Ideas of appropriate behaviour according to gender vary among cultures and era, although some aspects receive more widespread attention than others. An interesting case is described by R.W. Connell in Men, Masculinities and Feminism:
"There are cultures where it has been normal, not exceptional, for
men to have homosexual relations. There have been periods in 'Western'
history when the modern convention that men suppress displays of emotion
did not apply at all, when men were demonstrative about their feeling
for their friends. Mateship in the Australian outback last century is
a case in point."
Other aspects, however, may differ markedly with time and place. In pre-industrial
Europe, for example, the practice of medicine (other than midwifery) was
generally seen as a male prerogative. However, in Russia health care was
more often seen as a feminine role. The results of these views can still
be seen in modern society, where European medicine is most often practiced
by men, while the majority of Russian doctors are women.
In many other cases, the elements of convention or tradition seem to play a dominant role in deciding which occupations fit in with which gender roles. In the United States, physicians have traditionally been men, and the few people who defied that expectation received a special job description: "woman doctor". Similarly, we have special terms like "male nurse", "woman lawyer", "lady barber", "male secretary," etc. But in China and the former Soviet Union countries, medical doctors are predominantly women, and in the United Kingdom and Taiwan it is very common for all of the barbers in a barber shop to be women.
For example, in the Western society, people whose gender appears masculine and whose inferred and/or verified external genitalia are male are often criticised and ridiculed for exhibiting what the society regards as a woman's gender role. For instance, someone with a masculine voice, a four o'clock shadow if not a beard, an Adam's apple, etc., wearing a woman's dress and high heels, carrying a purse, etc., would most likely draw ridicule or other unfriendly attention in ordinary social contexts (the stage and screen excepted). It is seen by some in that society that such a gender role for a man is not acceptable. This, and other societies, impose expectations on the behaviour of the members of society, and specifically on the gender roles of individuals, resulting in prescriptions regarding gender roles.
It should be noted that some societies are comparatively rigid in their expectations, and other societies are comparatively permissive. Some of the gender signals that form part of a gender role and indicate one's gender identity to others are quite obvious, and others are so subtle that they are transmitted and received out of ordinary conscious awareness.
Transgendered and intersexed people
As long as a person's perceived physiological sex is consistent with that
person's gender identity the gender role of a person is so much a matter
of course in a stable society that people rarely even think of it. Only
in cases where, for whatever reason, an individual adopts a gender role
that is inconsistent with his or her perceived gender identity will the
matter draw attention. When an individual exhibits a gender role that
is discordant with his or her gender identity, it is most often done to
deliberately provoke a sense of incongruity and a humorous reaction to
the attempts of a person of one sex to pass himself or herself off as
a member of the opposite sex. People can find much entertainment in observing
the exaggerations or the failures to get nuances of an unfamiliar gender
role right.
Not entertaining, but usually highly problematic, however, are cases wherein the external genitalia of a person, that person's perceived gender identity, and/or that person's gender role are not consistent. People naturally, but too easily, assume that if a person has a penis, scrotum, etc., then that person is chromosomally male (i.e., that person has one X chromosome and one Y chromosome), and that the person, in introspection, feels like a male. Nature is much more inventive than our language and system of traditional concepts allow.
