Reproducibility of Gender Stereotypes: An Autoethnographic Account

Pages: 152-158
Savy Singh and Ishita U. Bharadwaj (Department of Psychology, University of Delhi, Delhi)

The present research work emanates from an autoethnographic tradition and is an attempt to explore the mechanisms of reproducibility of gender stereotypes in the life events of the researcher. The ontological and epistemological assumptions of the present work unfold into the paradigm of social constructionism. The data procuring modalities are the personal narratives of the researcher collected over a period of time. Reflexive Thematic Analysis Framework is applied for Data Analysis. The conceptualized themes include the vicious cycle of self-consciousness, self-sanctioning to prove group allegiance, Identity as an adaptation to socio-cultural and historical context and education as means of producing better home makers amongst others. They represent how mostly unconsciously and sometimes even consciously we opt to act in accordance with these stereotypes. The implications of the present work lie in generating awareness about the underlying mechanisms and curbing the resulting discriminatory practices from the same.