday, not just in communicating but in
the very act of thinking. It is a primary mediator in
our relationship with the world. Thus, sexist
language is a powerful tool for the maintenance
of gender ideology.
 The English language, which has gendered
nouns and pronouns, is a case in point: it uses
the word "man" to refer to humankind, and the
pronoun "he" to any abstract individual.
 Most Filipino languages are more fortunate in
that these do not have gendered pronoun or
terms for many_ positions: asawa may refer to a
male or female spouse, kapatid to a male or
female sibling. However, they do have terms
which perpetuate gender stereotypes: maybahay
("the one who has the house"), for instance,
means a wife, never a husband.
 Like the English language, Filipino languages
also use phrases which denigrate women: "no
balls" has its own equivalent (walang bayag);
competition is described as "seeing who can piss
higher" (pataasan ng ihi), a feat for which women
are not physically equipped; a wife who knows
nothing a_bout housework is contemptuously
branded a "pussy-wife" (asawang-puki), as
though her sole value to her husband resided in
her genitals.