IMAGE OF MAN AND WOMAN IN SOCIETY, CULTURE AND LANGUAGE. 1. Image of man/woman in language and culture

1. Image of man/woman in language and culture

2. Gender roles

3. Gender stereotypes

Questions for self-examination:

1. What is an image of a man and a woman in your society, culture, language? Compare it with the descriptions of other nations.

2. What is a gender policy?

3. Give example on gender roles in your society.

4. List proverbs with the images of male/female in English, Russian, Kazakh languages.

5. Define common gender stereotypes.

Philosophy, Cultural studies, Linguistics, LC and other sciences attempted to study human nature, physical and psychological characteristics, inner world, mentality, etc. not through science, but through natural languages.

Person is understood as a carrier of a particular national mentality and language, participating in joint activities (and most importantly - a speech activity) with other members of the national community. A person is a being, such as a human, that has certain capacities or attributes constituting personhood, which in turn is defined differently by different authors in different disciplines and by different cultures in different times and places. In ancient Rome, the word "persona" (Latin) or "prosopon" (πρόσωπον: Greek) originally referred to the masks worn by actors on stage. The various masks represented the various "personae" in the stage play.

For modern science, the utter interest is no longer put just to a man, as a person, but as specific person, carrier of consciousness, language, who has complex inner world and a certain attitude to the world of things. He occupies a special position in the universe and on Earth, he constantly engages in dialogue with the world. A man is social in nature. The man is the main object of study in a variety of literary genres: biographies, chronicles, annals, autobiography, epistolary works, obituaries and sermons.

The image of man appears in two forms - male and female. Opposition of the "male - female" is fundamental to human culture. It is rooted in the ancient view of the world: World, spirit - father of all things, and nature - mother. The result of their merger is the universe and everything in it.

A gender role can be defined as a set of social and behavioral norms that are generally considered appropriate for either a man or a woman in a social or interpersonal relationship. There are differences of opinion as to which observed differences in behavior and personality between genders are entirely due to innate personality of the person and which are due to cultural or social factors, and are therefore the product of socialization, or to what extent gender differences are due to biological and physiological differences.

Masculine gender or feminine gender attributes of an individual with respect to psychology, biology and role in society. The passage of time and creation of liberal value have shown the marked difference between the male and female forms have faded to great extent, starting with western culture. It is true that during emergency or at time of war, women are permitted to perform functions, which in normal time would be consider as a male role or vice versa. The role of male and female in society is influenced by various factors. These may vary with culture, region, religion, historical beliefs and experiences across the globe. Gender roles by society can be defined as role portrayed by an individual with respect to combination of factors, depending on living conditions. Ideas of appropriate behavior according to gender vary among cultures and era, although some aspects receive more widespread attention than others.

The roles based on classification into masculine, feminine or combination form and the roles based on physical character or sexual and mental orientation, either as a result of social bonding or self preferences. For example males are more likely to work physically tough like defence, army, working in heavy industries. But females are likely to perform Nonphysical like embroidery, cooking, taking care of children’s, tailoring, etc. Gender roles by society are very clear and mostly classified; this difference becomes rarer in developed societies like US or Western Europe.

The roles like Education, professional commitments, etc were segregated on the basis of sex, but it is more of a choice and can be done based on individual interest. Even now there are lot of society where feminine’s are should stick to work like taking care of child, household work and leaving professional and social roles to masculine gender. For some, there is no restriction with respect to the community obligations, and the gender roles are flexible. Thus, the kind of social structure widespread at a place defines the gender role by society to a great extent. Today many individuals consider themselves as free to choose their choices. Freeing of women, their changing roles are some of significant movements resulting in reducing gap in gender roles. The bottom line is gender roles in society are no longer monopoly. In order to carry on better living, a person free will should be the sole determinant of his or her role. There are huge areal differences in attitudes towards appropriate gender roles. For example, in the World Values Survey, responders were asked if they thought that wage work should be restricted to only men in the case of shortage in jobs. While in Iceland the proportion that agreed was 3.6%, in Egypt it was 94.9%. Attitudes have also varied historically, for example, in Europe, during the Middle Ages, women were commonly associated with roles related to medicine and healing. Due to the rise of witch-hunts across Europe and the institutionalization of medicine, these roles eventually came to be monopolized by men. In the last few decades, however, these roles have become largely gender-neutral in Western society. In the United States, physicians have traditionally been men, and the few people who defied that expectation received a special job description: "woman doctor". Similarly, there were special terms like "male nurse", "woman lawyer", "lady barber", "male secretary," etc. Other jobs, like clerical jobs used to be considered a men's jobs, but when several women began filling men's job positions due to World War II, clerical jobs quickly became dominated by women It became more feminized, and women workers became known as "typewriters" or "secretaries". Religion can play a significant part in how ideas of gender roles are created and perceived. Religions have a large impact on those who practice and follow them, and those practices and beliefs filters down into our everyday lives. Societies can change such that the gender roles rapidly change. The 21st century has seen a shift in gender roles due to multiple factors such as new family structures, education, media, and several others.

Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women. It can be described as a range of physical, biological, mental and behavioral characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity.

The modern academic sense of the word, in the context of social roles of men and women, dates from the work of John Money (1955), and was popularized and developed by the feminist movement from the 1970s onwards.

Gender identity is the gender a person self-identifies as. Social identity refers to the common identification with a collectivity or social category that creates a common culture among participants concerned. According to social identity theory, an important component of the self-concept is derived from memberships in social groups and categories; this is demonstrated by group processes and how inter-group relationships impact significantly on individuals' self perception and behaviors. The group people belong to therefore provide members with the definition of who they are and how they should behave in the social sphere.

Globally, communities interpret biological differences between men and women to create a set of social expectations that define the behaviors that are "appropriate" for men and women and determine women’s and men’s different access to rights, resources, power in society and even health behaviors. Although the specific nature and degree of these differences vary from one society to the next, they typically favor men, creating an imbalance in power and gender inequalities in all countries. According to Spade and Valentine (2011), there is no universal definition of expectations or responsibilities of gender. Many cultures have different expectations based on gender, but there is no universal standard to a masculine or feminine role across all cultures.

Such as, being female characterizes one as a woman, and being a woman signifies one as weak, emotional, and irrational, and is incapable of actions attributed to a "man". Mary Frith ("Moll Cutpurse") scandalised 17th century society by wearing male clothing, smoking in public, and otherwise defying gender roles.

Gender studies is a field of interdisciplinary study and academic field devoted to gender, gender identity and gendered representation as central categories of analysis. This field includesWomen's studies (concerning women, feminity, their gender roles and politics, and feminism), Men's studies (concerning men, masculinity, their gender roles, and politics). This discipline studies gender in the fields of literature and language, history, political science, sociology,anthropology, cinema and media studies, human development, law, and medicine. It also analyses race, ethnicity, location, nationality, and disability.

The study of genetics is particularly inter-disciplinary. It is relevant to almost every biological science. It is investigated in detail by molecular level sciences, and itself contributes details to high level abstractions like evolutionary theory.

"It is well established that men have a larger cerebrum than women by about 8–10% (Filipek, 1994; Nopoulos, 2000; Passe, 1997a,b; Rabinowicz, 1999; Witelson, 1995)." However, what is functionally relevant are differences in composition and "wiring". Richard J. Haier and colleagues at the universities of New Mexico and California (Irvine) found, using brain mapping, that men have more grey matter related to general intelligence than women, and women have more white matter related to intelligence than men – the ratio between grey and white matter is 4% higher for men than women.

Grey matter is used for information processing, while white matter consists of the connections between processing centers. Other differences are measurable but less pronounced.

Many of the more complicated human behaviors are influenced by both innate factors and by environmental ones, which include everything from genes, gene expression, and body chemistry, through diet and social pressures. A large area of research in behavioral psychology collates evidence in an effort to discover correlations between behavior and various possible antecedents such as genetics, gene regulation, access to food and vitamins, culture, gender, hormones, physical and social development, and physical and social environments.

Spain's desperate situation when invaded by Napoleonen abled Agustina de Aragón to break into a closely guarded male preserve and become the only female professional officer in the Spanish Army of her time (and long afterwards).

A person's sex as male or female has legal significance—sex is indicated on government documents, and laws provide differently for men and women. Many pension systems have different retirement ages for men or women. Marriage is usually only available to opposite-sex couples.

In modern times, the study of gender and development has become a broad field that involves politicians, economists, and human rights activists.

Researchers at the Overseas Development Institute have highlighted that policy dialogue on the Millennium Development Goals needs to recognize that the gender dynamics of power, poverty, vulnerability and care link all the goals. The United Nations Millennium Declaration signed at the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000 including eight goals that were to be reached by 2015, and although it would be a difficult task to reach them, they were all able to be monitored. The eight goals are: 1. Halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty at the 1990 level by 2015. 2. Achieve universal primary education 3. Promote gender equality and empower women 4. Reduce child mortality rates 5. Improve maternal health 6. Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases 7. Ensure environmental sustainability 8. Global partnership

Gender equality is also strongly linked to education. The Dakar Framework for Action (2000) set out ambitious goals: to eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and to achieve gender equality in education by 2015. The focus was on ensuring girls’ full and equal access to and achievement in good quality basic education. Studies demonstrate the positive impact of girls’ education on child and maternal health, fertility rates, poverty reduction and economic growth. Educated mothers are more likely to send their children to school.

The Gender-related Development Index (GDI), developed by the United Nations (UN), aims to show the inequalities between men and women in the following areas: long and healthy life, knowledge, and a decent standard of living.

Gender inequality has a great impact especially on women and poverty. In poverty stricken countries it is more likely that men have more opportunities to have an income, have more political and social rights than women. Women experience more poverty than men do due to gender discrimination.Gender and Development (GAD) is a holistic approach to give aid to countries where gender inequality has a great effect of not improving the social and economic development. It is to empower women and decrease the level of inequality between men and women.

Natural languages often make gender distinctions. These may be of various kinds, more or less loosely associated by analogy with various actual or perceived differences between men and women.

• Most languages include terms that are used asymmetrically in reference to men and women. Concern that current language may be biased in favor of men has led some authors in recent times to argue for the use of a more Gender-neutral vocabulary in English and other languages.

• Several languages attest the use of different vocabulary by men and women, to differing degrees. See, for instance, Gender differences in spoken Japanese. The oldest documented language, Sumerian, records a distinctive sub-language only used by female speakers. Conversely, many Indigenous Australian languages have distinctive registers with limited lexis used by men in the presence of their mothers-in-law.

• Several languages such as Persian are gender-neutral. In Persian the same word is used in reference to men and women. Verbs, adjectives and nouns are not gendered. (See Gender-neutrality in genderless languages)

• Grammatical gender is a property of some languages in which every noun is assigned a gender, often with no direct relation to its meaning. For example, the word for "girl" is muchacha (grammatically feminine) in Spanish, Mädchen (grammatically neuter) in German, and cailín (grammatically masculine) in Irish.

• The term "grammatical gender" is often applied to more complex noun class systems. This is especially true when a noun class system includes masculine and feminine as well as some other non-gender features like animate, edible, manufactured, and so forth. An example of the latter is found in the Dyirbal language. A system traditionally called "gender" appears in the Ojibwe language, which distinguishes between animate and inanimate, but since this does not exhibit a masculine/feminine distinction it might be better described by "noun class." Likewise, Sumerian distinguishes between personal (human and divine) and impersonal (all other) noun classes, but these classes have traditionally been known as genders.