Gender as a Social Construct Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The statement that challenges gender stereotypes is Women are responsible bus drivers.

A stereotype fixes people into one image: here, that women are emotional, fashion conscious or naturally nurturing, and that jobs such as driving buses belong to men. Showing women as responsible bus drivers breaks the assumption that such work is men's work.

The other three statements repeat common stereotypes about women rather than challenging them.

Answer: D

The strategy helps to counter gender stereotypes.

Stories and newspaper clippings that show women as pilots or scientists and men as nurses or homemakers challenge the fixed ideas children absorb about what men and women can do. Seeing such examples widens their sense of possible roles and is a recommended practice for gender-sensitive classrooms.

It does the opposite of promoting gender bias or encouraging stereotypical roles. Gender constancy is a stage in a child's development, the understanding that one's sex stays the same over time and situations; classroom materials are not meant to promote it, and non-traditional roles are not about it.

Answer: C

It is an example of gender bias in teaching.

Classroom research has found that teachers, often without realising it, call on boys more, give them more feedback and praise, and tolerate more interruptions from them. This unequal interaction reflects assumptions about gender rather than any real difference in what boys and girls need or can do, and it can lower girls' participation and confidence.

The other options try to justify the imbalance with stereotypes: that boys are more capable academically, need more attention, or are easier to manage. None is supported by evidence, and believing them is itself a form of gender bias.

Answer: B

Both (A) and (R) are true but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A).

The Assertion is sound: teachers' own attitudes and biases shape how they treat children, so reflective teachers keep examining them. The Reason is also true: functional fixedness, seeing an object only in its usual use, is a well-known barrier to problem solving.

But the two statements are about different things. Functional fixedness concerns problem solving, not teachers' biases towards children, so the Reason does not explain the Assertion.

Answer: A

Such generalisations are gender stereotypes.

A gender stereotype is a fixed, oversimplified belief about how people of a particular gender behave or should behave, for example that girls are not good at mathematics or that boys do not cry.

Gender discrimination is unequal treatment based on gender, gender identity is one's own sense of one's gender, and gender typing is the process by which children acquire behaviours considered appropriate for their gender.

Answer: D

The gender neutral situations are (b) and (d).

A gender neutral atmosphere is one in which tasks are not assigned by gender stereotypes. Boys volunteering in the annual function (b) and boys arranging refreshments for guests (d) are both doing work that is often given to girls, such as hospitality and helping, so these situations show roles not tied to gender.

Girls making rangoli (a) and girls preparing for a dance competition (c) are activities stereotypically linked with girls. They are not wrong in themselves, but they reinforce rather than break the usual gender roles, so options built on them are not the answer.

Answer: C

The Assertion is true but the Reason is false.

Adolescence brings gender intensification: pressure from peers, family and media to conform to expectations of femininity or masculinity grows during these years, so the Assertion holds.

The Reason is false. Sex is biological, but gender and gender roles are socially constructed, learned through socialisation and varying across cultures and times. Because they are not biologically fixed, the Reason cannot be accepted, which rules out the two options calling it true and the option calling both false.

Answer: A

The key gives gender-neutral policy for the National Rural Health Mission, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the Right to Education Act. They are meant for everyone and do not treat men and women differently.

I could not confirm the classification from a source. A gender-specific policy is directed at one gender, a gender-blind policy ignores gender, and a gender-centric policy centres on gender.

Answer: A

The Gender and Development (GAD) approach addresses the inequalities between women and men in their social roles, relations, conditions, organisations and cultures. Women in Development (WID) looks at integrating women into existing development but does not question the social relations between the sexes. Patriarchy and matriarchy are systems of male or female dominance, not approaches to development.

The Gender and Development approach looks at the relations between men and women and not only at women, and so asks for changes in social structures.