Key Agents of Socialisation: How Parents, Schools, and Media Shape Gender Roles

From the moment a baby is wrapped in a pink or blue blanket, society begins teaching it what it means to be a “girl” or a “boy.” This process, called gender socialisation, doesn’t happen overnight or in one place. It unfolds slowly through everyday interactions with parents, classrooms, screens, and friends. The agents behind this process shape not just how we dress or speak, but also what we believe we can become. Understanding these agents helps us see why gender inequality persists even when laws and policies push for equality.

What are agents of socialisation? 🔗

Agents of socialisation are the people, institutions, and platforms through which individuals learn the norms, values, and behaviours expected of their gender. Sociologists typically divide these agents into two categories. Primary agents, like the family, exert their influence during early childhood when impressions run deepest. Secondary agents, including schools, peer groups, religious institutions, and media, take over as children grow older and step into the wider world.

The “life course approach” recognises that socialisation does not end with childhood but continues across adolescence, adulthood, and old age, with different agents dominating at different stages. Yet, the messages absorbed in childhood often serve as the foundation upon which later experiences are layered.

Parents and family as primary agents 🔗

The family is where gender socialisation begins. Long before a child can speak, parents communicate gendered expectations through their gestures, choices, and language. The British sociologist Ann Oakley, in her 1972 book Sex, Gender and Society, offered one of the most influential frameworks for understanding this process. She argued that gender roles are cultural rather than biological, and that they are learned through four distinct mechanisms: manipulation, canalisation, verbal appellation, and activity exposure.

Manipulation 🔗

Manipulation refers to how parents handle and respond to their children’s bodies and behaviour in gender-specific ways. Mothers fuss over the hair and skin of baby girls, dressing them elaborately in feminine clothes, while boys are handled more roughly and dressed in practical, sturdy outfits. A girl who climbs trees may be told she will hurt herself; a boy doing the same is praised for his daring. Through approval and disapproval, parents reinforce what they consider appropriate for each sex.

Canalisation 🔗

Canalisation is the channelling of a child’s interests toward “appropriate” toys, games, and objects. Girls are typically given dolls, kitchen sets, and miniature domestic appliances, while boys receive cars, bricks, guns, and trains. Walk into any toy shop and the gendered colour-coding is hard to miss. These choices are not innocent. Dolls prepare girls for nurturing roles, while construction sets nudge boys toward technical thinking. The child’s curiosity is gently but firmly directed down a pre-set channel.

Verbal appellation 🔗

Verbal appellation refers to the use of language and labels that mark a child as masculine or feminine. Pet names like “Guddi,” “Dolly,” or “princess” for girls emphasise prettiness and delicacy, while boys are called “sher,” “champ,” or “tiger,” highlighting strength and bravery. Common praise such as “brave boy” and “pretty girl” may seem harmless, but it tells children which qualities are valued in them. Over time, these labels become internalised as identity.

Activity exposure 🔗

Activity exposure is the way children are drawn into different kinds of work and play. Girls are encouraged to participate in indoor, domestic activities, while boys are pushed toward outdoor pursuits. A daughter is often expected to help her mother in the kitchen, fold clothes, or look after younger siblings. A son might be sent out to buy groceries, taught to fix a fan, or encouraged to play sports. Through such routines, children learn not only what they should do but also what kind of adult they are expected to become.

The lasting impact of family 🔗

The influence of the family runs deep because it operates at an age when children cannot critically question what they observe. As sociologist Talcott Parsons noted, norms and values are learned first and foremost from the family. However, Oakley’s framework has its limits. It tends to underplay the role of secondary agents, and as children grow, the family’s grip can loosen as schools, peers, and media take over.

Schools as reinforcers of gender norms 🔗

Schools are often imagined as neutral spaces of learning, but they are powerful sites of gender socialisation. Children spend a significant portion of their formative years in classrooms, where teachers, textbooks, and peers continually transmit messages about masculinity and femininity, often unconsciously.

Teachers’ attitudes and the hidden curriculum 🔗

Teachers carry their own assumptions about gender, and these shape how they interact with students. Boys are frequently called on to answer questions in mathematics and science, while girls are praised more for neatness, obedience, and good handwriting. Classroom duties often follow gendered lines, with girls asked to decorate the noticeboard and boys asked to move furniture. This “hidden curriculum” teaches students that certain abilities and behaviours belong to one gender rather than another, even when the official syllabus says otherwise.

Curriculum and textbook biases 🔗

The content of school textbooks is another quiet but powerful force. A recent analysis found that in NCERT textbooks published between 2020 and 2022, just 34 percent of gendered words such as “he” or “she” are female, while 66 percent are male. The same study notes that South Asia, and India in particular, shows the strongest male bias in language linked to achievement and work, and the strongest female bias in language linked to appearance.

The patterns are even more striking when textbooks are read closely. A follow-up examination of NCERT textbooks reported that the Class V environmental studies textbook portrays soldiers, doctors, and officials as men, while women are relegated to domestic duties like cooking and cleaning. Earlier research found that in secondary school social studies textbooks, 95 percent of the freedom fighters cited were male, with women activists barely mentioned. When girls rarely see themselves as scientists, leaders, or freedom fighters in their books, the implicit message is that public achievement is a male domain.

Peer interactions and playground policing 🔗

Peers act as both companions and enforcers. Children quickly learn that stepping outside gender norms invites teasing, exclusion, or bullying. A boy who plays with dolls or cries easily may be called names; a girl who is loud or assertive may be labelled “tomboy” or “unladylike.” Interestingly, the policing tends to be harsher for boys, since departures from masculinity are treated as a loss of status, while girls have slightly more room to be tomboys without immediate ridicule. By adolescence, peer pressure can be even more powerful than parental guidance, especially in shaping ideas about appearance, romance, and ambition.

Media’s role in gender socialisation 🔗

Media has emerged as one of the most pervasive agents of gender socialisation, reaching children through television, films, advertisements, songs, and now smartphones. Unlike parents and teachers, media operates around the clock, and its messages can be absorbed without anyone’s direct supervision.

Traditional media and the persistence of stereotypes 🔗

Indian television and cinema have long reflected and reinforced familiar gender roles. Research on advertising shows that women are more often portrayed as younger and less often shown as employed compared to men. Commercials for detergents, floor cleaners, and kitchen products typically feature women in ethnic attire demonstrating how a product helps with housework, while men dominate voiceovers and authority roles. Sports broadcasting, similarly, remains a male-dominated genre from the athletes to the commentators, reinforcing a link between masculinity and competitive achievement.

Cinema has its own grammar of gender. Studies note that stereotypical presentations of women appear in nearly every Bollywood film, shaping the social expectations young adults form about gender behaviour. The hero rescues, the heroine waits; the male villain is powerful, the female antagonist is jealous or scheming. Even item songs and family dramas often present a narrow vision of what women and men are supposed to be.

New media: a double-edged sword 🔗

Social media has changed the equation. Unlike television, which broadcasts one message to many, platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and X allow users to create, share, and challenge content. This interactive nature gives young people new ways to explore identity. Male influencers have begun openly wearing make-up and challenging traditional masculinity, while women creators speak out against body-shaming, harassment, and domestic expectations.

Yet, the same platforms also amplify old stereotypes. A study of young Indian Facebook users found that gender stereotypical traits dominant offline are reproduced online, with men rated higher on traits like active, dominant, and independent, while women score higher on attractiveness and dependence. Online harassment, trolling, and “flaming” disproportionately target women who speak on politics or feminism. Filters and beauty trends push young girls toward narrow standards of fairness and thinness, while “alpha male” content urges boys to suppress emotion and assert dominance.

What makes new media distinct is its participatory character. A teenager is not just consuming images, but liking, commenting, posting, and being judged in return. Identity becomes something performed and constantly adjusted in response to feedback. This can be liberating for those who find supportive communities, but isolating for those whose self-expression invites abuse.

How agents interact and reinforce each other 🔗

It would be a mistake to treat these agents as separate. A girl who is told at home that cooking is her duty, who reads textbooks showing mothers in kitchens, who watches advertisements where women clean spotless floors, and who scrolls through Instagram reels glorifying domestic femininity, receives the same message from every direction. The agents work in concert, which is why gender norms feel so “natural” and are so hard to dislodge.

Change, when it happens, also requires multiple agents to move together. A progressive parent’s efforts can be undone by a sexist textbook; a sensitive teacher’s lessons can be overwhelmed by a film’s stereotypes; a critical media campaign can be neutralised by silence at the dinner table. Recognising this web is the first step toward loosening it.

What do you think? Looking back at your own childhood, which agent of socialisation do you feel shaped your understanding of gender most strongly, and were there moments when one agent contradicted another? Do you think new media is doing more to challenge gender stereotypes today, or is it simply repackaging old ones in shinier formats?

References

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