Abstract
AbstractBoth gender and narrative are foundational to the ways in which humans engage in meaning-making. Arguing from evolutionary, psychological and feminist theoretical perspectives, we posit that narratives and gender are culturally mediated mutually constituted meaning-making systems: Narratives are defined through gender and gender is defined through narrative. To contextualise this argument, we define ‘narrative’ and ‘gender’ and review the extant literature on how gender is expressed in culturally mediated master narratives and how narratives are performed differently by women and men. Our core argument is that the very act of narrating is a gendered activity that constructs, represents and narrates gender as a primary category of human existence, and these fundamentally gendered ways of narrating then construct, define and reify gendered ways of being in the world.
Highlights
We argue that narrative and gender are core components of creating meaning in human lives, and, perhaps more provocatively, that narratives and gender are mutually constituted meaning-making systems: Narratives are defined through gender and gender is defined through narrative
We have shown that both master narratives and narrative performance differ by gender
By examining how culturally canonical master narratives and everyday narrative performance explicitly and implicitly construct, and are constructed by, gender, we have shown that gendered identities are created through narrative processes
Summary
Master narratives of gender explicitly create stereotyped gendered life expectations. The traditional narrative was only moderately more endorsed by college men than women for themselves, but emerging adults of both genders perceived their parents to more commonly endorse traditional gendered expectations around motherhood and caregiving This may represent sociohistorical change, this finding might be a function of developmental stage, as research shows that both men and women become more gender typical with age and parenthood (Endendijk et al 2018). Rogers (2020) found in structured interviews that 7- to 12-year-old children mostly endorsed traditional narratives of gender, but simultaneously expressed counter or alternative narratives, suggesting that children are struggling with culturally canonical and alternative narratives of gender and, possibly, even that social and historical changes may be influencing evolving master narratives of gender in multiple ways. It does seem that master narratives that define gender and gendered lives are evolving to be more fluid, culturally canonical traditional master narratives of gender continue to impose certain ways of constructing gender in individual life narratives
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