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The study of the role of women in the society of early medieval England, or Anglo-Saxon England, is a topic which includes literary, history and gender studies.Important figures in the history of studying early medieval women include Christine Fell, and Pauline Stafford.
Conduct books from the period present an image of the role of elite women being to obey their spouse, guard their virtue, produce offspring, and to oversee the operation of the household. For those women who did adhere to these traditional roles, the responsibilities could be considerable, with households sometimes including dozens of people.
[5] [6] [7] Gender roles can be linked with essentialism, the idea that humans have a set of attributes that are necessary to their identity based on their gender. Sociologists tend to use the term "gender role" instead of "sex role", because the sociocultural understanding of gender is distinguished from biological conceptions of sex. [8]
As in earlier centuries, most women worked in agriculture, but here roles became more clearly gendered, with ploughing and managing the fields defined as men's work, for example, and dairy production becoming dominated by women. [7] [8] In medieval times, women had responsibility for brewing and selling the ale that men all drank.
Sexologist John Money coined the term gender role in 1955. The term gender role is defined as the actions or responses that may reveal their status as boy, man, girl or woman, respectively. [44] Elements surrounding gender roles include clothing, speech patterns, movement, occupations, and other factors not limited to biological sex.
Another theory of gender socialization, discussed by Susan McHale, is that the gender roles and attitudes of older siblings can impact the gender roles adopted by younger children. Throughout the findings of McHale's study, it is maintained that parents still have the most familial influence on childhood socialization. [28]
Little is known about gender roles in various ancient societies, but there is often an asymmetrical approach when depicting male and female roles in these societies. There are instances where male archaeologists have depicted the role of males of ancient times by mirroring present-day gender roles.
Gender is used as a means of describing the distinction between the biological sex and socialized aspects of femininity and masculinity. [9] According to West and Zimmerman, gender is not a personal trait; it is "an emergent feature of social situations: both as an outcome of and a rationale for various social arrangements, and as a means of legitimating one of the most fundamental divisions ...