Final answer:
Margaret Mead's study on gender roles challenges the functionalist view by highlighting cultural variations in the interpretation of gender in New Guinea tribes.
Step-by-step explanation:
Margaret Mead's classic study on gender roles in three New Guinea tribes did not find strong support for the functionalist view. In her research, Mead discovered three cultural groups with vastly different interpretations of gender. Among the Arapesh and Mundugumor, men and women were considered temperamentally similar, while among the Tchambuli (or Chambri), men and women were assumed to be temperamentally different. These findings challenge the functionalist perspective, which argues that gender roles were established based on the division of labor in pre-industrial societies.