GENDER ROLE SOCIALIZATION IN EDUCATION AND WORK



The other theory is the Gender Role Socialization; where Mead (1935) provided one of the classical theories on the gender gap in education and work on his analysis of the extraordinary diversity of sex roles in our own (particular culture) and other cultures. Every known society, he states, recognizes some differences between the sexes, but there are unique characteristic tasks, manners, and responsibilities primarily associated with women or with men.  In her own analysis of gender role socialization, Ezumah (2001) refers to this as that through which the ideas people have about masculinity and femininity are inculcated.


Socialization is an on-going process of social learning, which starts at infancy and continues till adulthood. Due to this gender role socialization, boys and girls have different experiences as they grow in their families. This situation is often manifested in the type of toys, duties and responsibilities that are normally assigned to boys and girls. In most cases girls are reared to have domestic orientation; they undertake the activities connected with cooking, clearing, washing of clothes, fetching of water and firewood and looking after the younger siblings. Consequent upon this is that the kind of values inculcated in girls influence their out look in life; inequality in terms of the first component (inequality of persons) is established in the family when girls and women do most of the domestic chores, the male superiority is being established. These  male/female segregated roles  influence the second  component of inequality (inequality of opportunity). This then manifests in :

i.                    opportunity to go to school;
ii.                 whether girls drop out of school to work in farms or to start trading and;
iii.               whether girls are encouraged to have early marriage and these opportunities provided lead them into the kind of job they do like quarry mining which has big health implications.


The unequal position of women which could be explained in the case of African women in the rural areas go a long way  in explaining  the unequal opportunities provided for them. The second component  of  inequality which is based on opportunities outside the home now put the rural women in an unskilled position, then introducing them to the only job they could do that exist around them. And now with the existence of quarry mine, she is faced with the associated implications of participating in such job. The rural Ebonyi women  could in the light of this situation be viewed in the tedious work they do in the mine, unchecked work hours, subsistence wage, exploitations  in various degrees which jeopardizes their well-being.
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