THE ROLE OF GENDER IN CULTURAL TRANSMISSION

Societies exist around a certain culture, which contains all the accumulations acquired in the historical course of a society. Thus, all societies are disposed to continue the cultural elements they present corporately. There are many factors providing the continuance of these cultural elements. The most important one of them is gender roles. The purpose of this study is to seek an answer to the question of “What is the role of gender in cultural transmission?” Although there are some studies about culture and gender in cultural research in Turkey, the studies revealing the relationship between culture and gender are limited. Therefore, qualitative in nature, this study evaluates the relationship between culture and gender roles, with reference to social interaction approach of the theory of symbolic interaction and women’s status and their relationships with men in terms of a sociocultural view according to institutive approach – one of the feminist theories. In addition, social learning theory, which is a social-behavioral approach, has been employed to explain how the individual has roles and behaviors related to these roles