The phrase doing gender refers to the connotation that gender is a
social construct. This is where Judith Lorber’s article, “Night to His Day: The
Social Construction of Gender,” written in the mid-90s comes into play. It
highlights ways in which people do gender every day. From the jobs people work
at to the colours people wear, to what colour is revealed at a gender reveal
party, my belief is that people have been brainwashed by society to believe
that from the day you were born you have been put into a box – a box of
believing that wearing a certain piece of clothing or applying for a certain
job may make you seem more masculine than feminine and vice versa.
In different parts of the globe, doing gender may be demonstrated in different ways. In Saudi Arabia women were only recently allowed to drive. That was a crime that was punishable with years in prison. It wasn’t till 2018 that women were finally allowed the same privilege as men to operate a vehicle. This is a more extreme example of doing gender.
To the Saudi Arabian government driving was seen as a more masculine activity and because the people in power were doing gender the rest of the country were forced to do the same. People don’t know how much doing gender can really impact society. “Gender boundaries are breachable and individual and socially organised shifts from one gender to another call attention to ‘cultural, social, or aesthetic dissonances. These odd or deviant or third genders show us what we ordinarily take for granted that people have to learn to be women and men”, Lorber states |||READ MORE
