What does breaking gender stereotyping mean?

Answer 1

Answer 1: "Gender" refers to whether a person is male or female. Examples: "Female" is Jane's gender; "male" is Jim's gender.

"Stereotyping" means to presume that something is true about person because he or she is part of a larger group about which certain things are believed or assumed. While stereotyping may involve prejudice, prejudice is not necessary for stereotyping to occur. Stereotypes are standardized and simplified conceptions of groups, or persons in them, based on prior beliefs or assumptions. Example: If Tony is Italian, and from New York, then some people might assume that he might have connections with the Mafia (organized crime; the Cosa Nostra; the "mob"). That's a stereotype... and likely an unfair one... and one that some might consider prejudicial, even pejorative: That italian males from New York are somehow involved with the mob.

To break a stereotype, then, means to somehow show that the assumption and image of the stereotype isn't true; to be an example of the stereotype being wrong or false. For example, if the aforementioned Tony becomes a priest, or a police officer, then that would help to break the stereotype, at least in his particular case.

A typical gender stereotype would be, for example, that women can't be as good in the workplace as men; and so they shouldn't earn as much money as men, even when they do the same job and work as men. A woman who does just as well as (or better than) men in the same job and doing the same work as men (and who is hopefully paid the same as men) effectively breaks that stereotype.

Answer 2

Women wear dresses. A man wearing a dress would be breaking a gender stereotype.