 In the previous module, we said that conventions are supported by ideology. Now let's see what ideology is and how gender ideology is developed. In this module, this would be our focus. First, ideology. Ideology is our belief about what is real or what is true. Or what is made true for us. In the previous modules, I defined it in Marxist sense of the term that ideology is our false consciousness. Things are made real or true for us without knowing that they are really true or false. It provides, ideology provides rational to our ways of life. Why we are following certain style of life, certain ideas about life, certain ideas about our social categories. The justification for all these things is provided by our ideology. Ideology helps us to assess or to give meaning to actions of people around us. We first of all understand our life according to ideology. And secondly, we also understand other's life, their behaviors, their actions according to our ideology. Gender ideology now coming to this. We apply this concept of ideology to gender that is our immediate focus in this course. Gender ideology means the beliefs about gender that justify gender based allocations. That supports what are these allocations. We are calling them gender order. Gender order is a system of allocations. And what do we mean by allocations? Let's see that. This system of allocation actually assigns rights and duties, assigns freedoms and limits to different sexes to males and females. This is called gender order. Now gender ideologies which support gender order, which support what kind of allocations are given to men and women. This gender ideology may differ from society to society. Nature of male and female may be perceived differently. And what is justice? This varies from society to society. What is natural? And what is natural means? What we accept without any kind of rationale or explanation? It can also vary from society to society. Then what is difference, gender difference? How we define, how we understand difference? It is given. It is essential. It is justified. Or difference creates inequality and it is unjustified. Again, different interpretations. Or sometimes people think that difference is manufactured. It is something artificial that is fabricated, that is consciously fabricated by vested interests, by particular groups of society. Why? To support hierarchies in society. To support hierarchies means something is higher and something is lower. Someone is powerful and someone is powerless or less powerful. To support such hierarchies, we need a system of difference. For some, some scholars think that gender order is divine. It is God-given. It is something morally imposed by religion. So they try to make it something sacred. And some people think that difference is part of our convention. So we see that gender order is supported by different gender ideals. To conclude this talk about gender ideology, we see that gender ideology gives rationale to gender order or male-female dichotomy. Because when we talk about gender order, actually we are talking about male-female difference and this difference is also known as dichotomy.