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Former featured articleGender role is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on January 17, 2005.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
July 19, 2004Featured article candidatePromoted
May 18, 2006Featured article reviewDemoted
Current status: Former featured article

Not enough attention to how they changed over history.

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Please see this[1] Doug Weller talk 20:08, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Stereotypes of men" listed at Redirects for discussion

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The redirect Stereotypes of men has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 July 3 § Stereotypes of men until a consensus is reached. Thepharoah17 (talk) 05:19, 3 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Major theorists requires attention

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The four people chosen to represent the § Major theorists in the article are: Talcott Parsons, John Money, West and Zimmerman, and Geert Hofstede. In a field with a large number of scholars with serious contributions to the theory, this seem somewhat arbitrary, although you could make a good case for the first three. The choice of Hofstede seems especially iffy, as his focus was on cultural studies. Other scholars are more known for their contributions to the field than he is, starting with Margaret Mead, Simone de Beauvoir, Michel Foucault, Ann Oakley, Judith Butler, Gayle Rubin, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and many others. Mathglot (talk) 22:42, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've blanked the section on Hofstede as irrelevant to the topic. Besides that, the entire section, including all six primary citations to Hofstede, was pure original research and direct interpretation of his work by SPS anon editor 108.48.83.31 who created the section in these 3 edits on 18 December 2012 (diff), followed by slight modifications by Tpylkkö in these 4 edits on 20 December. I will add brief sections on Beauvoir and Butler as a start to improving the § Major theorists section. Mathglot (talk) 17:59, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Lead needs rewrite

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The lead is supposed to summarize the key points of the article. Currently, entire sections are not mentioned in the lead at all, such as the § Major theorists, but also pretty much the whole body except for the section on culture. Mathglot (talk) 18:17, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Primary sources

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There is excessive reliance on primary sources. Following is a list of 140 journal articles cited in the article, as of rev. 1300978150 of 5 July 2025:

Citations in Gender role to journal articles
By last name of first author; some citations have been reordered to faciliate alphabetization.

Secondary sources are to be preferred according to our policy on WP:No original research. Journal articles may be primary or secondary; for example, systematic overviews and literature reviews are secondary, but they are the minority; see e.g., Chalabaev-2013, Diamond-1997, Santoniccolo-2023 (there may be others). Hopefully, this list may be used as a starting point to determine the scope of the problem in this article. Mathglot (talk) 19:01, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Article in need of re-org and rework

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The more I look at this article, the more I think the whole article, not just the lead, needs a rewrite. There should be a 'Terminology' section near the top of the article, either as the first section, or possibly second (after § Background), giving Money's original definition, and the shift to its current meaning as a societal behavioral expectation, as well as other, gender-related terms (expression, identity, etc.) Next, the largest section, and probably key section of the article, should be called, 'Femiminity and masculinity', but instead we don't have a section on it at all. (In the body, the word femininity occurs three times in section § In sports, once in § Gender roles in family violence, and nowhere else. Fwiw, masculinity occurs seven times in the body, six in Sports, and once in family violence.)

Another major problem, is that the article uses the term gender role in an inconsistent and confusing manner, reflecting, perhaps, the public confusion about it; however, that confusion should never have made it into a Wikipedia article. Sometimes it is used correctly and well, as in the § Background section, which does a very good job of explaining the term and differentiating it from related terms. In other sections, such as § Biological factors, usage seem confused or at least ambiguous. What are we to make of the second line of that section:

Although research indicates that biology plays a role in gendered behavior, the extent of its effects on gender roles is less clear.

Huh? That seems to use gender roles as a synonym for gender behavior in the second clause, to avoid the repetition which would be caused by phrasing it thus:

Although research indicates that biology plays a role in gendered behavior, the extent of its effects on gendered behavior is less clear.

The second is undoubtedly an accurate statement at present, and this is no time to engage in elegant variation merely for the sake of avoiding repetition, especially if it results in the top version, which is misleading in the extreme. Or, did they really mean to word the top one that way, because, as the first sentence of that section (not shown) says, historically, that is what people thought. If so, we are introducing historical, popular misconceptions into a Wikipedia article, and doing so in a topic where the terminology is tricky and needs careful handling. Is that what they are doing? Let's look at the next sentence:

One hypothesis attributes differences in gender roles to evolution.

Okay, that is wacky, now we know either that the editor who wrote that equates gender role to the meaning of gendered behavior, or is unaware of the distinction and while some uses later in the section are correct, others are not, and the whole thing is a big mess that leaves you guessing, and god help a reader unfamiliar with the topic trying to learn something from it. Imho, the entire section § Biological factors has to be thrown out and rewritten from scratch as hopelessly confused, as were the editors who wrote it—unless they were just trying to do us a favor with elegant variation and it all went horribly wrong. I don't know how many other sections betray the same confusion (hopefully none) but if they do, there may be a lot of work needed to bring this up to snuff. Mathglot (talk) 05:50, 18 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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