Gender Identity: How We See Ourselves and How Society Sees Us

How we see ourselves and how the world sees us rarely match perfectly, and nowhere is this gap more visible than in the realm of gender. Gender identity sits at the crossroads of personal experience and social expectation, shaping how we walk, talk, dress, work, and relate to others. It is one of the most intimate aspects of being human, yet it is also one of the most heavily policed by family, community, and the State. Understanding it requires looking inward at the self and outward at the society that surrounds it.

Defining gender identity
Why definitions matter
Self-identified versus imposed identities
Madhu Kishwar and the Indian conversation
The inherent and the environmental
Sociological implications of gender identity
Gender roles and behaviour
The recognition of non-binary identities
Culture, family, and the everyday
Why this conversation matters for college students

Defining gender identity

Gender identity refers to a person’s deeply felt internal sense of being a man, a woman, both, neither, or somewhere along a wider spectrum. According to the OpenStax sociology textbook, gender identity is a person’s deeply held internal perception of one’s gender, and it may or may not align with the sex assigned at birth. This makes it distinct from biological sex, which refers to anatomical and chromosomal characteristics, and from gender expression, which is the outward presentation of gender through clothing, behaviour, and mannerisms.

Sociologists generally treat gender as a social construct rather than a fixed biological category. As the LibreTexts module on the development of gender identity explains, gender doesn’t exist naturally but emerges through cultural and societal norms, with most societies organising people into categories of male and female while some individuals do not identify with the attributes assigned to their biological sex. The Indian Supreme Court itself acknowledged this distinction in the landmark NALSA judgment of 2014, clarifying that gender identity is an innate perception of one’s gender rather than a biological characteristic, and that every person has the right to self-identify.

Why definitions matter

Definitions are not just academic exercises. They determine who gets counted in a census, who qualifies for a scholarship, who can marry whom, and whose violence the law takes seriously. For a long time, Indian law and social policy operated within a strict male-female binary, leaving hijras, kinnars, aravanis, and other communities outside formal recognition. The shift toward acknowledging gender identity as a spectrum has therefore been both a conceptual and a constitutional revolution.

Self-identified versus imposed identities

One of the most useful ways to think about gender identity is to separate what we feel ourselves to be from what we are told to be. The first is self-identified; the second is imposed. In practice, the two are constantly in conversation, sometimes peacefully and sometimes through conflict.

From the moment a child is born in most Indian families, gender begins to be assigned in very concrete ways. Boys may be greeted with sweets distributed across the neighbourhood, while girls may be welcomed more quietly. Pink frocks, blue shorts, dolls, cricket bats, the choice of subjects in school, and even the way one is taught to sit are all rehearsals of an imposed gender script. Sociologist Charles Cooley’s concept of the looking-glass self captures this well: our self-understanding is partly constructed through our perception of how others view us. We learn to express gender based on how we think society and others will respond, internalise that feedback, and then reflect it back into the world.

Madhu Kishwar and the Indian conversation

Madhu Kishwar, founder-editor of the journal Manushi, has been one of the most influential Indian voices examining how gender identity is shaped within local cultural realities rather than imported feminist frameworks. Her collection Off the Beaten Track: Rethinking Gender Justice for Indian Women engages with questions of marriage, dowry, inheritance, harassment, and what she calls “living identities versus acquired ones.” Kishwar’s approach is significant because she insists that women’s identities in India cannot be understood in isolation from family, community, caste, and class. According to the Indian Knowledge Systems portal at IIT Gandhinagar, she pioneered women’s studies in India through Manushi from 1978 onwards and championed the rights of marginalised groups including street vendors and traditional art performers.

Her work highlights a tension familiar to many Indian women: the daughter, sister, wife, daughter-in-law, and mother are not just roles but identities that get layered onto the self, often without consent. A young woman may feel deeply ambitious and independent, yet the imposed identity of “good bahu” pulls her in a different direction. Kishwar’s writing suggests that gender justice is not about rejecting these inherited identities wholesale but about renegotiating them so that they leave room for personal authenticity and dignity.

The inherent and the environmental

Researchers continue to debate how much of gender identity is inherent and how much is environmental. What is clear is that both matter. A person’s internal sense of self emerges very early, often well before formal schooling begins, and yet that sense develops within an environment full of cues, rewards, and punishments. The freedom an individual has to harmonise inner and outer identity varies dramatically by family, region, caste, class, and historical moment. A girl in an urban metro with educated parents may have far more room to negotiate her identity than a girl in a conservative rural household, even though both technically share the same legal rights.

Sociological implications of gender identity

Once we accept that gender identity is shaped by both the self and society, the next question is what this means for everyday life. The answer is: almost everything. Gender identity influences who does the cooking, who earns the salary, who inherits land, who walks home alone after dark, and who is taken seriously in a meeting.

Gender roles and behaviour

Gender roles are the bundle of behaviours, attitudes, and tasks that a society considers appropriate for each gender. The Lumen Learning introduction to sociology notes that occupational sorting is a clear example: men tend to outnumber women in fields like law enforcement, the military, and politics, while women dominate care-related occupations such as childcare, healthcare, and social work. Adherence to these roles often demonstrates fulfilment of social expectations rather than personal preference. In the Indian context, this shows up in the disproportionate share of unpaid domestic work performed by women, in the underrepresentation of women in legislatures, and in the steep drop in female labour-force participation after marriage and childbirth.

Importantly, violations of these roles carry social costs. A man who chooses to be a stay-at-home father may face quiet ridicule. A woman who is assertive in the workplace may be labelled aggressive, while the same behaviour in a male colleague would be read as leadership. These reactions are not random; they are the social system reinforcing its scripts.

The recognition of non-binary identities

The clearest legal acknowledgment in India that gender identity extends beyond the binary came through the NALSA v. Union of India judgment of April 2014. The Supreme Court declared transgender persons to be the “third gender,” affirmed that all fundamental rights apply equally to them, and recognised their right to self-identification. The Court also directed that the community be treated as socially and economically backward, opening the door to reservations in education and public employment. According to Human Rights Watch, the judgment was a watershed moment that recognised the rights of transgender people to vote, to get an education, and to find work, while also urging the government to follow international human-rights commitments.

The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 followed, though it remains contested for falling short of NALSA’s vision in several respects. Implementation has been uneven, and many transgender Indians continue to face discrimination in housing, healthcare, and employment. Still, the legal shift has done something powerful: it has separated gender identity from biology in the eyes of the State and made room for identities that earlier had to live in the shadows.

Culture, family, and the everyday

Beyond courtrooms and policy papers, gender identity plays out in the kitchen, the classroom, and the WhatsApp family group. Cultural norms in India are not uniform; matrilineal traditions in parts of Kerala and the Northeast coexist with strongly patriarchal patterns in much of the north and west. Religious traditions, caste hierarchies, and regional histories all add their own pressures and possibilities. A Khasi woman in Meghalaya inherits property and family name as a matter of custom; a Jat woman in Haryana may struggle to claim her share even when the law is on her side. Identity, in other words, is local before it is national.

The arrival of smartphones, social media, and OTT platforms has further reshaped how young Indians encounter gender. Influencers, web series, and online communities offer models of selfhood that earlier generations simply did not see. This has expanded the imaginative space within which young people construct their identities, even as it has also generated new forms of harassment, surveillance, and backlash.

Why this conversation matters for college students

For students of population and family studies, gender identity is not an abstract topic. It shapes fertility patterns, health outcomes, educational attainment, and labour-market participation. Sex-selective practices, son preference, maternal mortality, and the gender pay gap all trace back, at least in part, to how a society constructs and ranks its gender identities. Understanding the difference between what people feel themselves to be and what they are told to be is therefore essential for anyone hoping to work in public policy, social work, health, education, or research.

It is also a deeply personal matter. Most of us spend our lives somewhere on the spectrum between full self-identification and full social conformity, negotiating each day what to accept, what to push back against, and what to quietly reshape. Recognising that this negotiation is universal, even if its specific contours differ from person to person, can be both humbling and liberating.

What do you think? Looking at your own life, can you point to moments when an imposed gender expectation conflicted with your own sense of self, and how did you handle it? Do you believe Indian society today gives people enough room to define their own gender identity, or are the old scripts still doing most of the talking?

References

PDF 📄

Gender Identity: How We See Ourselves and How Society Sees Us

Table of Contents

Defining gender identity 🔗

Why definitions matter 🔗

Self-identified versus imposed identities 🔗

Madhu Kishwar and the Indian conversation 🔗

The inherent and the environmental 🔗

Sociological implications of gender identity 🔗

Gender roles and behaviour 🔗

The recognition of non-binary identities 🔗

Culture, family, and the everyday 🔗

Why this conversation matters for college students 🔗