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Every society scripts gender differently
By the time a child is 12 to 18 months old, the child knows what a woman is supposed to do, what a man is supposed to do, and what tools each of them uses. The details of those assignments vary totally from one society to the next, which makes notions of gender very fluid.
Gender roles follow changing social structures, economies, and means of production, and across history no single definition holds of what work is expected from which person.
There was a time when a woman was not supposed to speak out loud or run. Men once had more freedom to show the soft side of their nature than they are given today.
How did Margaret Mead compare gender roles?
In her 1935 book Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, anthropologist Margaret Mead described three New Guinea peoples: the Arapesh, the Mundugumor, and the Tchambuli. She reported that each assigned a different temperament to men and women, and none matched the American pattern. Later anthropologists have debated her findings, but the book became a landmark in the study of gender across cultures.
When do children learn gender?
Developmental psychologists have found that children begin using gender labels and showing gender-typed toy preferences during their second year. By age three, most children can reliably sort people and objects by gender. Children keep absorbing these cues from parents, peers, books, and television through childhood.
How did Athens treat women's voices?
In classical Athens, respectable women were expected to stay out of public life. In the funeral oration that Thucydides attributes to Pericles in 431 BC, the greatest glory for women is to be least talked about among men. Athenian women could not vote or hold office.