Society influence on gender roles.
Studies from all over the world have shown us how gender norms in a society or culture can influence the way a person feel, act and most importantly think. Culture and society can be sometime be interchangeably used because most people tend to live in a society where they find a matching culture. Therefore every individual growing up in a particular society develops a clearly defined ideas of what constitutes appropriate behavior for men and women. These behaviors are not innate but are learned either through enforcement or by simple observation. Sociologist often uses gender role, or sex role as a vital tool to study family interaction because it involves ties between the individual and the family. I still remember when I took my first sociology class, my professor Mr. Omar Montana, graduate student of Queens College, mentioned that it’s the society that further subdivides this whole concept of the social structure into “Status” and “Role”. Status is referred to the position in the society, which is “ascribed” by the society to us. While role refers to actions of the individual who occupies a certain status. Lorraine Hansberry’s, “A Raisin in the Sun” is a play that portraits a few weeks in the life of an African-American family residing on the Southside of Chicago in the 1950s. It is often considered a radical work for its time because of the several issue she puts forward. She not only shows the dilemmas of a Black family moving to a white neighborhood but also in a larger context deal with feminist issues in the play. Hansberry introduces several characters
GIRI 2
through the play and shows us how race relation that was prevalent in the 1950s Chicago had a significant effect in their life.
One of the several themes of the play, “A Raisin in the Sun” is “dreams deferred”. We know it’s hard for individual to become successful who are born in poverty but it’s even harder when they live in a society of...