Gender Current Event
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Chapter41.pptxTreviño, Investigating Social Problems, 2e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.
Gender
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Chapter 4
Treviño, Investigating Social Problems, 2e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.
Gender
Social meaning layered on top of our sex categories
Pink as feminine, blue as masculine
Long hair as feminine, short hair as masculine
Burly as masculine, petite as feminine
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Treviño, Investigating Social Problems, 2e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.
Gender and Intersectionality
Gender can be examined simultaneously with other identities
Race, social class, and sexuality
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For example:
Urban Black and Latino girls more likely than boys to go to college, earn higher grades, and aspire to higher status occupations than male counterparts.
Black male nurses often seen as more threatening than White female nurses.
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Treviño, Investigating Social Problems, 2e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.
Sexual Dimorphism
Belief there are two distinct types of people in the world: males and females
Not representative of objective reality
Intersexed individuals are born with anatomical ambiguity in their biological sex
Often reinforced by social norms
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Treviño, Investigating Social Problems, 2e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.
Feminism and the Study of Gender as a Social Problem
Gender inequality: the way in which the meanings assigned to sex and gender create disparities
Feminism: a body of knowledge and a social movement that addresses the problem of gender inequality
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Treviño, Investigating Social Problems, 2e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.
The Gender Binary
Determining gender: the variety of ways we place someone in a gender category
Usually accept a person’s word, except in gender-segregated situations
Bathrooms, women’s sports
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Treviño, Investigating Social Problems, 2e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.
The Gender Gap in STEM
Significant gender imbalance
No evidence that difference is based on aptitude
Need to ask why women are choosing other fields
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Treviño, Investigating Social Problems, 2e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.
Gender Wage Gap
In the United States, for every dollar a man makes, his female counterpart makes 81 cents
Belgium has smallest gender wage gap, 9.3%
Women represent 95% of registered nurses in the United States; are paid 5% less than male counterparts
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Treviño, Investigating Social Problems, 2e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.
Gender Inequality in Global Perspective
In 2014, the UN ranked the U.S. 55th of the 188 countries in terms of gender equality
Women with more education have much lower mortality rates
Worldwide, women live longer than men and but are also sicker
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Treviño, Investigating Social Problems, 2e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.
Gender and Structural Functionalism
Sex roles: set of expectations attached to sex category, vary by culture
Most culture impose expectations on individuals based on assigned sex
Example: Instrumental versus expressive
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Men are taught in childhood and throughout their lives to be instrumental, or goal- and task-oriented, while women are taught to be expressive, or oriented toward their interactions with other people.
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Treviño, Investigating Social Problems, 2e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.
Gender and Symbolic Interactionism
Doing gender theory: Gender is an interactive performance we stage through our interactions with others
Accountability to our audience
We do gender “correctly” when audience interprets behavior as we intended
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Accountability in doing gender theory refers to whether the audience for our performance understands our actions as we have intended for them to be understood
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Treviño, Investigating Social Problems, 2e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.
Gender and Symbolic Interactionism
Doing gender consistently convinces us natural/biological differences explain masculinity and femininity
Gender inequality becomes part of our gender performances through allocation
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Allocation is the way decisions get made about who does what, who gets what and who does not, who gets to make plans, and who gets to give orders or take them. Example: Men are often allocated more power in decision-making.
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Treviño, Investigating Social Problems, 2e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.
Gender and Conflict Theory
Socialist feminism
Applies Marx’s theories about class to gender
Best way to understand gender relations is to see women as an oppressed social class
But class inequality typically results in segregation, gender inequality does not
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Treviño, Investigating Social Problems, 2e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.
Gender and Conflict Theory
Radical feminists see patriarchy as the root of gender inequality.
Patriarchal societies are characterized by male dominance
characterized by androcentrism
explicitly favor men over women
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Treviño, Investigating Social Problems, 2e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.
Gender and Conflict Theory
Liberal feminism
Gender inequality rooted in the way institutions treat men and women
Inequality occurs when institutions limit the opportunities for women to compete with men in economic and political arenas
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Treviño, Investigating Social Problems, 2e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.
Gender and Conflict Theory
Consciousness raising
Seeks to help women see the connections between personal experiences with gender exploitation and the larger structure of society
“The personal is political”
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Example: Encouraging women to see sexual harassment as a product of the patriarchal way our society is structured, part of the way men maintain control through fear and power
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Treviño, Investigating Social Problems, 2e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.
Queer Theory
Draws on:
The social constructionist aspect of doing gender theory
The society-wide approach of radical feminism
Postmodernistic distrust of metanarratives (universal explanations)
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Treviño, Investigating Social Problems, 2e. © SAGE Publications, 2019.
Queer Theory
Distrustful of gender/sex categories (gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual)
Works to get rid of current categories
Proposes we think of identity categories as open and fluid
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