Family, school, religious institutions, and media forged certain ideas, beliefs, and norms on how each gender should act, behave, and processed within a normal social constitution. all the rules learned within the family gets the same support from school and media and make it look normal to everyone. ”Gender/ sex difference sexist because of larger social forces, particularly institutions and the communication that exists within and between them.”
for example, a woman should be a nurturer and men should be the housemaster. all these institutions support the same idea so it makes it normal and if it’s questioned it becomes a taboo. The fear of being rejected from a certain society make us weak individuals who can’t make their own decision from choosing their clothing, lifestyle because of the influence of the society, the capitalism, and the advertisement that shapes our mind to think that if I’m wearing certain designer jean or bag I will look and feel confident, and therefore attract more friends and family member’s admiration.” Gender is created, not just within families or interpersonal relationships but also within the structure of all major social institutions, including schools, religion, the economy, and the state….These institutions shape and mold the experiences of us all. (p.30; italics in original).
The co-existence of the micropolitics,macropolitics, and the mesopolitics in the society and their influence throughout all the institutions like school, work, religious places makes it impossible to break free from this gender bias and from the systematic inequalities. For example the existence of the systemic sexism that forged the idea that women pay more for their items that men and even for car services and maintenance. I remember that I used to go to a mechanic to fix my car and I feel that I was in his place every other week fixing something just because I had no clues about cars and of course he was charging me more than he did when my husband came and argued with him the charged and of course he did adjust them.
one must dig deep down our social institution and try to erase the ideas of gender and sex, like the idea of hegemony that reflects the dominance of one sex over the other in the social institution. For example when the woman gets married she needs to take her husband’s name. When I got married I was against this idea because it made me feel like I have to erase who I’m as a person. After all, my name represents me so I choose to keep my name, maybe that this can seems strange but this was my way of keeping my identity as a complete woman.
The manifestation of racial, gender, and sexual orientation micro-aggressions chapter was very interesting to me. I have certainly felt and lived difficult situations where I was discriminate either because I was an Arabic woman, a mother of two that need to take care of her kids instead of working and going to school, or even when parking my car where most people think that men have more training and expertise in parking cars than women. Sometimes I chose to ignore them and move on and sometimes I had to react nicely and responded that I’m a woman who seeks more knowledge to educate herself and be a good support for her children’s future educationally and financially.
Micro-aggressions can be based on different factors from gender, race, social class, sexual orientation, social group, or religion. Our society holds a lot off micro-aggressions toward a lot of people intentionally or unintentionally, for example, the racial micro-aggression in the death of George Floyd and the debate of Black Life Matter and their suffering just because of their skin color. second, the gender micro-aggressions where women and men are treated in the work placed based on their sex rather than their merit. we rarely see a nurse men because it’s reserved for women who are nurturer based on their sex, on the other hand, the president and C.E.O job are more for men because they are considered to have the power and the knowledge to lead. Third, we see the micro-aggressions toward a marginal social group like Spanish, Muslim,poor, gay, lesbian, bisexual because they represent a small portion of the population and look at strangers and different.
Micro-aggressions are omi-present and will still be as long as we treat whoever is different as a minority and with inequality instead of opening our door and mind to learn from them . Liberty, equality is what our constitution is built on, and if we follow these fundamentals we can reach a peaceful ,unique,and a homogeneous society.
