Societal Effect on the Dichotomy of Emotional Reactions Between Genders.
Emotional Dichotomy is societal restrictions on how males and females are expected to express their emotions. We were born within a society where our gender and gender roles were biologically chosen and based on that role, we knew whether our masculine or feminine attributes were valued more in the world and what was expected of us. The history of mental acceptance between men and women is a multifaceted topic that has evolved over centuries, leading men and women to have limitations in how they express themselves in society. Society affects the dichotomy of emotional reactions between genders and their way of expressing their emotional life. It creates a barrier rather than a safe space for men and women to freely express how they feel.
Historical events and societal changes have also influenced emotional gender roles and barriers. For example, there was a rise of capitalism and industrialization in the 19th century where men were primarily provided and associated mostly with engaging in working outside of the home. Whereas women were responsible for domestic and emotional labor within the household. In the 20th century, the women’s rights movement began to change traditional gender equality. ring World War II, many women went into factories while men were mobilized into the military. A piece of supporting evidence is from the article by the Bills of Right Insitute “Women’s Rights in the Late 20th Century”, “However, many unmarried and poor women had already participated in the industrial economy for a century. With demobilization after the war, more than three million women quit their jobs to return to their roles as homemakers or were let go to make room for returning men.” However, as the war ended and many of the men returned, women had to quit to make space for those returning men. Gender inequality affects the way men and women show up in the world today. Due to these circumstances where women were identified as being homemakers. They did not receive the opportunities to strive and earn an independent life. Whereas for men they’re role was to be the provider, which gave them a sense of being dominant and head of the household. Social implications impact the world we live in today by affecting the way men and women develop their identity, character, and persona. Some common gender stereotypes include the belief that males are stronger, competitive, aggressive, and dominant while females are nurturing, emotional and supportive. These gender expectations can affect how men and women communicate with each, men are more likely to interrupt or dominate conversations while women may avoid conflict or use a low confident language to converse. In the article “The Gender Stereotyping of Emotions- Prejudice and Intergroup”, by “Specifically, women are believed to experience and express awe, embarrassment, fear, distress, happiness, guilt, sympathy, sadness, love, surprise, shame, and shyness more frequently than men. Men are believed to experience and express anger and pride more often than women. Furthermore, the findings indicated that, although people believe that there are gender differences for both the experience and expression of these emotions, the differences are larger for expression than experience.” This shows that there is a certain expectation for genders as to how they should behave which dictates the persona they put on. Men mostly suppress their emotions and act unemotional rather than vulnerable due to it being against their culinary. This leads to an unacceptance of their mental health which limits how they express their emotions. However, women are expected to overreact, and their femininity is viewed as weak. This hinders many women from fully accepting and embracing their femininity because of how powerless and look down upon it is viewed. The effect of such social implementation diminishes the way men and women communicate based on the limited persona which is highly influenced by the social stigma. Another detail from the article “Gender and Emotion Expression: A Development Contextual Perspective” by Chaplin, shows how stereotype affects men and women when expressing their emotions, “In terms of externalizing emotions, although boys may be encouraged to limit emotion displays in general (for example, according to Buck’s theory), the one type of emotion display that they may be allowed to continue would be externalizing emotions such as anger. These would be allowed because socialization agents would encourage anger in boys to be consistent with gender roles for greater acceptance of externalizing emotion expressions in boys than girls.” Girls from a very young age are thought to explore their softer feminine side compared to their masculine whereas boys are not usually taught how to show their emotions due to social standards and implications. This influenced the way they created their persona. This social stigma led to men externalizing more anger than vulnerable emotions.
Society plays a significant role in shaping how men and women express themselves in the world today. The power dynamic intrudes and creates a stronger barrier because, for example, a male may feel uncomfortable expressing vulnerability or seeking help whereas a woman, may feel pressured to be vulnerable because it is considered sensitive. To further elaborate, another supporting piece from Chaplin is “This may mean that men are aroused internally, but “keep in” emotions whereas women freely express emotions. In addition, women show greater rates of clinical depression and some forms of anxiety disorders than men starting in adolescence, disorders which involve in their etiology and in their description the experience and expression of high levels of internalizing negative emotions such as sadness, guilt, and fear. In contrast, men show greater rates of antisocial behaviors and alcohol abuse than women.” The effect varies between men and women, according to the source “men show greater rates of antisocial behaviors and alcohol abuse than women”. Alcohol becomes a coping mechanism for men and as well as women but there is a higher percentage of men who consume more alcohol than women. This can be proven by the article “Gender and Alcohol Consumption: patterns from the multinational Genesis Project”, “Drinking men were also consistently more likely than drinking women to be high-frequency drinkers (5 or more days per week) (94 of 101 age-specific comparisons, and in the majority of age groups in 32 of 34 countries.” Following back to history and to where the social standards were set, it still affects the way men and women cope with their mental health, emotional life, and way of living. omen currently is relearning to become independent and strive for themselves but in some ways, their emotions seem to also be affected due to being projected as “sensitive”.
Another effect that is faced in today’s world is mental acceptance which affects communication between men and women and hinders their inability to feel safe enough to seek support for their mental health.
These descriptive statistics that were used to explore gender differences in self-reported mental health problems. It is based on the article, “Gender and self-reported mental health problems: predictors of help-seeking from a general practitioner” by Tedstone Doherty and Kartalova-O’Doherty. It reveals statistics of both men and women of older ages conforming to the mental health issues they are dealing with but never spoke of it or had a safe space to share it due to the fear of embarrassment in most cases. The graph above specifically shows the percentage of men and women who ranges from the age of eighteen to sixty-five plus that struggled with mental health problems but never seek help while experiencing such distresses. To elaborate, Doherty states, “Analysis of the GHQ 12 scores which measures current psychological distress showed that the sample was experiencing moderate levels of distress, and males were experiencing relatively higher levels of distress than females. Previous research has found that women are more likely to experience depression while men are more likely to report alcohol problems”. This conveys how men and women are less likely to seek help or report their mental health until they are older and no longer feel limited or restricted to finding expression of their emotions in a way that is helpful.
An additional piece of evidence from “Gender and self-reported mental health problems: predictors of help-seeking from a general practitioner” is self-reported embarrassment influenced help-seeking behavior rather strongly for males but not females. “These findings would suggest that males may be more susceptible to self-stigma surrounding seeking help for mental health problems. Males who reported embarrassment were almost seven times less likely to contact the general practitioner than males who were not embarrassed. Mental health promotion and prevention campaigns need to educate males on the extent of distress in the population and to ‘normalize’ distress in such a way that males do not feel embarrassed about seeking help for such problems.” Social stigma induces misunderstanding and fear which can prevent individuals with mental health concerns from seeking the help they need. On the other hand, also shame, guilt, and lack of resources may cause either males or females to feel unsafe seeking support or help due to fear of judgment. Thus, this may cause individuals to find other unhealthy ways of coping with their mental health by using harmful substances or causing harm to themselves.
Societal limitations significantly impact how both men and women express themselves and it can be reduced by acknowledging the importance of how it is impacting the current and future generations. Mental acceptance between men and women is a multifaceted topic that has evolved creating limitations in how men and women express themselves, but it can be addressed and changed. Another piece of supporting detail from the “Failure to seek help for mental health problems can result in these problems escalating and requiring more intensive treatment later. This not only results in psychological and economic costs for the individual but also for society.” The increase in education can help to reduce stigma, improve mental health resources available to all can provide mental acceptance and as well and better health access/resources can help to create a safer space for both men and women to fully be able to embrace and express themselves. Mental acceptance within individuals will help to create an environment where people will be able to manage their emotions better, accept each other with a non-judgmental mindset, and have more open minds for embracing new perspectives and a world where it is normal to express how one feels without feeling ashamed or embarrassed. This can also lead to a change in the personas men and women have built to show up in the world based on social stigmas. Awareness of how gender stereotypes, roles, and mental acceptance can help to reshape the world we live in for ourselves as well as the future generations where it is more inclusive and supportive.
References:
–https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2845878/
-https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/gender-identity/sex-gender-identity/what-are-gender-roles-and-stereotypes
