What is gender culture With reference to Sabrina Petra Ramet's paper Essay

What is gender culture With reference to Sabrina Petra Ramet's paper Gender Reversals and Gender Cultures - Essay Example ies regarding the type of gender differences, the levels of gender inequality, and the amount of violence that is necessary to maintain both systems of difference and domination. Following Ramet (1996): ]Gender culture† â€Å"is meant a society’s understanding of what is possible, proper, and perverse in gender-linked behavior, and more specifically, that set of values, mores, and assumptions which establishes which behaviors are to be seen as gender –linked† (2). Gender culture is a socially constructed phenomenon which reflects social values and perception of male and female members by others. This process occurs through a complex interaction of identification processes, symbol systems, and social institutions, gender differences are produced--typically in the form of a dichotomy that not only opposes masculinity to femininity but also translates these oppositional differences into gender hierarchy, the privileging of traits and activities defined as masculine over those defined as feminine. Ramet (1996) explains that: â€Å"gender cultures also define the limits of social tolerance and, in this regard, may be seen within the scope of the overarching cultural system as a whole† (3). Similar ideas are expressed by Moir and Jessel (1992) who stated that it is important to recognize the cultural variation in how gender differences are formed and expressed, it is also important to stress the political nature of gender as a system of diff erence construction and hierarchical dichotomy production that is constitutive of almost all contemporary societies. In societies, gender is about power, and power is gendered (115). Dress, make-up and occupation are vivid examples of ‘gender culture’ For instance, â€Å"Casting a woman in the role of King Lear or Hamlet tantalizes the audience with veiled allusions to female gender culture, and prompts questions about the gender ambiguity of behavior â€Å"(Ramet 7). Ramet underlines that sexual differences in certain adaptive