Girls are Incompetent and Weak?
Illustration (https://www.reddit.com)
The norm and stereotyped around the globe that the girls are incompetent, quiet, weak and followers, whereas boys are opposite that are strong and leaders.
Early than thought
This perception is believed occur to the boys and girls at later age. However, the study conducted by the Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute and the World Health Organization, then reported by Casey (2017) showed that as early as 10 years old, boys and girls have clued the norms of boys and girls. Study is done across 15 countries with 450 respondents.
The study covers low, middle, and high-income countries around the globe such as USA, Malawi, India, South Africa, China and Belgium. In some countries, pre-teen understand that it is not norm to have relationship to opposite sex. If they breach the norm, they will be abused as negative penalty.
Gender restraining has negative impacted on both girls and boys. For girls even worse. Girls tend to get sexual violent that lead to child pregnancy and even sexual transmitted diseases such as HIV or AIDS.
In boy cases, they tend to be drugs abusers and involve in crime or violence. Surprising finding that in illegal abortion countries, the kids know how and where to find backstreet abortion.
Other surprising findings that girls tend be accepted if they breach the norm in certain countries in recently, but the boys will be abused and even beaten if they behave like girls.
Norm in Current Perspective
McIntyre (2011, p.102 - 106) describes that norm is how individual, girls and boys, women and men should behave in their community. A kind of standard behavior or attitudes where everyone should follow.
As an example, that women should not wearing jeans when they attend the church or temple in the USA. Off course there are punishments to whom not follow the norm. The punishments are varied, range from just glance of disapprove to the form of to be asked to leave the church or temple.
Moreover, the sanctions could be harsh to whom violate the norms that called “taboo.” The punishment could be expelled from group, to be prisoned or even killed. But, especially on death punishment, author did not mention where and when these punishments occurred.
In case of teenagers, Coghlan (2017) report that strict norm on kids could have lifelong effects, and lead to health problems, especially for girls. The norm caused limited choice for girls. The girls have no opportunity to explore the world, and even leaving the schools.
Luckily, the author reported that there is positive thing in Shanghai, China that girls got some degree of respect from society if they could achieve higher education and have good career.
References
Casey, R. 2017. Teens risk suicide, drugs and AIDS due to gender "straitjacket", study says.
Retrieved from https://news.trust.org/item/20170920130543-6hgts/
Coghlan, A. 2017. Kids everywhere have damaging gender stereotyping set by age 10. Retrieved
from https://www.newscientist.com/article/2147963-kids-everywhere-have-damaging-gender-stereotyping-set-by-age-10/
McIntyre, L. J. (2011). The Practical Skeptic: Core Concepts in Sociology 5th ed.,
New York: McGraw-Hill. (ISBN 978-0-07-340440-0). Retrieved from https://issuu.com/leanne.s/docs/practical_skeptic_2010_core_concepts