Gender as a Social Construct — Sanjaleen Prasad, 2015.

Using Anita Desai’s novel Fasting, Feasting, Prasad argues that gender roles are socially constructed rather than natural. The article examines how patriarchal institutions, family expectations, religion, media, and culture shape women’s identities, opportunities, and life choices.

1. Gender Is Socially Constructed, Not Biologically Determined

2. Patriarchal Societies Create and Enforce Gender Roles

3. Gender Socialization Begins in Childhood

4. Women Are Often Expected to Serve Men and Family

5. Culture, Religion, and Tradition Can Reinforce Women’s Subordination

6. Patriarchal Control Limits Women’s Freedom and Opportunities

7. Gender Construction Exists in Both Eastern and Western Societies

8. Media and Advertising Help Construct Gender Norms

9. Women Are Not Just Passive Victims

10. Gender Equality Requires Challenging Socially Constructed Assumptions

🧠 Conclusion

This article invites readers to see gender not as a fixed fact of nature, but as a social system that teaches people what men and women are supposed to be. ⭐ Through family expectations, religion, culture, media, and institutions, societies create rules about behavior, ambition, appearance, and responsibility.

Within this system, patriarchy refers to arrangements that place men in positions of greater authority while limiting women’s autonomy and opportunities. ⭐

Yet the article also shows that people are not merely products of the system—they can question, resist, and challenge it.

In this sense, the statement that “women are made, not born” means that womanhood is not simply a biological condition but a social identity continuously shaped by the world around us. ⭐

If you are a man or a woman, how much of who you are came from your biology—and how much was taught to you by your family, culture, religion, schools, media, and society? If gender is a social system, then perhaps the deepest question is not who were you born as, but who were you taught to become?