Gender Inequality and Social Pressure: Analysis on the Life Satisfaction Survey of the Turkish Statistical Institute

Gender is one of the basic features that characterizes human beings, and when gender is mentioned, the first thing that comes to our minds is biological sex. However, the concept of social gender includes much more than innate male and female biological characteristics. Society constructs social gender on top of biological sex. It shapes the two genders by assigning them social duties, roles, and forms of behavior, and it criticizes and directs the genders regarding their attire, behavior, what’s considered normal or abnormal for them, what is expected from them, and what they will be held accountable for. Thus, the two sexes, which are born as equals, stop being equal as a result of the roles determined by society and the duties and responsibilities imposed by it, and gender inequality thus emerges. Furthermore, this disrupts equality to the detriment of women. It is seen that the public sphere is taken as a reference while trying to define the social existence, identity, and actions of women. In many ways, such as attire, behavior, attitude, etc. the public sphere is where women are exposed to much more social pressures and limitations than men. These limitations and pressures cause them to feel that they are under social pressure, from their clothing to their speech and mimics, from their behavior to their socialization. Moreover, the social pressure that women are exposed to is not only from men. It comes from the general society, and therefore, the pressures and limitations in question have a social character. This study aims to analyze the relationship between the demographic characteristics of individuals, especially gender, and the social pressure that individuals feel in terms of social gender and marital status using the logistic regression models, based on the Microdataset of the Turkish Statistical Institute, Life Satisfaction Research 2019. As a result of the analysis, it has been determined that women are exposed to social pressure at a much higher rate than men regarding their gender, marital status, and attire. This situation can be accepted as an indicator of gender inequality between men and women.