Takeaways
Gender ideology has evolved throughout history, influenced by religious beliefs, philosophical ideas, social movements, and cultural shifts.
Ancient civilizations established gender roles and expectations that persisted for centuries.
The 19th and 20th centuries witnessed significant milestones, including suffrage movements, first-wave feminism, and challenges to traditional gender roles.
In recent years, there has been a significant shift in the way people talk about sex and gender. Suddenly, it appears that no one can agree on fundamental topics such as "What is a woman?" "What is the difference between sex and gender?" and "Are these categories even real or meaningful?" But how did the new gender ideology emerge?
Gender Ideology in Ancient Civilizations
In examining the history of gender ideology, it is crucial to explore its origins in ancient civilizations. The beliefs, roles, and expectations surrounding gender in these early societies set the foundation for future perceptions and norms.
Gender roles were strongly established in Mesopotamian societal institutions such as Sumer, Akkad, and Babylon. Men were in charge of administration, combat, and religious leadership, while women were in charge of household tasks and child-rearing. There were significant outliers, with some women rising to prominence as priestesses and queens. Men held political and administrative posts in Ancient Egypt, but women were important in family life and religion.
Ancient Greece had a huge influence on Western gender conceptions. The patriarchal nature of Greek culture confined women's engagement in public life to domestic chores. In Roman society, the centrality of the family unit and the roles of paterfamilias (the male head of the home) and materfamilias (the female head of the household) were emphasized. The ideal Roman lady was modest, chaste, and family-centered.
Early comments on gender may be found in religious and philosophical books from ancient cultures. The Epic of Gilgamesh from Mesopotamia, the Egyptian Tale of Two Brothers, Greek intellectual works by Plato and Aristotle, and Roman literature by personalities such as Cicero are all examples.
Medieval and Renaissance Europe
Gender ideology in Europe underwent substantial modifications during the medieval and Renaissance periods, driven by religious, social, and intellectual advancements. During the medieval period, Christianity played a significant influence in developing gender ideology.
While the Renaissance saw a shift in intellectual and creative activities, the ramifications for gender ideology were significant. Humanist views, influenced by ancient texts, began to question established gender assumptions. However, these changes were essentially restricted to the top classes, with the majority of the population's gender roles remaining substantially intact.
The Enlightenment and the Rise of Feminism
The Enlightenment era was a watershed moment in questioning established gender ideas. The pursuit of reason, individuality, and equality fostered debates and movements that called into question traditional concepts of gender roles and equality. As basic ideals, Enlightenment intellectuals promoted rationality, liberty, and equality. The notion of natural rights, as well as the belief in all people's inherent value and ability, challenged the established gender hierarchy.
Philosophers such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau contributed to the intellectual debate around gender equality. This epoch saw a surge of intellectual and social upheaval that challenged established gender ideologies. Reason, equality, and individual rights ideals paved the way for conversations about gender equality and women's rights. Early feminist theorists such as Mary Wollstonecraft laid the groundwork for future movements.
The 19th and 20th Century: Gender Ideology in Flux
Gender ideology underwent substantial modifications in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as socioeconomic developments, political movements, and cultural upheavals spurred conversations on gender equality. The emergence of suffrage movements across the world, as women organized and battled for the right to vote, and the first-wave feminist movement gained traction in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Women took up non-traditional responsibilities in the workforce as a result of the upheavals of World War I and World War II, resulting in considerable shifts in gender norms. Their achievements and sacrifices pushed established norms, resulting in talks about gender equality and the birth of second-wave feminism in the 1960s.
The Concept of Gender Ideology
The term gender was inscribed in a document arising from an inter-governmental agreement for the first time during the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development. The term gender was openly assailed by US-based right-wing Catholic organizations at the Preparatory Committee Meeting for the IV World Conference on Women (Beijing 1995) in New York. Opposition to gender became more prominent in response to its usage in mainstream policies presented at the United Nations Conferences in Cairo in 1994 and Beijing in 1995, when the term "woman," used in prior conferences, was replaced by the term "gender."
Dale O'Leary, a North American conservative Catholic female journalist, released The Gender Agenda in 1997, portraying gender as a neocolonial instrument of a worldwide feminist conspiracy. The book has been translated into dozens of languages by the mid-2000s. In his book The Salt of the Earth, Cardinal Ratzinger argued in 1997 that the idea of gender "dissimulates an insurgency against the limits man carries within him as a biological being." While the Catholic Church does not have a monopoly on this resistance, it is not only one of its key proponents, but it is also sometimes credited for coining the phrase gender ideology.
The term "gender ideology" has been used in both good and negative contexts. Some individuals use the word to attack the notion that gender roles are socially constructed, while others use it to emphasize how gender norms may be oppressive.
Gender ideology research has revealed a diverse set of opinions concerning gender roles. Some people feel that gender roles are set and unchangeable, whilst others believe they are flexible and changeable. Some people think gender roles are good for society, while others think they are destructive.
Both gender ideology and gender role ideology refer to attitudes regarding the appropriate roles, rights, and responsibilities of women and men in society. The concept can reflect these attitudes generally or in a specific domain, such as an economic, familial, legal, political, and/or social domain (Kroska, 2007).
The sociological approach to studying and measuring gender ideology can be traced back to the 1930s with the development of instruments such as Kirkpatrick's 1936 Attitudes Toward Feminism scale.
Studies of gender ideology also present an ample terminological variation: gender ideology, sexual role ideology, gender role ideology, attitudes about gender, attitudes relating to gender, gender equality, and beliefs about gender are expressions that have been used with a similar meaning in a series of research studies in areas like sociology, anthropology, psychology, administration, literary studies and so on.
The differences in definitions reflect the polysemy of the idea of ideology itself. In the social sciences, the term can refer to anything from advanced theoretical models to simply identifying a group of common views about a given topic. The concept of ideology has been given two main meanings over its more than 200 years of history: a critical, negative, or prescriptive meaning, “used to evaluate a state of affairs” through association with ideas like inversion, distortion, mystification, false consciousness, reification, alienation, illusion, misrepresentation, bias, domination, interpellation, and subjectivation; and a descriptive or neutral meaning whereby “ideologies can be regarded as ‘systems of thought,’ ‘systems of belief’ or ‘symbolic systems’ which pertain to social action or social practice” (Thompson, 2000).
Gender ideology is a complicated subject that cannot be defined in a single way. However, it is an essential notion to grasp, since it may help us better comprehend how gender roles impact our lives. The term has been used in both negative as well as positive contexts. It is critical to understand the many ways in which the expression is employed so that we may make educated judgments regarding the difficulties it presents
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Hamlin, C. L.. (2020). Gender ideology: An analysis of its disputed meanings. Sociologia & Antropologia, 10(3), 1001–1022. https://doi.org/10.1590/2238-38752020v10310
Kroska, Amy. (2007). Gender ideology and gender role ideology. In: Ritzer, George. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology Malden/Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Thompson, John B. (2000). Ideologia e cultura moderna: teoria social crítica na era dos meios de comunicação de massa Petrópolis: Vozes.