Hi, I'm Julie Tietz. And welcome to Conflict Resolution, Putting The Pieces Together. Today we're going to talk about conflicts that can occur over changes in gender roles. The first thing that we have to know is that our culture assigns specific roles and traits according to our gender.
But these roles and traits that are assigned to our gender aren't static. And so they can change over time. And we see that a lot within our culture and our gender and gender assigned roles and traits. And sometimes these changes within our own culture are not universal. So not everybody believes in these changes that are occurring over time according to our gender roles and gender assigned traits.
And when there is some people or individuals that don't like the changes, a conflict can occur. And some members will resist the change. And this is because they are feeling that it's inappropriate or maybe that they are going to lose something or challenging their beliefs. And it's really outside of their comfort zone. And our comfort zone is the situations and feelings that we are accustomed to.
And so any sort of change that happens within gender roles or traits within our culture is going outside of our comfort zone. And we don't really like that feeling. Or some individuals don't like that feeling. And this creates cognitive dissonance, so where we are holding in our mind two or more incompatible thoughts.
So in terms of gender, we have been known in our culture that a specific gender is assigned to a specific role. That's how it's been. But now we see that changing. And our mind doesn't know how to deal with it. So we have to figure out a way in which we can balance it out. And that feeling is really uncomfortable for some people.
Let's look at some examples on changing gender roles within culture. So when we change these gender roles over time, conflict can occur within that culture. And let's use, for example, women in the military. For the longest time in the United States men have been in the military, and they have been soldiers. But now that has changed. And there are plenty and a lot of women that are enlisted and working within the military.
And so those that are having a difficult time with that change may view that that job is not appropriate for a woman, because they can't do the job effectively. They don't have those traits that are needed to work in the military. Only men have those traits. And so we can see a conflict within the culture here.
Similarly, with male nurses. Women, typically, were nurses. But now we know that there are plenty of men working as nurses in hospitals and clinics and other various health care places. And women are thought to be the ones that are nurturing and comforting. And men are supposed to be stoic and not emotional. Well in nursing, we know that that's a comfort role. And so here we have that cognitive dissonance again on how we can reconcile this between our old cultural norms around gender versus the new ones that are changing.
Another example could be women wearing pants. For the longest time in, the United States women did not wear pants they wore skirts. And that has changed over time.
And again, men showing emotion. For the longest time, we thought that men are only supposed to be stoic, and they cannot show emotion. But now we are seeing more images throughout society, whether that's in movies or advertising or even with our own social groups, it's becoming more common for men to be able to show emotion. But we're not quite there yet. I think there is still a lot of hang ups on men showing emotion and crying. And so here we are having that, again, cognitive dissonance and maybe creating some conflict here along the way when we are trying to change our gender roles within our culture.
Here are key points here on conflict over gender role changes. We know that gender roles and traits within culture are not static and they can change over time. And when change occurs, we can create conflict within cultures because people are being pushed outside of their comfort zone and are feeling anxious and may perceive these changes as potential loss of privilege and power, and role associated with their gender and that specific change.
Here are your key terms before we go. Feel free to pause and look at them a little bit closer. Thank you so much for taking the time out to view this. I hope that you've learned something. And I can't wait to catch you again next time.