Violate a Gender Norm

When thinking about some gender roles, my group came up with some ideas of male gender roles, since we only had women in our group. We came up with men holding the door open for women, wearing baggy pants, the fairytales where the price swoops in to save the damsel in distress, and lifting weights, push-ups, or other signs of strength. All of these are things that in our society are seen as a man’s role and could be questionable if a woman attempts to do it.

For our group experiment, we decided to hold the door open for numerous different people to see how they reacted to a woman opening the door for them. We feel that this is a strongly male role because men are seen as the protectors of women. They try to help with anything and everything; even something as simple as opening the door for women. Some might say that it is in a guy’s nature to feel the need to help out the “weaker gender” and show that they are strong and still caring.

We decided that to complete this experiment, we would go to one of the buildings on our campus and simply hold the door open for different people. With certain people, the violator felt awkward, but for other people, it seemed fine. The first person who came up to the door was an older gentleman, probably a professor. When one of the girls in our group went and opened the door for him, he showed obvious surprise. He took a step back and was going to let her pass, and then moved through the door to hold it for her to go through. When she just stood there and smiled, letting him pass, he said thank you and continued walking, but looked back a few times as he left. The next person we tested was a college aged girl. She gave the violator a weird look and also looked back as she walked away, but still smiled and said thank you. When I was attempting the experiment, I held the door for a college aged boy on crutches. He showed no surprise, but instead it seemed like he appreciated it and smiled and thanked me as he walked in without a second glance back. The last test we did was on a group of people. One member of our group help the door open and the people coming out, opened and walked out of every other door around her and stared at her as if she were strange. Some of them glared, some looked confused, and other just started laughing.

From this experiment, we came up with the conclusion that it depends on who you are dealing with for whether or not an activity is weird. When it came to the guy on crutches, he didn’t care whether we were guys or girls, he just appreciated the fact that he didn’t have to try to open the door himself. With the older gentleman, it seemed like he had a strong desire to take over and hold the door open for the women, rather than have her hold it for him. The college girl just seemed confused that we were holding the door for her, and the group wanted nothing to do it and did everything in their power to avoid the door that was being held. This is important to society because it shows how acceptable tasks have changed over the years. The older gentleman was raised in a time when it was proper for the man to hold the door for the woman, it confused or annoyed the college students, showing that it is still seen as a guy’s job and not exactly normal for a woman to hold the door. This still shows a little bit of inequality towards women. We are still seen as the weaker gender, but that is slowly diminishing and a change is happening. Women are gaining more authority and showing that they don’t need men to do everything for them and that they are capable as well.