Young Males, Modern Society, and Drug Use Essay -- Essays Papers

Young Males, Modern Society, and Drug Use To understand the use of drugs by young men and to review the literature in a coherent framework it is necessary to begin with an understanding of the term 'gender'. Gender is said to mean more than just male or female. Rather it is a description of the traits and attributes which society ascribes to each sex. Gender is distinguished from sex in that sex refers to biology, whereas gender refers to the cultural meanings and social constructs that are superimposed on the biological differences between the sexes. That is, gender is socially constructed. It transforms female to mean 'feminine' and male to mean 'masculine', and by so doing it defines our expectations of both male and female behavior in everyday life. Most research up until the 1980s was based on male perceptions and male constructs of drug use, which by its very nature, neglected female drug use (Davey, 1994; Sargent, 1992; Temple-Smith & Hamilton, 1991). Some studies ignored women entirely; others included women but ignored gender, simply combining men and women in the analysis. Authors of many studies thus generalized from male subjects to 'people'. As Henderson (1993) says "It is a familiar sentiment by now that the literature on drugs is limited when it comes to the subject of gender and drug use. All too often studies have ignored gender as a factor in drug use and extrapolated from the male experience." (p. 127). It is important, therefore, to acknowledge that historically, gender has been a 'blindspot' in much of the research on drug use and abuse (Lammers & Schippers, 1991). The influence of male gender has not been considered, despite the fact that males have mostly been the subjects of the studies. As Broom (... ..., S. (1997). Youth violence and the limits of moral panic. Youth Studies Australia, 16(1), 25-30. Vogel-Sprott, M., & Chipperfield, B. (1987). Family history of problem drinking among young male social drinkers: Behavioral effects of alcohol. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 48(5), 430-436. Waldron, I. (1991). Patterns and causes of gender differences in smoking. Social Science and Medicine, 32(9), 989-1005. Waldron, J. (1997). Changing gender roles and gender differences in health behavior. In D.S. Gochman (Ed.), Handbook of health behavior research 1: Personal and social determinants (pp. 303-328). New York: Plenum Press. Walpole, S. (1995). Gender equity in education: A view from outside the classroom. In Proceedings of the Promoting Gender Equity Conference (pp. 5-11). Canberra: Ministerial Council for Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs.