Scientific Knowledge and Social Patterns of Gender

INFLUENCE OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE ON SOCIAL PATTERNS OF GENDERByCourseTutorInstitutionDate Scientific Knowledge and Social Patterns of Gender Human beings are always embedded in culture and so is gender. In our daily conversations, actions, interactions, institutions and the beliefs that we do share, gender remains one of the factors determining our relationship CITATION Pet18 \l 1033 (Peter & Wolper, 2018). If you are a male, the way you interact with another male will be different from the way you interact with a female. As Cifre et al (2018) notes, it is very important to differentiate between gender and sexuality as they are often misinterpreted. Sexuality is usually more biological and it is used to refer to the sexual differences while gender is assigning meaning and it can be male of female depending on the social categories of the culture. Over time, there are various studies which have been carried out on the influence of scientific knowledge on gender patterns of behavior in the society. Several factors have also been put into consideration when carrying out research on the above topic such as the rise of the social movements such as feminism and environmentalism, the effects of science-based technologies and the new trends taking place in the technological space. In this paper, the influence of the increasing scientific knowledge on the social patterns of gender will be discussed. The various ways in which scientific knowledge has influenced the society in relation to gender will be highlighted. The rise of new technologies has led to a replacement of a number of channels of communication. The internet is one of the technologies that has revolutionized the way in which people communicate with each other. There are also a number of debates which have existed for a long time on the influence of gender and internet usage. Research show that there is still existence of a gender gap in access of the internet. As Amarasekara and Granti (2018) note the lack of female communicators on different internet platforms such as YouTube reveals that despite the efforts made to ensure gender equality, the female gender still remains behind in terms of accessing the internet and using it appropriately for the purposes of learning. The researchers also note that the increased popularity of YouTube as an education platform where people produce content on various topics such as Mathematics and Science is dominated by the male gender showing that the female gender are not willing to go out and engage in the production of content on the internet CITATION Ama18 \l 1033 (Amarasekara & Grant, 2018). There are a number of factors contributing to this situation and one of them is culture. The society often has a number of gender stereotypes that are affecting the distribution of roles. In addition, most of the researchers do argue that in certain cultures traditionally, women would be denied access to technology for different reasons. This denial of access to technologies meant that men would dominate in the field of technology. However, in recent cases, there has been an increased involvement of women in the technological field. The technological companies are doing away with the gender stereotypes and assigning women roles in their companies. This is a great indicator of development in this field. Gender identity has also been observed to influence the employability of individuals in the science-related fields in the society. Cifre et al (2018) notes that the individuals who are more defined to be masculine would be oriented towards working in an environment that is in the public sphere and they are also perceived to be aggressive when seeking for the employment opportunities while the female gender would prefer to work in a private sphere. As Silverman (2001) discusses in Chapter 3 of the book The Gender and Science Reader, there are number of characteristics which are perceived to be masculine such as competitiveness and leadership that make it appropriate for the male gender to receive certain positions as compared to the female gender. The employers on their side also take the gender stereotypes into consideration when they are recruiting people for different positions CITATION Sil01 \l 1033 (Silverman, 2001). There are a number of job positions that they consider appropriate for the male gender while others are appropriate for the female gender. Researchers have also observed that in most cases when women are absorbed into ‘male perceived jobs’ they will change their behavior to make sure it matches the stereotypic male jobs that they are doing. The existence if the gender gap in employability often changes the way in which the young people are approaching the market while seeking employment opportunities. In the field of science, the male gender will have the perception of being employed in high paying positions with time while the female gender will have the perception of getting employed in a field that does not require them to be so aggressive. However, in most recent cases, there are efforts made by different groups to ensure gender equality. There are fewer instances where they have succeeded and the women are holding senior positions in the science field...