Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Femininity
Summary
Femininity (also called womanliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with women and girls. Femininity can be understood as socially constructed, and there is also some evidence that some behaviors considered feminine are influenced by both cultural factors and biological factors. To what extent femininity is biologically or socially influenced is subject to debate. It is conceptually distinct from both the female biological sex and from womanhood, as all humans can exhibit feminine and masculine traits, regardless of sex and gender.
Traits traditionally cited as feminine include gracefulness, gentleness, empathy, humility, and sensitivity, though traits associated with femininity vary across societies and individuals, and are influenced by a variety of social and cultural factors.
Despite the terms femininity and masculinity being in common usage, there is little scientific agreement about what femininity and masculinity are. Among scholars, the concept of femininity has varying meanings.
Professor of English Tara Williams has suggested that modern notions of femininity in English-speaking society began during the medieval period at the time of the bubonic plague in the 1300s. Women in the Early Middle Ages were referred to simply within their traditional roles of maiden, wife, or widow. After the Black Death in England wiped out approximately half the population, traditional gender roles of wife and mother changed, and opportunities opened up for women in society. The words femininity and womanhood are first recorded in Chaucer around 1380.
In 1949, French intellectual Simone de Beauvoir wrote that "no biological, psychological or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society" and "one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman". The idea was picked up in 1959 by Canadian-American sociologist Erving Goffman and in 1990 by American philosopher Judith Butler, who theorized that gender is not fixed or inherent but is rather a socially defined set of practices and traits that have, over time, grown to become labelled as feminine or masculine.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Ontological neighbourhood
Related lectures (6)
Analyzing Masculinity in American Cinema
Explores masculinity in American cinema, focusing on gender, power dynamics, and hegemonic masculinity.
Understanding Personalities: Traits, Measures, and Evolution
Explores personalities, traits, and evolution, covering definitions, measures, biological bases, and gender differences.
Gender and Environment: Part II & Group Project
Explores gender differences in pro-environmental behaviors, eco-friendly product perceptions, and sustainable consumption, culminating in a group project on gender and environmental attitudes.
Related publications (4)
Rethinking student-teacher relationships in higher education: a multidimensional approach
Student-teacher relationships play an important role in both teacher and student experiences in higher education and have been found to be linked to learning, classroom management, and to student absenteeism. Although historically conceptualised in terms o ...
2021The Impact of Gender on Engineering Students’ Group Work Experiences
Roland John Tormey, Siara Ruth Isaac, Prisca Aeby, Mila Vukmirovic
Women remain significantly underrepresented in engineering education, a cultural milieu which is stereotypically seen as a masculine domain. Laboratory studies and some questionnaire-based studies suggest being numerically under- or overrepresented in stud ...
2019The Impact of Gender on Engineering Students' Group Work Experiences
Roland John Tormey, Siara Ruth Isaac, Prisca Aeby, Mila Vukmirovic
Women remain significantly underrepresented in engineering education, a cultural milieu which is stereotypically seen as a masculine domain. Laboratory studies and some questionnaire-based studies suggest being numerically under- or overrepresented in stud ...
TEMPUS PUBLICATIONS2019Related concepts (37)
Masculinity
Masculinity (also called manhood or manliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles associated with men and boys. Masculinity can be theoretically understood as socially constructed, and there is also evidence that some behaviors considered masculine are influenced by both cultural factors and biological factors. To what extent masculinity is biologically or socially influenced is subject to debate. It is distinct from the definition of the biological male sex, as anyone can exhibit masculine traits.
Social construction of gender
The social construction of gender is a theory in sociology about the manifestation of cultural origins, mechanisms, and corollaries of gender perception and expression in the context of interpersonal and group social interaction. Specifically, the social construction of gender theory stipulates that gender roles are an achieved "status" in a social environment, which implicitly and explicitly categorize people and therefore motivate social behaviors.
Transgender
A transgender person (often abbreviated to trans person) is someone whose gender identity differs from that typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth. Many experience gender dysphoria, which they may seek to alleviate through transitioning, often adopting a different name and set of pronouns in the process. They may pursue gender affirming care such as hormone replacement therapy and various gender-affirming surgeries. Not all transgender people desire these treatments and others may be unable to access them for financial, medical or legal reasons.