What Are Gender Roles In American Culture

“…the truth was that in the absence of any evidence or experience or reason to think so, I had known that I could do it, too. I had no choice do you see, but to know that” (Chabon 718).
With the mainstreaming of social constructivist theories relating to gender roles, it is important for one to appreciate that all arguments surrounding gender roles are historically and culturally contingent. The meaning of this is that something that might be true about gender roles in one society’s cultural group might be different when it comes to another cultural group. Likewise, gender roles in all over the world have significantly changed over time. Therefore, there is no generalizable and universal statement regarding gender roles. The common thread in the discussion about gender roles has been the historical evolution of the family, from a time where families were single-income families, which were families where one spouse (the father) is in charge of
In America, for instance, approximately 97 percent of families own a television set (Stelter). As such, viewers need to carefully assess the content in the programs that they watch (Chandler). They should then decide if they could support the content on the moral ground. Since the media does not have anything to sell, they have transformed the image of female as a sellable product and the sex has taken a central role in the fictionist’s world. For example, in one of America’s most popular television dramas The Big Bang Theory one of the lead characters in the earlier seasons of the show was a lady called Penny. Her character in the show was that of a stereotyped female in that she was this ditzy and charming neighbor whose role almost solely involved creating sexual tensions pitting her and one of another leading male character Leonard. Though more female characters were introduced as the show progressed, Penny’s character remained that of creating sexual