How do gender roles play a role in how we study human beings and how they think?

Gender roles are an important factor as to how humans are studied. For many years, women were deemed biologically and intellectually inferior to their male counterparts. This led to women not being able to attend universities and hold the same job positions as men. Now gender roles are less strictly defined but they still do exist. Women are perceived as caretakers and nurturers and are said to be more sensitive. When younger girls observe their mothers displaying such characters, they themselves begin to exhibit them. Men are supposed to be the tough and defending heads of the family. It is deemed "not manly" for a man to display his feelings and this further enhances the idea of gender roles. Because such traits are exhibited, men and women are treated differently in experiments and are considered to be two different subjects. Some experiments even separate men and women because they are expected to react differently.

(Charline)