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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 5 page research paper that examines the concepts of gender in Arapesh society. The writer first defines gender and then discusses how the Arapesh, a native people of Papua New Guinea view gender roles. The writer argues that while the Arapesh, on the surface, appear to have few gender distinctions, secret male rituals are an intrinsic part of their culture. Bibliography lists 5 sources.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_kharap.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
thirty New Guinea peoples listed in the Ethnographic Atlas and are perhaps the better known to Western audiences than almost any other Melanesian people (Roscoe, 1994). The following examination of
the Arapesh people will concentrate on their conception of gender. However, before exploring how the Arapesh see male and female societal roles, it is clarifying to define precisely what is
meant by "gender" and how this differs from "sex." Although "sex" and "gender" are often used interchangeably in the media, these terms of two distinctly different meanings. "Sex" refers
to biological functions. Sex dictates that only men can be fathers; only women can give birth. "Gender" refers to the connotations that each culture attaches to the sexes, i.e. what
a particular culture regards as "proper" behavior for men and women. Each culture, no matter its degree of sophistication, tends to look on its own cultural gender roles as
"natural" or inherent. However, if this were the case, it would be logical to expect gender roles to be uniform throughout the globe and this is not the
case. Gender roles differ in their construction from culture to culture (Holme, 1972). As this suggests, while biological roles are preset, the cultural evidence argues that gender is completely a
social construction. For example, in the US, it is generally believed that women are more emotional then men. The societal concept of the female gender assigns girls and women
this attribute. However, in Iran, it is the men who are considered to be "naturally" more emotionally. Iran is a patriarchal country-men are definitely the dominant gender-yet in this culture
women are considered to be the coldly practical sex, while emotionality is considered to be a trait of the masculine gender (Holme, 1972). The people of this culture inevitably live
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