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Gender Role
Gender roles, according to Berkowitz, are an acceptance of social construction as it pertains to gender and the roles we perform. Sociological discourse holds the significance of teaching social construction as it pertains to gender, rather than simply “doing gender” and being hopeful that generations will gain perspective on this socially constructed lens. “The gender order is hierarchal in that, overall, men dominate women in terms of power and privilege; yet multiple and conflicting sources of power and oppression are intertwined, and not all men dominate all women. Intersectionality theorizes how gender intersects with race, ethnicity, social class, sexuality, and nation in variegated and situationally contingent ways” (Berkowitz 133).

The constructionism of gender and stereotyped roles can be examined through a given environment. A certain gendered patriarchy turns abstraction into material reality. This reality is negotiated into each interaction we have. For example, based on a simulation discussed in “Walk Like a Man, Talk Like a Woman”, the simulation used “demonstrates the social constructiveness of gender, maintaining that gender should be conceptualized and portrayed as a process, system of stratification, and social structure” (Berkowitz 1). The perceptions of the social world in which these students view the world around them is as an “objective reality rather than as a product of human interaction and interpretation that is institutionalized and transformed over time” (Berkowitz 1). One of the most powerful notions that this simulation encourages is teaching from a constructionist perspective that requires instructors to “challenge perceptions by requiring students to unpack the “hows and whys” of sociological phenomena” (Berkowitz 1).

Gender as Accomplishment
Our realities are constructed, socially and culturally, through everyday life. Through scientific research, theorizing, and sociological studies, we can never know entirely what it means to be a woman or a man. “All knowledge is new grounded in the everyday social construction of a world of two genders where gender attribution, rather than ‘gender’ differentiation, is what concerns those who fear change. With the courage to confront, understand, and redefine our incorrigible propositions, we can begin to discover new scientific knowledge and to construct new realities in everyday life” (Kessler 181).