The words “man” and “woman” feel like they describe something obvious. Yet a closer look at how societies expect men and women to behave reveals something far more complex. What counts as masculine in one community may be considered feminine in another. The clothes we wear, the jobs we are pushed toward, the emotions we are allowed to express – most of these come not from biology but from culture. This is the heart of how sociologists define gender, and it is a definition that has reshaped how we understand identity, roles, and inequality.
Table of Contents
Gender as a cultural concept
The most influential definition of gender in modern sociology comes from British sociologist Ann Oakley. In her landmark 1972 book Sex, Gender and Society, Oakley drew a sharp line between two ideas that had previously been lumped together. According to Oakley, “Sex” refers to the biological division into male and female, while “gender” refers to the parallel and socially unequal division into femininity and masculinity. With this single distinction, she gave the social sciences a vocabulary to talk about something the world had long taken for granted: the differences between men and women are not all rooted in the body.
Oakley argued that “gender” is a matter of culture and refers to the social classification into “masculine” and “feminine”. Sex covers chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive organs. Gender covers everything else – how we dress, how we speak, what work we do, how we carry ourselves, and what we are taught to feel. By framing gender as a cultural classification, Oakley made it possible to study masculinity and femininity as products of society rather than as fixed traits handed down by nature.
Why this distinction matters
Before Oakley’s intervention, behaviours like nurturing, aggression, leadership, or shyness were often explained as “natural” outcomes of being male or female. Oakley’s framework challenged this biological determinism. If gender is cultural, it can be examined, questioned, and changed. The World Health Organization echoes this view, noting that gender interacts with but is different from sex, which refers to the different biological and physiological characteristics of females, males and intersex people. This framing has become foundational for public health, policy, and gender equality work worldwide.
The social construction of gender
Once we accept that gender is cultural, the next question is: how exactly does culture create it? The answer lies in the theory of the social construction of gender. This theory holds that gender roles are an achieved “status” in a social environment, which implicitly and explicitly categorize people and therefore motivate social behaviors. In simpler terms, gender is something we learn to do, not something we are born being.
Oakley herself described how this learning happens. She identified processes through which children are gendered from the earliest age: manipulation (dressing baby girls in pink frills and baby boys in blue trousers), canalisation (giving girls dolls and kitchen sets while giving boys cars and toy guns), verbal appellations (“good girl”, “be a man”), and differential activities (encouraging boys to climb trees while asking girls to help in the kitchen). These small, repeated acts add up. By the time a child is five or six, the lessons are deep enough that they feel natural.
Roles, tasks, and values across societies
If gender were purely biological, we would expect roles to look similar wherever humans live. But anthropologists have shown the opposite. The classic study here is anthropologist Margaret Mead’s Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, published in 1935. Mead profiled three New Guinea cultures with distinct gender systems, exploring what happens when an individual’s emotional disposition is at odds with society’s gender expectations.
Among the Arapesh, both men and women were gentle, cooperative, and nurturing – traits Western societies typically code as feminine. Among the Mundugumor, both sexes were aggressive and competitive – traits typically coded as masculine. Among the Tchambuli (now Chambri), the pattern almost reversed Western expectations: women were the dominant economic providers while men were artistic and emotionally expressive. Mead’s work showed that masculinity is not necessarily expressed through aggressiveness and that femininity is not necessarily expressed through passivity and acquiescence. The same biology produced strikingly different social arrangements.
Cross-cultural studies since Mead have only strengthened this picture. The Mosuo of southwestern China practise a matrilineal system in which women head households and control property. The Aka people of Central Africa are known for unusually high paternal involvement in childcare. Even within India, a household in rural Bihar carries very different gender expectations from a household in urban Bengaluru. Roles change with region, religion, caste, class, and time period.
The impact of culture on gender perception
Culture does not just assign tasks. It also shapes what we perceive as natural, attractive, or moral in gendered behaviour. Among the Juchitán in Oaxaca, Mexico, women traditionally run businesses, wear bold colourful clothing, and carry themselves with confident authority – practices that defy Western expectations of femininity but are seen as completely ordinary within their community.
South Asia offers its own striking example. The hijra community has existed for centuries and represents a recognised third gender category in the region. Hijras challenge the assumption that humans can only be classified as men or women. In 2014, the Supreme Court of India formally recognised transgender people as a third gender, acknowledging long-standing cultural realities that the binary framework had ignored.
Socialisation: the engine of gender
The mechanism through which culture shapes gender is called socialisation. From birth, families, schools, peers, religion, and media all teach children what is expected of “boys” and “girls”. A boy who cries may be told to “man up”. A girl who plays roughly may be called a tomboy. A teenager who deviates from gender norms faces correction – sometimes gentle, sometimes harsh. Feminist theory views gender as an achieved status, shaped by social interactions and normative beliefs, and gender roles vary across cultures and contexts.
Media and popular culture amplify these messages. Television serials, advertisements, school textbooks, and films repeat images of what men and women “should” look like and do. When the same message is repeated across every institution a person encounters, it begins to feel like common sense rather than a choice. That is precisely how social construction works: it makes a constructed reality feel natural.
Examples from everyday life
Consider something as mundane as colour. Pink is now considered a “girl” colour and blue a “boy” colour. Yet in the early twentieth century, the convention in many Western countries was actually reversed – pink was seen as a strong, masculine colour suited to little boys, and blue was considered delicate and feminine. The change happened through marketing and shifting cultural taste, not biology. The same logic applies to crying, leadership styles, choice of profession, and even body posture. Many of the differences we attribute to gender are a product of society – and if society determines what is masculine or feminine, then society can change what is considered masculine, feminine, or anything in between.
Why the definition still matters today
Understanding gender as a cultural classification has practical consequences. It helps explain why women are under-represented in certain professions, why men are pressured to suppress emotions, and why people who do not fit the binary often face discrimination. It also opens space for change. If roles are made, they can be remade. Campaigns for equal pay, paternity leave, transgender rights, and freedom from gender-based violence all rest on the insight Oakley articulated in 1972: gender is not destiny.
The definition also matters for public health. A gender approach to health begins with recognising differences between men and women and promotes the integration of gender as a social determinant of health into policy, research, services, and programmes. From maternal health to mental health, ignoring gender as a cultural force leads to weaker policies and worse outcomes.
Recognising gender as a social construction does not erase the body. It simply separates what biology provides from what culture writes on top of it. That separation is one of the most important conceptual moves in modern social science, and it continues to influence law, education, healthcare, and everyday conversations about who we are and who we are allowed to be.
What do you think? If gender is largely shaped by culture rather than biology, which gender expectations in your own surroundings feel like genuine tradition, and which feel like rules waiting to be questioned? And when you think about your own upbringing, what were the small, everyday moments that quietly taught you what it means to be a “boy” or a “girl”?
References
- https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095846541
- https://www.annoakley.co.uk/fromsgas.pdf
- https://www.who.int/europe/health-topics/gender
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_construction_of_gender
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_Temperament_in_Three_Primitive_Societies
- https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sex-and-Temperament-in-Three-Primitive-Societies
- https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Gender_Studies/Introduction_to_Gender_Studies_(Coleman)/02:_Sex_and_Gender-_What's_the_Difference/2.03:_Cultural_Diversity_and_Gender_Norms
- https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/old-school-parenting-modern-day-families/201907/time-move-beyond-gender-is-socially-constructed
Leave a Reply