2 page Behavioral Analysis Paper about Inequalities of Gender and Age

Gender and Age10CHAPTER

In Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, on Africa’s north- ern coast, I met some U.S. college students and spent a couple of days with them. They wanted to see the city’s red light district, but I wondered whether it would be worth the trip. I already had seen other red light districts, including the unusual one in Amsterdam where a bronze statue of a female prostitute lets you know you’ve entered the area; the state licenses the women and men, requiring that they have medical checkups (certificates must be posted); and the prostitutes add sales tax to the receipts they give customers. The prostitutes sit behind lighted picture windows while customers stroll along the nar- row canal side streets and do “window shopping” from the out- side. Tucked among the brothels are day care centers, bakeries, and clothing stores. Amsterdam itself is an unusual place—in cafes, you can smoke marijuana but not tobacco.

I decided to go with them. We ended up on a wharf that extended into the Mediterranean. Each side was lined with a row of one-room wooden shacks, crowded one against the next. In front of each open door stood a young woman. Peering from outside into the dark inte- riors, I could see that each door led to a tiny room with an old, well-worn bed.

The wharf was crowded with men who were eyeing the women. Many of the men wore sailor uniforms from countries that I couldn’t identify.

As I looked more closely, I could see that some of the women had runny sores on their legs. Incredibly, with such vis- ible evidence of their disease, customers still sought them out.

With a sick feeling in my stomach and the desire to vomit, I kept a good distance between the beckoning women and myself. One tour of the two-block area was more than sufficient.

Somewhere nearby, out of sight, I knew that there were men whose wealth derived from exploiting these women who were condemned to live short lives punctuated by fear and misery.

The prostitutes sit behind lighted picture windows while cus- tomers stroll along the narrow canal side streets and do “win- dow shopping” from the outside.

Afghanistan

276 CHAPTER 10 Gender and Age

Differences in how we display gender often lie below our awareness. How males and females use social space is an example. In this unposed photo from Grand Central Station in New York City, you can see how males tend to sprawl out, females to enclose themselves. Why do you think this difference exists? Biology? Socialization? Both?

In the previous chapter, we considered how race–ethnicity affects people’s well-being and their position in society. In this chapter, we examine gender stratification—males’ and females’ unequal access to property, power, and prestige.

We also explore the prejudice and discrimination directed to people because of their age. Gender and age are especially significant because, like race–ethnicity, they are master statuses; that is, they cut across all aspects of social life. We all are labeled male or female and are assigned an age category. These labels are powerful, because they convey images and expectations about how we should act and serve as a basis of power and privilege.

Inequalities of Gender Let’s begin by considering the distinctions between sex and gender.

Issues of Sex and Gender When we consider how females and males differ, the first thing that usually comes to mind is sex, the biological characteristics that distinguish males and females. Primary sex characteristics consist of a vagina or a penis and other organs related to reproduction. Secondary sex characteristics are the physical distinctions between males and females that are not directly connected with reproduction. These characteristics become clearly evident at puberty when males develop larger muscles, lower voices, more body hair, and greater height, while females develop breasts and form more fatty tissue and broader hips.

Gender, in contrast, is a social, not a biological, characteristic. Gender consists of whatever behaviors and attitudes a group considers proper for its males and females. Sex refers to male or female, and gender refers to masculinity or femininity. In short, you inherit your sex, but you learn your gender as you learn the behaviors and attitudes your culture asserts are appropriate for your sex.

As the photo montage on the next page illustrates, the expectations associated with gender differ around the world. They vary so greatly that some sociologists suggest that we replace the terms masculinity and femininity with masculinities and femininities.

The Sociological Significance of Gender. The sociological significance of gender is that it is a device by which society controls its members. Gender sorts us, on the basis of sex, into different life experiences. It opens and closes doors to property, power, and prestige. Like social class, gender is a structural feature of society.

Before examining inequalities of gender, let’s consider why the behaviors of men and women differ.

Gender Differences in Behavior: Biology or Culture? Why are most males more aggressive than most females? Why do women enter “nurturing” occupations, such as teach- ing young children and nursing, in far greater numbers than men? To answer such questions, many people respond with some variation of “They’re just born that way.”

Is this the correct answer? Certainly biology plays a signifi- cant role in our lives. Each of us begins as a fertilized egg. The egg, or ovum, is contributed by our mother, the sperm that fertilizes the egg by our father. At the very instant the egg is fer- tilized, our sex is determined. Each of us receives twenty-three chromosomes from the ovum and twenty-three from the sperm. The egg has an X chromosome. If the sperm that fertilizes the egg also has an X chromosome, the result is a girl (XX). If the sperm has a Y chromosome, the result is a boy (XY).

How do sex and gender differ?

Read

Night to His Day: The Social

Construction of Gender by

Judith Lorber on mysoclab.com

Issues of Sex and Gender 277

Standards of Gender

Each human group determines its ideas of “maleness” and “femaleness.” As you can see from these photos of four women and four men, standards of gender are arbitrary and vary from one culture to another. Yet, in its ethno centrism, each group thinks that its preferences refl ect what gender “really” is. As indicated here, around the world men and women try to make them selves appealing by aspiring to their group’s standards of gender. Jordan

Kenya

Tibet

Ethiopia

India

Mexico

New Guinea

Brazil

How does gender depend on culture?

278 CHAPTER 10 Gender and Age

The Dominant Position in Sociology. That’s the biology. Now, the sociological question is, Does this biological difference control our behavior? Does it, for example, make females more nurturing and submissive and males more aggressive and domineer- ing? Here is the quick sociological answer: The dominant sociological position is that social factors, not biology, are the reasons people do what they do.

Let’s apply this position to gender. If biology were the principal factor in human behavior, all around the world we would find women behaving in one way and men in another. Men and women would be just like male spiders and female spiders, whose genes tell them what to do. In fact, however, ideas of gender vary greatly from one cul- ture to another—and, as a result, so do male–female behaviors.

Despite this, to see why the door to biology is opening just slightly in sociology, let’s consider a medical accident and a study of Vietnam veterans.

Opening the Door to Biology A Medical Accident.

In 1963, 7-month-old identical twin boys were taken to a doctor for a routine circumci- sion. The physician, not the most capable person in the world, was using a heated needle. He turned the electric current too high and accidentally burned off the penis of one of the boys.

You can imagine the parents’ disbelief—and then their horror—as the truth sank in. What could they do? After months of soul-searching and tearful consultations with experts, the parents decided that their son should have a sex-change operation (Money and Ehrhardt 1972). When he was 22 months old, surgeons castrated the boy, using the skin to construct a vagina. The parents then gave the child a new name, Brenda, dressed him in frilly clothing, let his hair grow long, and began to treat him as a girl. Later, physicians gave Brenda female steroids to promote female puberty (Colapinto 2001).

At first, the results were promising. When the twins were 4 years old, the mother said (remember that the children are biologically identical):

One thing that really amazes me is that she is so feminine. I’ve never seen a little girl so neat and tidy. . . . She likes for me to wipe her face. She doesn’t like to be dirty, and yet my son is quite different. I can’t wash his face for anything. . . . She is very proud of herself, when she puts on a new dress, or I set her hair. . . . She seems to be daintier. (Money and Ehrhardt 1972)

If the matter were this clear-cut, we could use this case to conclude that gender is determined entirely by nurture. Seldom are things in life so simple, however, and a twist occurs in this story.

Despite this promising start and her parents’ coaching, Brenda did not adapt well to femininity. She preferred to mimic her father shaving, rather than her mother putting on makeup. She rejected dolls, favoring guns and her brother’s toys. She liked rough- and-tumble games and insisted on urinating standing up. Classmates teased her and

called her a “cavewoman” because she walked like a boy. At age 14, she was expelled from school for beating up a girl who teased her. Despite estrogen treatment, she was not attracted to boys. At age 14, when despair over her inner turmoil brought her to the brink of suicide, her father, in tears, told Brenda about the accident and

her sex change. “All of a sudden everything clicked. For the first time, things made sense, and I understood who and what I was,” the twin said of this revelation. David (his new

name) was given testosterone shots and, later, had surgery to partially recon- struct a penis. At age 25, David married a woman and adopted her children (Diamond and Sigmundson 1997; Colapinto 2001). There is an unfortunate end to this story, however. In 2004, David committed suicide.

David Reimer, whose story is recounted here.

Why is the door to biology slowly opening in sociology?

Gender Inequality in Global Perspective 279

Sociologists study the social factors that underlie human behavior, the experiences that mold us, funneling us into different directions in life. The research on Vietnam veterans discussed in the text indicates how the sociological door is opening slowly to also consider biological factors in human behavior. This March 31, 1967, photo shows soldiers of the 1st Cavalry Division carrying a buddy who had just been shot.

From research on Vietnam veterans: How do social factors of human behavior override biological ones?

The Vietnam Veterans Study. Time after time, researchers have found that boys and men who have higher levels of testosterone tend to be more aggressive. In one study, researchers compared the testosterone levels of college men in a “rowdy” fraternity with those of men in a fraternity that had a reputation for academic achievement. Men in the “rowdy” fraternity had higher levels of testosterone (Dabbs et al. 1996). In another study, researchers found that prisoners who had committed sex crimes and other crimes of violence had higher levels of testosterone than those who had com- mitted property crimes (Dabbs et al. 1995). The samples were small, however, leaving the nagging uncertainty that these findings might be due to chance.

Then in 1985, the U.S. government began a health study of Vietnam veterans. To be certain that the study was representative, the researchers chose a random sample of 4,462 men. Among the data they collected was a measurement of testosterone. This sample supported the earlier studies. When the veterans with higher testosterone levels were boys, they were more likely to get in trouble with parents and teachers and to become delinquents. As adults, they were more likely to use hard drugs, to get into fights, to end up in lower-status jobs, and to have more sexual partners. Those who married were more likely to have affairs, to hit their wives, and, it follows, to get divorced (Dabbs and Morris 1990; Booth and Dabbs 1993).

This makes it sound like biology is the basis for behavior. Fortunately for us soci- ologists, there is another side to this research, and here is where social class, the topic of Chapter 8, comes into play. The researchers compared high-testosterone men from higher and lower social classes. The men from lower social classes were more likely to get in trouble with the law, do poorly in school, and mistreat their wives (Dabbs and Morris 1990). You can see, then, that social factors such as socialization, subcultures, life goals, and self-definitions were significant in these men’s behavior. In Sum: Sociologists acknowledge that biological factors are involved in some human behavior other than reproduction and childbearing (Udry 2000). Alice Rossi, a feminist soci- ologist and former president of the American Sociological Association, suggested that women are better prepared biologically for “mothering” than are men. Rossi (1977, 1984) said that women are more sensitive to the infant’s soft skin and to their nonverbal communications.

Perhaps Rossi expressed it best when she said that the issue is not either biology or society. Instead, whatever biological predispositions nature provides are overlaid with culture. A task of sociologists is to discover how social factors modify biology, especially as sociologist Janet Chafetz (1990:30) said, to determine how “different” becomes translated into “unequal.”

Gender Inequality in Global Perspective

Around the world, gender is the primary division between people. To catch a glimpse of how remarkably gender expectations differ with culture, look at the photo essay on the next two pages. Every society sorts men and women into separate groups and gives them different access to property, power, and prestige. These divisions always favor men-as-a-group. After reviewing the historical record, historian and feminist Gerda Lerner (1986) concluded that “there is not a single society known where women-as-a-group have decision-making power over men (as a group).” Consequently, sociologists classify females as a minority group. Because females outnumber males, you may find this strange. The term minority group applies, however, because it refers to people who are discriminated against on the basis

traditional Western

expectations, and some

diverge sharply from our gender

stereotypes. Although w omen in India

remain subservient to m en —with the

women’s movement hard ly able to break

the cultural surface —wo men’s occupations

are hardly limited to the home. I was

surprised at some of the hard, heavy labor

that Indian women do.

Indian women are highly visible in public places. A storekeeper is as likely to be a woman as a man. This woman is selling glasses of water at a beach on the Bay of Bengal. The structure on which her glasses rest is built of sand.

I visited quarries in different parts of India, where I found men, women, and children hard at work in the tropical sun. This woman works 8½ hours a day, six days a week. She earns 40 rupees a day (about 90 cents). Men make 60 rupees a day (about $1.35). Like many quarry workers, this woman is a bonded laborer. She must give half of her wages to her master.

Women also take care of livestock. It looks as though this woman dressed up and

posed for her photo, but this is what she was wearing

and doing when I saw her in the fi eld and stopped to talk to her. While the

sheep are feeding, her job is primarily to “be” there, to make certain the sheep

don’t wander off or that no one steals them.

The villages o f India have no

indoor

plumbing. Ins tead, each vill

age has

a well with a h and pump, an

d it is

the women’s j ob to fetch the

water.

This is backbre aking work, fo

r, after

pumping the w ater, the wom

en

wrestle the he avy buckets o

nto their

heads and car ry them home

. This

was one of the few occupatio

ns I

saw that was l imited to wom

en.

Work and Gender: Wo men at Work in India

Traveling through India was both a

pleasant and an eye-open ing experience.

The country is incredibly diverse, the

people friendly, and the l and culturally

rich. For this photo essay , wherever I

went —whether city, villag e, or country-

side —I took photos of w omen at work.

From these photos, you can see that

Indian women work in a wide variety of

occupations. Some of t heir jobs match

© Jim Henslin, all photos

Sweeping the house is traditi onal work for Western wome

n. So it is in India, but

the sweeping has been exten ded to areas outside the hom

e. These women

are sweeping a major interse ction in Chennai. When the t

raffi c light changes

here, the women will continu e sweeping, with the drivers

swerving around

them. This was one of the few occupations that seems to b

e limited to women.

When I saw this unusual sight, I had to stop and talk to the workers. From historical pictures, I knew that belt-driven machines were common on U.S. farms 100 years ago. This one in Tamil Nadu processes sugar cane. The woman feeds sugar cane into the machine, which disgorges the stalks on one side and sugar cane juice on the other.

A common sight in India is women working on construction crews. As they work on buildings and on highways, they mix cement, unload trucks, carry rubble, and, following Indian culture, carry loads of bricks atop their heads. This photo was taken in Raipur, Chhattisgarh.

As in the West, food preparation in India is traditional women’s work. Here, however, food preparation takes an unexpected twist. Having poured rice from the 60-pound sack onto the fl oor, these women in Chittoor search for pebbles or other foreign objects that might be in the rice.

This woman belongs to the Dhobi subcaste, whose occupation is washing clothes. She stands waist deep at this same spot doing the same thing day after day. The banks of this canal in Hyderabad are lined with men and women of her caste, who are washing linens for hotels and clothing for more well-to-do families.

282 CHAPTER 10 Gender and Age

of physical or cultural characteristics, regardless of their numbers (Hacker 1951). Women around the world struggle against gender discrimination. For an extreme case, see the Mass Media in Social Life box on the next page.

How Did Females Become a Minority Group? Have females always been a minority group? Some analysts speculate that in hunting and gathering societies, women and men were social equals (Leacock 1981; Hendrix 1994) and that horticultural societies also had less gender discrimination than is common today (Collins et al. 1993). In these societies, women may have contributed about 60 percent of the group’s total food. Yet, around the world, gender is the basis for discrimination.

How, then, did it happen that women became a minority group? The main theory that has been proposed to explain the origin of patriarchy—men dominating society— centers on human reproduction (Lerner 1986; Friedl 1990). In early human history, life was short. Because people died young, if the group were to survive, women had to give birth to many children. This brought severe consequences for women. To survive, an infant needed a nursing mother. If there were no woman to nurse the child, it died. With a child at her breast or in her uterus, or one carried on her hip or on her back, women were not able to stay away from camp for as long as the men could. They also had to move slower. Around the world, then, women assumed the tasks that were associated with the home and child care, while men hunted the large animals and did other tasks that required both greater speed and longer absences from the base camp (Huber 1990).

This led to men becoming dominant. When the men left the camp to hunt animals, they made contact with other tribes. They traded with them, gaining new possessions—and they also quarreled and waged war with them. It was also the men who

Why do sociologists call women a minority group? What theory, based on reproduction, explains how women became a minority group?

Men’s work? Women’s work? Customs in other societies can blow away stereotypes. As is common throughout India, these women are working on road construction.

Gender Inequality in Global Perspective 283

made and controlled the instruments of power and death, the weapons that were used for hunting and warfare. The men heaped prestige upon themselves as they returned to the camp triumphantly, leading captured prisoners and displaying their new possessions or the large animals they had killed to feed the women and children.

Contrast this with the women. Their activities were rou- tine, dull, and taken-for-granted. The women kept the fire going, took care of the children, and did the cooking. There was nothing triumphant about what they did—and they were not perceived as risking their lives for the group. The women were “simply there,” awaiting the return of their men, ready to acclaim their accomplishments.

Men, then, took control of society. Their sources of power were their weapons, items of trade, and the knowl- edge they gained from their contacts with other groups. Women did not have access to these sources of power, which the men enshrouded in secrecy. The women became second-class citizens, subject to whatever the men decided.

Mass Media in Social Life

Women in Iran: The Times Are Changing, Ever So Slowly A woman’s testimony in court is worth half that of a man’s

testimony. A woman may inherit from her parents only half what her

brother inherits. A woman who has sex with a man who is not her husband

can be stoned to death. A woman who refuses to cover her hair in public can

receive 80 lashes with a whip.

Not exactly equality. As you would expect, Iranian women

don’t like it. Until now, though, there was little that they could do. Controlled by their fathers until they marry and afterward by their husbands, women for the most part didn’t know that life could be different.

Now the mass media along with a new literacy are spearheading change in gender relations. Iranian women are logging onto the Internet, and they are reading books. Those who watch satellite television, which is illegal, are seeing pictures of other ways of life, an unfamiliar equality and mutual respect between women and men.

Thanks to the mass media, their eyes are being opened to the fact that not all the women in the world live under the thumbs of men. From this awareness is coming the realization that they don’t have to live like this either, that there is a potential for new relationships.

This awareness and the glimmer of hope that another way of life can be theirs have stimulated a women’s movement. The move- ment is small—and protest remains dangerous. Some women have

been fined, and for others it is worse. Women are being arrested for being “feminists.” Punishment is fines and prison. Security forces sometimes rape these offenders. Other protestors find brutality at home, from their husbands, fathers, or brothers.

Despite the danger, women are continuing to protest. They are even pressing for new rights in the Iranian courts. They are demand- ing divorce from abusive husbands—and some are getting it.

Not much has changed yet. A man can still divorce his wife whenever he wants, while a woman who wants to divorce a hus- band must go through a lengthy procedure and never can be

sure she will be granted the divorce. A husband also gets automatic custody of any children over the age of 7.

But as women continue their struggle, change will come. One sign of hope: Iraninan politicians, embarrassed by the international outcry, are allowing fewer women to be stoned to death. But women continue to be buried up to their necks in the ground and then stoned.

That there are fewer stonings, though, is at least a beginning. Sources: Based on Fathi 2009; Semple 2009; U.S. Department of State 2011.

For Your Consideration↑

What do you think gender relations will be like in Iran ten years from now? Why?↑

If the women’s movement in Iran becomes popular and effective, do you think that relationships between men and women will be about the same as in the United States? Why or why not?

A sign of fundamental change is Iranian women protesting in public. Can the genie be put back in the bottle? Unlikely.

A theory of how patriarchy originated centers on childbirth. Because only

women give birth, they assumed tasks associated with home

and child care, while men hunted and performed other survival tasks that required greater strength, speed, and absence from home. Following

in the steps of her female ancestors, this woman

in Yangshou, China, while she works, takes care of her grandchild.

What background factors underlie the women’s movement in the Arab world?

284 CHAPTER 10 Gender and Age

Foot binding was practiced in China until about 1900. Tiny feet were a status symbol. Making it difficult for a woman to walk, small feet indicated that a woman’s husband did not need his wife’s labor. To make the feet even smaller, sometimes the baby’s feet were broken and wrapped tightly. Some baby’s toes were cut off. This photo was taken in Hubel Province, China. The woman getting the pedicure is reportedly 105 years old.

Global Violence Against Women A global human rights issue is violence against women. Historical examples include foot binding in China, witch burning in Europe, and suttee (burning the living widow with the body of her dead husband) in India. Today we have rape, wife beating, female infanticide, and the kidnapping of women to be brides. There is also forced prostitution, which was probably the case in our opening vignette. Another notorious example is female circumcision, the topic of the Cultural Diversity box on the next page.

“Honor killings” are another form of violence against women (Yardley 2010a). In some societies, such as India, Jordan, Kurdistan, and Pakistan, a woman who is thought to have brought disgrace on her family is killed by a male relative—usually a brother or her husband, but sometimes her father or uncles. What threat to a family’s honor can be so severe that men kill their own daughters, wives, or sisters? The usual reason is sex outside of marriage. Virginity at marriage is so prized in these societies that even a woman who has been raped is in danger of becoming the victim of an honor killing (Zoepf 2007; Falkenberg 2008). Killing the girl or woman—even one’s own sister or mother—removes the “stain” she has brought to the family and restores its honor in the community. Sharing this view, the police in these countries generally ignore honor

killings, viewing them as private family matters.

In Sum: Inequality is not some accidental, hit-or-miss affair. Rather, each society’s institutions work together to maintain the group’s particular forms of inequality. Customs, often venerated throughout history, both justify and maintain these arrange- ments. In some cases, the prejudice and discrimination directed at females are so extreme they result in their enslavement and death.

Gender Inequality in the United States As we review gender inequality in the United States, let’s begin by taking a brief look at how change in this vital area of social life came about. Before we do so, though, you might enjoy the historical snapshot presented in the Down-to-Earth Sociology box on page 286.

Fighting Back: The Rise of Feminism In the nation’s early history, the second-class status of women was taken for granted. A husband and wife were legally one person—him (Chafetz and Dworkin 1986). Women could not vote, buy property in their own names, make legal contracts, or serve on juries. How could things have changed so much in the last hundred years that these examples sound like fiction?

A central lesson of conflict theory is that power yields privilege. Like a magnet, power draws society’s best resources to the elite. Because men tenaciously held onto their privileges and used social institutions to maintain their dominance, basic rights for women came only through prolonged and bitter struggle.

Feminism—the view that biology is not destiny and that stratification by gender is wrong and should be resisted—met with strong opposition, both by men who had priv- ilege to lose and by women who accepted their status as morally correct. In 1894, for example, Jeannette Gilder said that women should not have the right to vote: “Politics is too public, too wearing, and too unfitted to the nature of women” (Crossen 2003).

Feminists, then known as suffragists, struggled against such views. In 1916, they founded the National Woman’s Party, and in 1917 they began to picket the White House. After picketing for six months, the women were arrested. Hundreds were sent to prison,

How is gender inequality related to violence? Who were the suffragists?

Gender Inequality in the United States 285

Cultural Diversity around the World

Female Circumcision “Lie down there,” the excisor suddenly said to me

[when I was 12], pointing to a mat on the ground. No sooner had I laid down than I felt my frail, thin legs grasped by heavy hands and pulled wide apart. . . . Two women on each side of me pinned me to the ground . . . I underwent the ablation of the labia minor and then of the clitoris. The operation seemed to go on forever. I was in the throes of agony, torn apart both physically and psychologically. It was the rule that girls of my age did not weep in this situation. I broke the rule. I cried and screamed with pain . . . !

Afterwards they forced me, not only to walk back to join the other girls who had already been excised, but to dance with them. I was doing my best, but then I fainted. . . . It was a month before I was completely healed. When I was better, everyone mocked me, as I hadn’t been brave, they said. (Walker and Parmar 1993:107–108)

Worldwide, about 140 million females have been circum- cised, mostly in Muslim Africa and in some parts of Malaysia and Indonesia (Lazaro 2011). In Egypt and Indonesia, between 90 and 97 percent of the women have been circumcised (Slackman 2007; Leopold 2012). In some cultures, the surgery occurs seven to ten days after birth, but in others it is not performed until girls reach adolescence. Among most groups, it takes place between the ages of 4 and 8. Because the surgery is usually done without an- esthesia, the pain is so excruciating that adults hold the girl down. In urban areas, physicians sometimes perform the operation; in rural areas, a neighborhood woman usually does it.

In some cultures, only the girl’s clitoris is cut off; in oth- ers, more is removed. In Sudan, the Nubia cut away most of the girl’s genitalia, then sew together the remaining outer edges. They bind the girl’s legs from her ankles to her waist for several weeks while scar tissue closes up the vagina. They leave a small opening the diameter of a pencil for the passage of urine and menstrual fluids. When a woman mar- ries, the opening is enlarged further. After birth, the vagina is again sutured shut; this cycle of surgically closing and opening begins anew with each birth.

What are the reasons for circumcising girls? Some groups believe that it reduces female sexual desire, making it more likely that a woman will be a virgin at marriage and, afterward, remain faithful to her husband. Others think that women can’t bear children if they aren’t circumcised.

The surgery has strong support among many women. Some mothers and grandmothers even insist that the cus- tom continue. Their concern is that their daughters marry well, and in some of these societies uncircumcised women are considered impure and are not allowed to marry.

Feminists respond that female circumcision is a form of ritual torture to control female sexuality. They point out that men dominate the societies that practice it.

Change is on its way: A social movement to ban female circumcision has developed, and the World

Health Organization has declared that female circumcision is a human rights issue. Fifteen African countries have now banned the circumcision of females. Without sanctions, though,

these laws accomplish little. In Egypt, which prohibited female circumcision in 1996, almost all girls continue to be circumcised (Leopold 2012).

Health workers have hit upon a strategy that is meeting some success. To overcome resistance to change, they begin teaching village women about germs and hygiene. They then trace current health prob- lems such as incontinence to female circumcision. When enough support

has been gained, an entire village will publicly abandon the practice. As other villages do the same, the lack of circumcision no longer remains an obstacle to marriage. Sources: As cited, and Lightfoot-Klein 1989; Merwine 1993; Chalkley 1997; Collymore 2000; Tuhus-Dubrow 2007; UNIFEM 2008; Lazaro 2011.

For Your Consideration↑

Do you think the members of one culture have the right to interfere with the customs of another culture? If so, under what circumstances? What makes us right and them wrong? What if some African nation said that the U.S. custom of circumcising males is wrong—and wanted the United Nations to take action?

Finally, how would you respond to this Somali woman who said, “The Somali woman doesn’t need an alien woman telling her how to treat her private parts”?

An excisor (cutter) in Uganda holding the razor blades she is about to use to circumcise teenage girls.

How is female circumcision part of gender inequality?

286 CHAPTER 10 Gender and Age

Down-to-Earth Sociology

Women and Smoking: Let’s Count the Reasons (A humorous, but serious, look at historical changes in gender)

Why Women Shouldn’t Smoke 1. Smoking turns a woman into a tramp.

“A man may take out a woman who smokes for a good time, but he won’t marry her, and if he does, he won’t stay married.”

Editorial in The Washington Post, 1914

2. Women who smoke drive men wild. They break up families and even make men kill.

“Young fellows go into our res- taurants to find women folks sucking cigarettes. The . . . next thing you know the young fellows, vampired by these smoking women, desert their homes, their wives and children, rob their employers and even commit murder so that they can get money to lavish on these smoking women.”

A New York City alderman

3. Smoking ruins women’s sleep—and it is bad for their skin.

“The cigarette habit indulged by women tends to cause nervousness and insomnia and ruins the com- plexion. This is one of the most evil influences in American life today.”

Hugh S. Cumming, surgeon general of the U.S., 1920

4. Women just aren’t as good as men at smoking.

“Women really don’t know how to smoke. One woman smoking one cigarette at a dinner table will stir up more smoke than a whole tableful of men smoking cigars. Neither do they know how to hold their cigarettes properly.”

The manager of a Manhattan hotel, 1920s

Why Women Should Smoke 1. Smoking prevents fat ankles.

“You can’t hide fat, clumsy ankles. When tempted to overindulge, reach for a Lucky.”

The American Tobacco Company, 1930s

Challenging Gender Opposition to women smoking was so strong that the

police in New York City warned women not to light up—even in their own cars. Women’s colleges also got into the act. Smith College students who were seen smoking, even off campus, were given a demerit. This was serious—three demer- its and a woman would be kicked out of college.

Why do you think there was such strong opposition to women smoking in the early 1900s? Men were free to smoke wherever they wanted—in hotels and restaurants, in the street and at work, and in bars, which at that time were off limits to women.

Smoking was part of how women were breaking out of their traditional roles, a gender change that threatened the privileged position of men. Despite the strong opposition, more and more women began to smoke. As they contin- ued to challenge the privileges of men in this and other areas of social life, they ushered in the gender relations that we have today.

For Your Consideration↑

Today if a woman in Saudi Arabia drives a car, she is arrested. How is this a parallel to men’s reaction to U.S. women smoking in the early 1930s?

An ad from 1929

(And with cancer, you’ll lose even more weight!)

including Lucy Burns, a leader of the National Woman’s Party. The extent to which these women had threatened male privilege is demonstrated by how they were treated in prison.

Two men brought in Dorothy Day [the editor of a periodical that promoted women’s rights], twisting her arms above her head. Suddenly they lifted her and brought her body down twice over the back of an iron bench. . . . They had been there a few minutes when Mrs. Lewis, all doubled over like a sack of flour, was thrown in. Her head struck the iron bed and she fell to the floor senseless. As for Lucy Burns, they handcuffed her wrists and fastened the handcuffs over [her] head to the cell door. (Cowley 1969)

In the early 1900s, men were offended by women smoking. Why?

Gender Inequality in the United States 287

The “first wave” of the U.S. women’s movement met enormous opposition. The women in this 1920 photo had just been released after serving two months in jail for picketing the White House. Lucy Burns, mentioned on page 286, is the second woman on the left. Alice Paul, who was placed in solitary confinement and is a subject of this 1920 protest, is featured in the photo circle of early female sociologists in Chapter 1, page 10.

This first wave of the women’s movement had a radical branch that wanted to reform all the institutions of society and a conservative branch whose concern was to win the vote for women (Freedman 2001). The conservative branch dominated, and after win- ning the right to vote in 1920, the movement basically dissolved.

The second wave began in the 1960s. Sociologist Janet Chafetz (1990) points out that up to this time most women thought of work as a temporary activity intended to fill the time between completing school and getting married. For an example of how children’s books reinforced such thinking, see Figure 10.1 on the next page. As more women took jobs and began to regard them as careers, however, they compared their working con- ditions with those of men. This shift in their reference group changed the way women viewed their conditions at work. The result was a second wave of protest against gender inequalities. The goals of this second wave (which continues today) are broad, ranging from raising women’s pay to changing policies on violence against women.

A third wave of feminism has emerged. It has many divisions, but three main aspects are apparent. The first is a greater focus on the problems of women in the Least Industrialized Nations (Spivak 2000; Hamid 2006). Some are fighting battles against conditions long since overcome by women in the Most Industrialized Nations. The second is a criticism of the values that dominate work and society. Some feminists argue that competition, toughness, calloused emotions, and independence represent “male” qualities and need to be replaced with cooperation, connection, openness, and inter- dependence (England 2000). A third aspect is an emphasis on women’s sexual pleasure (Swigonski and Reheim 2011).

Sharp disagreements among feminists have emerged regarding male–female rela- tionships. Some, for example, defend their use of “erotic capital,” women’s sexual

Can you contrast the three waves of feminism?

288 CHAPTER 10 Gender and Age

attractiveness and seductiveness, to get ahead at work. Others deplore this as a denial of ability and betrayal of equality (Hakim 2010).

Although U.S. women enjoy fundamental rights today, gender inequality continues to play a central role in social life. Let’s first consider gender inequality in health care.

Gender Inequality in Health Care Medical researchers were perplexed. Reports were coming in from all over the country: Women were twice as likely as men to die after coronary bypass surgery. Researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles checked their own records. They found that of 2,300 coronary bypass patients, 4.6 percent of the women died as a result of the surgery, compared with 2.6 percent of the men.

These findings presented a sociological puzzle. To solve it, researchers first turned to biology (Bishop 1990). In coronary bypass surgery, a blood vessel is taken from one part of the body and stitched to an artery on the surface of the heart. Perhaps the surgery was more difficult to do on women because of their smaller arteries. To find out, researchers measured the amount of time that sur- geons kept patients on the heart-lung machine while they operated. They were surprised to learn that women spent less time on the machine than men. This indicated that the surgery was not more difficult to perform on women.

As the researchers probed, a surprising answer unfolded: unintended sexual discrimination. When women complained of chest pains, their doctors took them only one-tenth as seriously as when men made the same complaints. How do we know this? Doctors were ten times more likely to give men exercise stress tests and radioactive heart scans. They also sent men to surgery on the basis of abnormal stress tests, but they waited until women showed clear-cut symptoms of heart disease before sending them to surgery. Patients with more advanced heart disease are more likely to die during and after heart surgery.

Source: From Dick and Jane: Fun with Our Family, Illustrations © copyright 1951, 1979, and Dick and Jane: We Play Outside, copyright © 1965, Pearson Education, Inc., published by Scott, Foresman and Company. Used with permission.

FIGURE 10.1 Teaching Gender

The “Dick and Jane” readers were the top selling readers in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. In addition to reading, they taught “gender messages.” What gender message do you see here?

Housework is “women’s work,” a lesson girls should learn early in life.

Besides learning words like “pigs” (relevant at that historical period), boys and girls also learned that rough outside work was for men.

What does this page teach children other than how to read the word “Father”? (Look to the left to see what Sally and Jane and Mother are doing.)

As women accomplish more in areas traditionally dominated by men, do you think that the definition of femininity will change? If so, how?

How is gender inequality in health care a life-or-death matter?

Gender Inequality in the United States 289

Although these findings have been publicized among physicians, the problem contin- ues (Jackson et al. 2011). Perhaps as more women become physicians, the situation will change, since female doctors are more sensitive to women’s health problems. For exam- ple, they are more likely to order Pap smears and mammograms (Lurie et al. 1993). In addition, as more women join the faculties of medical schools, we can expect women’s health problems to receive more attention in the training of physicians. Even this might not do it, however, as no one knows how stereotyping of the sexes produces this deadly discrimination, and women, too, hold our cultural stereotypes.

In contrast to unintentional sexism in heart surgery, there is a type of surgery that is a blatant form of discrimination against women. This is the focus of the Down-to-Earth Sociology box below.

How does gender inequality show up in surgery?

Down-to-Earth Sociology

Cold-Hearted Surgeons and Their Women Victims

While doing participant observation in a hospital, sociologist Sue Fisher (1986) was surprised to hear surgeons recommend total hysterectomy (removal of both the uterus and the ovaries) when no cancer was present. When she asked why, the male doctors explained that the uterus and ovaries are “potentially disease producing.” They also said that these organs are unnecessary after the childbearing years, so why not remove them? Doctors who reviewed hysterectomies confirmed this gender- biased practice. Ninety percent of hysterectomies are avoidable. Only ten percent involve cancer (Costa 2011).

Greed is a power- ful motivator in many areas of social life, and it rears its ugly head in surgical sexism (Domingo and Pellicer 2009). Surgeons make money when they do hys- terectomies, and the more of them that they do, the more money they make. Since women, to understate the matter, are reluctant to part with these organs, surgeons find that they have to “sell” this operation. As you read how one resident explained the “hard sell” to sociologist Diana Scully (1994), you might think of a used car salesperson:

You have to look for your surgical procedures; you have to go after patients. Because no one is crazy enough to come and say, “Hey, here I am. I want you to operate on me.” You have to sometimes convince the patient that she is really sick—if she is, of course [laughs], and that she is better off with a surgical procedure.

Used-car salespeople would love to have the powerful sales weapon that these surgeons have at their disposal: To “convince” a woman to have this surgery, the doctor puts on a serious face and tells her that the examination has turned up fibroids in her uterus—and they might turn into cancer. This

statement is often suf- ficient to get the woman to buy the surgery. She starts to picture herself lying at death’s door, her sorrowful family gathered at her death bed. Then the used car salesperson—I mean, the surgeon—moves in to clinch the sale. Keeping a serious face and emitting an “I-know- how-you-feel” look, the surgeon starts to make arrangements for the surgery. What the surgeon withholds is the rest of the truth—that a lot of women have

fibroids, that fibroids usually do not turn into cancer, and that the patient has several alternatives to surgery.

In case it is difficult for someone to see how this is sexist, let’s change the context just a little. Let’s suppose that the in- come of some female surgeons depends on selling a special- ized operation. To sell it, they systematically suggest to older men the benefits of castration—since “those organs are no longer necessary, and might cause disease.”

For Your Consideration↑

Hysterectomies are now so common that one of three U.S. women eventually has her uterus surgically removed (White- man et al. 2008). Why do you think that surgeons are so quick to operate? How can women find alternatives to surgery?

290 CHAPTER 10 Gender and Age

Gender Inequality in Education What a contrast with today. Until 1832, women were not allowed to attend college with men. When women did start to attend college with men, they had to wash the men’s clothing, clean their rooms, and serve them their meals (Flexner 1971/1999).

How the times have changed. So much so that this quote sounds like a joke. Gradually, like out-of-fashion clothing, such ideas were discarded. As Figure 10.2 shows, by 1900 one-third of college students were women, and today more women than men attend college. The overall average differs with racial–ethnic groups, as you can see from Figure 10.3 on page 291. African Americans have the most women relative to men, and Asian Americans the least. Another indication of how extensive the change is: Women now earn 57 percent of all bachelor’s degrees and 60 percent of all master’s degrees (Statistical Abstract 2012:Table 299).

Figure 10.4 on the next page illustrates another major change—how women have increased their share of professional degrees. The greatest change is in dentistry: In 1970, across the entire United States, only 34 women earned degrees in dentistry. Today, that total has jumped to 2,300 a year. As you can also see, almost as many women as men now become dentists, lawyers, and physicians. It is likely that women will soon outnumber men in earning these professional degrees.

Gender Tracking. With such extensive changes, it would seem that gender equality has been achieved, or at least almost so, and in some instances—as with the changed sex ratio in college—we have a new form of gender inequality. If we look closer, however, we find something beneath the surface. Underlying these degrees is gender tracking; that is, college degrees tend to follow gender, which reinforces male–female

Explore

Living Data

on mysoclab.com

* This sharp drop in female enrollment occurred when large numbers of male soldiers returned from World War II and attended college under the new GI Bill of Rights.

** Author’s estimate. Source: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 1938:Table 114; 1959:Table 158; 1991:Table 261; 2012:Table 277.

FIGURE 10.2 Changes in College Enrollment, by Sex

What percentages of U.S. college students are female and male?

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Pe rc

en ta

g e

70%

1900

65

35

1910

65

35

1920

62

38

1930

59

41

1940

52 48

1950*

70

30

1960

60

40

1970

58

42

58

42

1980

48 52

1990

45

55

2000

44

56

2010

43

57

2020**

WomenMen

How did gender inequality in education show up in the 1800s?

Gender Inequality in the United States 291

Note: This figure can be confusing. To read it, ask: What percentage of a particular group in college are men or women? (For example, what percentage of Asian American college students are men or women?)

Source: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 2012:Table 279.

FIGURE 10.3 College Students, by Sex and Race–Ethnicity

0%

10%

20%

30%

50%

40%

60% Pe

rc en

ta g

e

70%

Whites Latinos African Americans

Asian Americans

Native Americans

WomenMen

54

46

56

44

58

42

60

40

65

35

Source: By the author. Based on Digest of Education Statistics 2007:Table 269; Statistical Abstract of the United States 2012:Table 303.

FIGURE 10.4 Gender Changes in Professional Degrees

Men Women

0

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

90%

70%

50%

30%

10%

Pe rc

en ta

g e

1970

Dentistry (D.D.S., D.M.D.)

1

99

1970

Medicine (M.D.)

8

92

2008

4951

2009

46

54

1970

Law (L.L.B., J.D.)

5

95

2009

46

54

distinctions. Here are two extremes: Men earn 95 percent of the associate degrees in the “masculine” field of construction trades, while women are awarded 96 percent of the associate degrees in the “feminine” field of “family and consumer sciences” (Statistical Abstract 2012:Table 301). Because gender socialization gives men and

How does gender inequality in education show up today?

292 CHAPTER 10 Gender and Age

women different orientations to life, they enter college with gender-linked aspirations. Socialization—not some presumed innate characteristic—channels men and women into different educational paths.

Gender Inequality in the Workplace To examine the work setting is to make visible basic relations between men and women. Let’s begin with one of the most remarkable areas of gender inequality at work, the pay gap.

The Pay Gap After college, you might like to take a few years off, travel around Europe, sail the oceans, or maybe sit on a beach in some South American paradise and drink piña cola- das. But chances are, you are going to go to work instead. Since you have to work, how would you like to make an extra $700,000 on your job? If this sounds appealing, read on. I’m going to reveal how you can make an extra $1,465 a month between the ages of 25 and 65.

Historical Background. First, let’s get a broad background to help us understand today’s situation. One of the chief characteristics of the U.S. workforce is the steady growth in the numbers of women who work for wages outside the home. Figure 10.5 shows that in 1890 about one of every five paid workers was a woman. By 1940, this ratio had grown to one of four; by 1960 to one of three; and today it is almost one of two. As shown in this figure, during the next few years we can expect that the ratio will remain 53 percent men and 47 percent women.

Geographical Factors. Women who work for wages are not distributed evenly throughout the United States. From the Social Map on the next page, you can see that where a woman lives makes a difference in how likely she is to work outside the home. Why is there such a clustering among the states? The geographical patterns that you

Note: Pre-1940 totals include women 14 and over: totals for 1940 and after are for women 16 and over. Broken lines are the author’s projections.

Sources: By the author. Based on Women’s Bureau of the United States 1969:10; Manpower Report to the President, 1971:203, 205; Mills and Palumbo 1980:6, 45; Statistical Abstract of the United States 2012: Table 587.

FIGURE 10.5 Women’s and Men’s Proportion of the U.S.

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0

Pe rc

en ta

g e

Men

Women

1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 20202010

Year

90%

Labor Force

How has the proportion of women and men in the U.S. workforce changed over time?

Gender Inequality in the Workplace 293

see on this map reflect regional subcultural differences about which we currently have little understanding.

The “Testosterone Bonus”. Now, back to how you can make an extra $700,000 at work—and maybe even more. You might be wondering if this is hard to do. Actually, it is simple for some and impossible for others. As Figure 10.7 on the next page shows, all you have to do is be born a male. If we compare full-time workers, based on current differences in earnings, this is how much more money the average male can expect to earn over the course of his career. Now if you want to boost that annual difference to $30,600 for a whopping career total of $1,225,000, be both a male and a college graduate. Hardly any single factor pinpoints gender discrimination better than these totals. As you can see from Figure 10.7, the pay gap shows up at all levels of education.

For college students, the gender gap in pay begins with the first job after graduation. You might know of a particular woman who was offered a higher salary than most men in her class, but she would be an exception. On average, employers start men out at higher salaries than women, and although women advance in salary at roughly the same rate as men, they never catch up from the men’s starting “testosterone bonus” (Carter 2010; Weinberger 2011; Smith 2012). Depending on your sex, then, you will either benefit from the pay gap or be victimized by it.

The pay gap is so great that U.S. women who work full time average only 72 percent of what men are paid. As you can see from Figure 10.8 on page 295, the pay gap used to be even worse. A gender gap in pay occurs not only in the United States but also in all industrialized nations.

Reasons for the Gender Pay Gap. What logic can underlie the gender pay gap? As we just saw, college degrees are gender linked, so perhaps this gap is due to career choices. Maybe women are more likely to choose lower-paying jobs, such as teach- ing grade school, while men are more likely to go into better-paying fields, such as business and engineering. Actually, this is true, and researchers have found that about half of the gender pay gap is due to such factors. And the balance? It consists of a

FIGURE 10.6 Women in the Workforce

Less than average: 49.2% to 57.9%

Average: 58.2% to 62.6%

More than average: 62.9% to 68.8%

e:

e:

NH 65.5 MA 61.9 RI 62.6

CT 63.9 NJ 60.8

DE 59 MD 64

DC 64.4

AK 65.6

UT 60.4

OH 61.1

SC 56.5

NC 57.9

VA 63.3

WA 62.9

OR 59.9

CA 57.7

NV 60.4

ID 57.9

MT 60.9

WY 64.2

AZ 56.2 NM

56.2

CO 63.5

ND 67.7

SD 68.3

NE 67.6

KS 65.9

OK 57.8

TX 57

MN 67.4

IA 68

MO 61.7

AR 55.9

LA 54.7

WI 66.5

IL 60.6

KY 55.8

TN 56.2

MS 52.1

AL 53.1

GA 58.2

FL 56.8

IN 59.8

MI 57.4

WV 49.2

PA 58.6

NY 57.3

ME 60.6

HI 58.3

What percentage of women are in the workforce?

NJNJ 60.8 EE 99 D 4

4

Most women in the work force

1. Vermont (68.8%)

2. South Dakota (68.3%)

3. Iowa (68.0%)

Fewest women in the work force

1. West Virginia (49.2%)

2. Mississippi (52.1%)

3. Alabama (53.1%)

VT 68.8

Source: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 2011:Table 593.

What is the “testoserone bonus”? Why is there a gender pay gap?

294 CHAPTER 10 Gender and Age

0

$10,000

$20,000

$30,000

$40,000

$50,000

$60,000

$70,000

$80,000

$90,000

$100,000

Ea rn

in g s

p er

y ea

r

Average of All Workers

$62,445

$44,857

72%

High School Dropouts

$33,194

$23,478

High School Graduates

$43,140

$32,227

Some College, No Degree

$52,580

$36,553

Associate Degree

$55,631

$42,307

College Graduates

$92,815

$62,198

2

71% 75% 70% 76% 67%

Women Men

1Full-time workers in all fields. The percentage at the bottom of each purple bar indicates the women’s average percentage of the men’s income. 2Bachelor’s and all higher degrees, including professional degrees. Source: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 2012:Table 703.

FIGURE 10.7 The Gender Pay Gap, by Education1

combination of gender discrimination (Jacobs 2003; Roth 2003) and what is called the “child penalty”—women missing out on work experience and opportunities while they care for children (Hundley 2001; Wilde et al. 2010).

The CEO Gap. As a final indication of the extent of the U.S. gender pay gap, consider this. Of the nation’s top 500 corporations (the so-called Fortune 500), only twelve are headed by women (VenderMey 2011).

I examined the names of the CEOs of the 350 largest U.S. corporations, and I found that your best chance to reach the top is to be named (in this order) John, Robert, James, William, or Charles. Edward, Lawrence, and Richard are also advantageous names. Amber, Katherine, Leticia, and Maria apparently draw a severe penalty. Naming your baby girl John or Robert might seem a little severe, but it could help her reach the top. (I say this only slightly tongue-in-cheek. One of the few women to head a Fortune 500 company—before she was fired and given $21 million severance pay—had a man’s first name: Carleton Fiorina of Hewlett-Packard. Carleton’s first name is actually Cara, but knowing what she was facing in the highly competitive business world, she dropped this feminine name to go by her masculine middle name.)

Is the Glass Ceiling Cracking? “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes flex time and a baby carriage.” —Said by a supervisor at Novartis who refused to hire women (Carter 2010)

This supervisor’s statement reflects blatant discrimination. Most gender discrimination in the workplace, however, seems to be unintentional, with much of it based on gender stereotypes.

Apart from cases of overt discrimination, then, what keeps women from breaking through the glass ceiling, the mostly invisible barrier that prevents women from reaching the executive suite? The “pipelines” that lead to the top of a company are its marketing,

How does the gender pay gap differ by education?

Gender Inequality in the Workplace 295

sales, and production positions, those that directly affect the corporate bottom line (Hymowitz 2004; DeCrow 2005). Men, who dominate the executive suite, stereotype women as being good at “support” but less capable than men of leadership (Belkin 2007). They steer women into human resources or public relations. In these positions, success- ful projects are not appreciated in the same way as those that bring corporate profits— and bonuses for their managers.

Another reason for the strength of the glass ceiling is that women lack mentors— successful executives who take an interest in them and teach them the ropes. Lack of a mentor is no trivial matter, for mentors can provide opportunities to develop lead- ership skills that open the door to the executive suite (Hymowitz 2007; Yakaboski and Reinert 2011).

Sexual Harassment—and Worse Sexual harassment—unwelcome sexual attention at work or at school, which may affect job or school performance or create a hostile environment—was not recognized as a problem until the 1970s. Before this, women considered unwanted sexual comments, touches, looks, and pressure to have sex as a personal matter, something between her and some “turned on” man—or an obnoxious one.

With the prodding of feminists, women began to perceive unwanted sexual advances at work and school as part of a structural problem. That is, they began to realize that the issue was more than a man here or there doing obnoxious things

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

$80

70

1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015

In co

m e

in T

ho us

an d s

Year

$40,367

$62,445

$50,241

$44,857

$32,940

72%

Men

$19,173

$24,999

$28,979

$11,159

$16,252

$20,591

$26,547

60%

65%

71%

66%

66%

Women

$5,434 $6,598 $9,184

$12,934

$3,296 $3,816 $5,440

$7,719 61% 58%

59% 60%

Source: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 1995:Table 739; 2002:Table 666; 2012:Table 703, and earlier years. Broken lines indicate the author’s estimate.

FIGURE 10.8 The Gender Gap over Time: What Percentage of Men’s Income Do Women Earn?

As the glass ceiling slowly cracks, women are gradually gaining entry into the top positions in society. Shown here is Virginia Rometty, the first woman to head IBM.

Is the glass ceiling cracking? What keeps women from breaking through it?

296 CHAPTER 10 Gender and Age

because he was attracted to a woman; rather, men were using their positions of authority to pressure women for sex.

Effects on Perception. As symbolic interactionists stress, labels affect the way we see things. Because we have the term sexual harassment, we perceive actions in a different light than people used to. We are now more apt to perceive a supervisor who makes sexual advances to a worker not as sexual attraction but as a misuse of authority. It is important to add that this is not just a “man thing.” Unlike the 1970s, many women today are in posi- tions of authority. In those positions they, too, sexually harass subordinates (Settles et al. 2011). With most authority still vested in men, however, most of the sexual harassers are men.

Sexual Orientation. Originally, sexual desire was an element of sexual harassment, but no longer. This changed when the U.S. Supreme Court considered the lawsuit of a homosexual who had been tormented by his supervisors and fellow workers. The Court ruled that sexual desire is not necessary—that sexual harassment laws also apply to homosexuals who are harassed by heterosexuals while on the job (Felsenthal 1998). By extension, the law applies to heterosexuals who are sexually harassed by homosexuals.

Violence Against Women Around the world, one of the consistent characteristics of violence is its gen- der inequality. That is, females are more likely to be the victims of males, not the other way around. Let’s see how this almost-one-way street in gender violence applies to the United States.

Forcible Rape. The fear of rape is common among U.S. women, a fear that is far from groundless. The U.S. rate is 0.52 per 1,000 females (Statistical Abstract 2012:Table 314). If we exclude the very young and women over 50, those who are the least likely rape victims, the rate comes to about 1 per 1,000. This means that 1 of every 1,000 U.S. girls and women between the ages of 12 and 50 is raped each year. Despite this high number, women are safer now than they were ten and twenty years ago. The rape rate then was much higher than today.

Although any woman can be a victim of sexual assault—and victims include babies and elderly women—the typical victim is 16 to 19 years old. As you can see from Table 10.1, sexual assault peaks at those ages and then declines.

Women’s most common fear seems to be an attack by a stranger—a sudden, violent abduction and rape. However, contrary to the stereotypes that underlie these fears, most victims know their attackers. As you can see from Table 10.2, about one of three rapes is committed by strangers.

Males are also victims of rape, which is every bit as devastating for them as it is for female victims (Choudhary et al. 2010). Rape in prison is a special problem, sometimes tolerated by prison guards, at times even encouraged as punishment for prisoners who have given them problems (Donaldson 1993; Buchanan 2010).

Date (Acquaintance) Rape. What has shocked so many about date rape (also known as acquaintance rape) are studies showing how common it is (Littleton et al. 2008). Researchers who used a nationally representative sample of women enrolled in U.S. col- leges and universities with 1,000 students or more found that 1.7 percent had been raped during the preceding six months. Another 1.1 percent had been victims of attempted rape (Fisher et al. 2000).

With 11 million women enrolled in college, 2.8 percent (1.7 plus 1.1) means that over a quarter of a million college women were vic- tims of rape or of attempted rape in just the past six months. (This

Although crassly put by the cartoonist, behind the glass ceiling lies this background assumption.

© K

es . R

ep ro

du ct

io n

rig ht

s ob

ta in

ab le

fr om

w w

w .C

ar to

on St

oc k.

co m

Why is sexual harassment a structural problem, not just a personal problem? What are the typical ages of rape victims?

TABLE 10.1 Age of Rape Victims

Age Rate per 1,000 Females

12–15 1.9 16–19 3.3 20–24 2.3 25–34 1.3 35–49 0.8 50–64 0.3 65 and Older 0.09

Sources: By the author. A ten-year average, based on Statistical Abstract of the United States; 2002:Table 303; 2003:Table 295; 2004:Table 322; 2005:Table 306; 2006:Table 308; 2007:Table 312; 2008:Table 316; 2009:Table 305; 2010:Table 305; 2012:Table 316.

The Changing Face of Politics 297

conclusion assumes that the rate is the same in colleges with fewer than 1,000 students, which has not been verified.) Most of the women told a friend what happened, but only 5 percent reported the crime to the police (Fisher et al. 2003).

Murder. All over the world, men are more likely than women to be killers. Figure 10.9 illustrates this gender pattern in U.S. murders. Note that although females make up about 51 percent of the U.S. population, they don’t even come close to making up 51 percent of the nation’s killers. As you can see from this figure, when women are murdered, about 9 times out of 10 the killer is a man.

Violence in the Home. In the family, too, women are the typical victims. Spouse bat- tering, marital rape, and incest are discussed in Chapter 12, pages 375–376. Two forms of violence against women—honor killings and genital circumcision—are discussed on pages 284 and 285.

Feminism and Gendered Violence. Feminist sociologists have been especially effective in bringing violence against women to the public’s attention. Some use symbolic interactionism, pointing out that to associate strength and virility with violence—as is done in many cultures—is to promote violence. Others use conflict theory. They argue that men are losing power, and that some men turn violently against women as a way to reassert their declining power and status (Reiser 1999; Meltzer 2002; Xie et al. 2011).

Solutions. There is no magic bullet for this problem of gendered violence, but to be effective, any solution must break the connection between violence and masculinity. This would require an educational program that encompasses schools, churches, homes, and the media. Given the gunslinging heroes of the Wild West and other American icons, as well as the violent messages that are so prevalent in the mass media, includ- ing video games, it is difficult to be optimistic that a change will come any time soon.

Our next topic, women in politics, however, gives us much more reason for optimism.

The Changing Face of Politics Women could take over the United States! Think about it. There are eight million more women than men of voting age. But look at Table 10.3 on the next page. Although women voters greatly outnumber men voters, men greatly outnumber women in political office. The remarkable gains women have made in recent elections can take our eye off the broader picture. Since 1789 almost 2,000 men have served in the U.S. Senate. And how many women? Only 38, including 17 current senators. Not

TABLE 10.2 Relationship of Victims and Rapists

Relationship Percentage

Relative 7% Known Well 33% Casual Acquaintance 23% Stranger 34% Not Reported 2%

Sources: By the author. A ten-year average, based on Statistical Abstract of the United States; 2002:Table 296; 2003:Table 323; 2004–2005:Table 307; 2006:Table 311; 2007: Table 315; 2008:Table 316; 2009:Table 306; 2010:Table 306; 2011:Table 313.

The most common drug used to facilitate date rape is alcohol, not GHB.

0

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

90%

70%

50%

30%

10%

The Victims

Pe rc

en ta

g e

Women Men

23

77

The Killers

11

89

Source: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 2012:Tables 311, 324.

FIGURE 10.9 Killers and Their Victims

What is the relationship of victims and rapists? What is the pattern of gender and murder?

298 CHAPTER 10 Gender and Age

until 1992 was the first African American woman (Carol Moseley-Braun) elected to the U.S. Senate. No Latina or Asian American woman has yet been elected to the Senate (National Women’s Political Caucus 1998, 2011; Statistical Abstract 2012:Table 413).

We are in the midst of fundamental change. In 2002, Nancy Pelosi was the first woman to be elected by her colleagues as minority leader of the House of Representatives. Five years later, in 2007, they chose her as the first female Speaker of the House. These posts made her the most powerful woman ever in Congress. Another significant event occurred in 2008 when Hillary Clinton came within a hair’s breadth of becoming the presidential nominee of the Democratic party. That same year, Sarah Palin was chosen as the Republican vice-presidential candidate. We can also note that more women are becoming corporate executives, and, as indicated in Figure 10.4 (on page 291), more women are also becoming lawyers. In these positions, women are traveling more and making statewide and national contacts. Along with other societal changes allowing women more freedom, such as the increasing view of child care as a responsibility of both mother and father, it is only a matter of time until a woman occupies the Oval Office.

Glimpsing the Future—with Hope Women’s fuller participation in the decision-making processes of our social institutions has shattered stereotypes that tended to limit females to “feminine” activities and push

males into “masculine” ones. As structural barriers continue to fall and more activities are degendered, both males and

females will have greater freedom to pursue activities that are more compatible with their abilities and desires as

individuals. As females and males develop a new conscious-

ness both of their capacities and of their potential, relationships will change. Distinctions between the sexes will not disappear, but there is no reason for biological differences to be translated into social inequalities. Our potential, as sociologist Alison Jaggar (1990) observed, is for gender equality to become less a goal than a background condition for living in society.

TABLE 10.3 U.S. Women in Political Office

Percentage of Offices Held by Women

Number of Offices Held by Women

National Office U.S. Senate 17% 17 U.S. House of Representatives

17% 73

State Office Governors 12% 6 Lt. Governors 18% 9 Attorneys General 8% 4 Secretaries of State 24% 12 Treasurers 20% 10 State Auditors 16% 8 State Legislators 24% 1,800

Source: Center for American Women and Politics 2010.

Hillary Clinton broke through the glass ceiling in politics when she was elected senator from New York: She also came close to being the Democratic nominee for president. She is shown here in her position as Secretary of State, meeting with Arab leaders in Morocco.

How are gender and politics changing? Are we close to gender equality in politics? What support do you have for your answer?

Aging in Global Perspective 299

Inequalities of Aging In 1928, Charles Hart, who was working on his Ph.D. in anthropology, did fieldwork with the Tiwi people, who live on an island off the northern coast of Australia. Because every Tiwi belongs to a clan, they assigned Hart to the bird (Jabijabui) clan and told him that a particular woman was his mother. Hart described the woman as “toothless, almost blind, withered.” He added that she was “physically quite revolting and mentally rather senile.” He then recounted this remarkable event:

Toward the end of my time on the islands an incident occurred that surprised me because it suggested that some of them had been taking my presence in the kinship system much more seriously than I had thought. I was approached by a group of about eight or nine senior men. . . . They were the senior members of the Jabijabui clan and they had decided among themselves that the time had come to get rid of the decrepit old woman who had first called me son and whom I now called mother. . . . As I knew, they said, it was Tiwi custom, when an old woman became too feeble to look after herself, to “cover her up.” This could only be done by her sons and brothers and all of them had to agree beforehand, since once it was done, they did not want any dissension among the broth- ers or clansmen, as that might lead to a feud. My “mother” was now completely blind, she was constantly falling over logs or into fires, and they, her senior clansmen, were in agreement that she would be better out of the way. Did I agree?

I already knew about “covering up.” The Tiwi, like many other hunting and gather- ing peoples, sometimes got rid of their ancient and decrepit females. The method was to dig a hole in the ground in some lonely place, put the old woman in the hole and fill it in with earth until only her head was showing. Everybody went away for a day or two and then went back to the hole to discover to their great surprise, that the old woman was dead, having been too feeble to raise her arms from the earth. Nobody had “killed” her; her death in Tiwi eyes was a natural one. She had been alive when her relatives last saw her. I had never seen it done, though I knew it was the custom, so I asked my brothers if it was necessary for me to attend the “covering up.”

They said no and that they would do it, but only after they had my agreement. Of course I agreed, and a week or two later we heard in our camp that my “mother” was dead, and we all wailed and put on the trimmings of mourning. (C. W. M. Hart in Hart and Pilling 1979:125–126)

Aging in Global Perspective We won’t deal with the question of whether it was moral or ethical for Hart to agree that the old woman should be “covered up.” What is of interest for our purposes is how the Tiwi treated their frail elderly—or, more specifically, their frail female elderly. You probably noticed that the Tiwi “covered up” only old women. As was noted earlier, females are discriminated against throughout the world. As this incident makes evident, in some places that discrimination extends even to death.

Every society must deal with the problem of people growing old, and of some becoming frail. Although few societies choose to bury old people alive, all societies must decide how to allocate limited resources among their citizens. With the percentage of the population that is old increasing in many nations, these decisions are generating tensions between the generations.

The Social Construction of Aging The way the Tiwi treated frail elderly women reflects one extreme of how societies cope with aging. Another extreme, one that reflects an entirely different attitude, is illus- trated by the Abkhasians, an agricultural people who live in Georgia, a republic of the former Soviet Union. The Abkhasians pay their elderly high respect and look to them

Watch Ways We Live

on mysoclab.com

What is the “covering up” ceremony of the Tiwi? Why did they practice it?

This 104-year old woman in Bama Yao, China, has slowed down but has not retired. As in her earlier years, she still does spinning and remains an active member of her community.

Except for interaction within families, age groups in Western culture are usually kept fairly separate. The idea of having a day care center in the same building as a nursing home breaks this tradition. This photo was taken in Seattle, Washington.

for guidance. They would no more dispense with their elderly by “covering them up” than we would “cover up” a sick child in our culture.

The Abkhasians may be among the longest-lived people on earth. Many claim to live past 100—some beyond 120 and even 130 (Benet 1971; Robbins 2006). Although researchers have concluded that the extreme claims are bogus (Young et al. 2010), government records do indicate that many Abkhasians do live to a very old age.

Three main factors appear to account for their long lives. The first is their diet, which consists of little meat, much fresh fruit, vegetables, garlic, goat cheese, cornmeal, buttermilk, and wine. The second is their lifelong physi- cal activity. They do slow down after age 80, but even after the age of 100 they still work about four hours a day. The third factor—a highly developed sense of community—lies at the very heart of the Abkhasian culture. From childhood, each individual is integrated into a primary group and remains so throughout life. There is no such thing as a nursing home, nor do the elderly live alone. Because they continue to work and contribute to the group’s wel- fare, the elderly aren’t a burden to anyone. They don’t vegetate, nor do they feel the need to “fill time” with bingo and shuffleboard. In short, the elderly feel no sudden rupture between what they “were” and what they “are.”

The examples of the Tiwi and the Abkhasians reveal an important socio- logical principle: Like gender, aging is socially constructed. That is, noth- ing in the nature of aging summons forth any particular viewpoint. Rather, attitudes toward the aged are rooted in society and, therefore, differ from one social group to another. As we shall see, even the age at which people are considered old depends not on biology, but on culture.

Industrialization and the Graying of the Globe As was noted in previous chapters, industrialization is occurring worldwide. With indus- trialization comes a higher standard of living, including more food, a purer water supply, and more effective ways of fighting the diseases that kill children. As a result, when a country industrializes, more of its people reach older ages. The Social Map on the next page illustrates this principle.

From this global map, you can see that the industrialized countries have the high- est percentage of elderly. The range among nations is broad, from just 1 of 45 citizens in nonindustrialized Uganda to nine times more—1 of 5—in postindustrial Japan (Statistical Abstract 2012:Table 1334). In just two decades, half the population of Italy and Japan will be older than 50 (Kinsella and Phillips 2005). The graying of the globe

is so new that two-thirds of all people who have ever passed age 50 in the history of the world are alive today (Zaslow 2003).

As the numbers of elderly continue to grow, analysts have become alarmed about future liabilities for their care. This issue is especially troubling in western Europe and Japan, which have the largest percentage of citizens over age 60. The basic issue is, How can nations provide high-quality care for their growing numbers of elderly without burdening future generations with impossible taxes? Although more and more nations around the world are confronting this issue, no one has found a solution yet.

The Graying of America As Figure 10.11 on the next page illustrates, the United States is part of this global trend. This figure shows how U.S. life expectancy, the number of years people can expect to live, has increased since 1900. To me, and perhaps to you, it is startling to realize that a hundred years ago the average U.S. man didn’t make it to his 50th birthday, while the average U.S. woman died

What does “the social construction of aging” mean? Can you give an example?

Aging in Global Perspective 301

What indicators are there that the globe is “graying”?

A g

e

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

90

Year

1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020

51.8 53.6 54.6

61.6 60.8 65.2 65.6

71.1 73.1 74.7

70.0 71.8

80.8

66.6 67.1

77.4 78.8

48.4

58.1

48.3

75.7 79.7

74.3

81.9 77.1

46.3

Men Women

Sources: By the author. Based on Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial Edition, Part I, Series B, 107–115; Statistical Abstract of the United States 2012:Table 104.

FIGURE 10.11 U.S. Life Expectancy by Year of Birth

Highest percentage of population age 65 and older

1. Japan (22.6%)

2. Germany (20.4%)

3. Italy (20.3%)

h

Lowest percentage of population age 65 and older

1. Uganda (2.1%)

2. Niger (2.3%)

3. Afghanistan (2.4%)

The least: 2.1% to 3.9%

The middle range: 4.1% to 9.9%

The most: 10.0% to 22.6%

Percentage unknown

Percentage of a Country’s Population Age 65 and Older

North America

South America

Africa

Europe

Asia

Australia

t percentage of tion age 65 and older

(22 6%)

f

percentage ulation age 65 er

da (2.1%)

(2.3%)

anistan (2.4%)

The least: 2.1% to 3.9%

Percentage of a Country’s Population Age 65 and Older

NNNoNorthth AAmmerica

South America

Afriica

Europe

Asisiaa

AusAustratralialia

Source: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 2011:Table 1333.

FIGURE 10.10 The Graying of the Globe

302 CHAPTER 10 Gender and Age

shortly after her 50th birthday. Since then, we’ve added about 30 years to our life expec- tancy, and Americans born today can expect to live into their 70s or 80s.

The term graying of America refers to this growing percentage of older people in the U.S. population. Look at Figure 10.12 above. In 1900 only 4 percent of Americans were age 65 and older. Today 13 percent are. The average 65-year-old can expect to live another 19 years (Statistical Abstract 2012:Table 107). U.S. society has become so “gray” that, as Figure 10.13 shows, the median age has almost doubled since 1850. Today, there are 8 million more elderly Americans than there are teenagers.

As anyone who has ever visited Florida knows, the elderly population is not distributed evenly around the country. (As Jerry Seinfeld sardonically noted, “There’s a law that when you get old, you’ve got to move to Florida.”) The Social Map on the next page shows how uneven this distribution is.

Although more people are living to old age, the maximum length of life possible, the life span, has not increased. No one knows, however, just what that maximum is. We do know that it is at least 122, for this was the well-documented age of Jeanne Louise Calment of France at her death in 1997. If the birth certificate of Tuti Yusupova in Uzbekistan proves to be genuine, her age of 130 would indicate that the human life span may exceed even this number by a comfortable margin. It is also likely that advances in genetics will extend the human life span—perhaps to hundreds of years.

Let’s see the different pictures of aging that emerge when we apply the three theo- retical perspectives.

The Symbolic Interactionist Perspective At first, the audience sat quietly as the developers explained their plans to build a high- rise apartment building. After a while, people began to shift uncomfortably in their seats. Then they began to show open hostility.

“That’s too much money to spend on those people,” said one. “You even want them to have a swimming pool?” asked another incredulously. Finally, one young woman put their attitudes in a nutshell when she asked, “Who

wants all those old people around?”

When physician Robert Butler (1975, 1980) heard these complaints about plans to build apartments for senior citizens, he began to realize how deeply antagonistic feelings toward

1900 20001950 2050

Year

25%

20%

15%

10%

5%

0

20.2%

12.4%

4%

8.2%Pe rc

en ta

g e

Source: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 2012:Table 9, and earlier years.

FIGURE 10.12 The Graying of America: Americans Age 65 and Older

Source: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 2000:Table 14; 2012:Table 9, and earlier years.

A g

e

1850 20001900 1950 2050

Year

40

30

20

10

0

39

30

35

20 23

of the U.S. Population FIGURE 10.13 The Median Age

What does “graying of America” mean? Why is this term accurate?

When does old age begin? And what activities are appropriate for the elderly? From this photo that I took of Munimah, a 65-year-old bonded labor- er in Chennai, India, you can see how culturally relative these questions are. No one in Chennai thinks it is extraor- dinary that this woman makes her liv- ing by carrying heavy rocks all day in the burning, tropical sun. Working next to her in the quarry is her 18-year-old son, who breaks the rocks into the size that his mother carries.

The Symbolic Interactionist Perspective 303

The younger states: 10.1% to 14.2%

The average states: 14.4% to 15.7%

The grayer states: 15.8% to 19.5%

ates: %

ates: %

es: %

UT

VT

OH

AK

SC

NC

VA

WA

OR

CA

NV

ID

MT

WY

AZ NM

CO

ND

SD

NE

KS

OK

TX

MN

IA

MO

AR

LA

WI

IL

KY

TN

MS AL GA

FL

IN

MI

WV

PA

NY

ME

NH MA RI

CT NJ

DE MD DC

HI

Percent Elderly

Least elderly

1. Utah (10.1%)

2. Alaska (10.2%)

3. Georgia (11.6%)

Most elderly

1. Florida (19.5%)

2. West Virginia (18.1%)

3. Maine (18%)

Source: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 2011:Table 18. Projections to 2015.

FIGURE 10.14 As Florida Goes, So Goes the Nation

the elderly can run. He coined the term ageism to refer to prejudice and discrimination directed against people because of their age. Let’s see how ageism developed in U.S. society.

Shifting Meanings of Growing Old As we have seen, there is nothing inherent in old age to produce any particular atti- tude, negative or not. Some historians point out that in early U.S. society old age was regarded positively (Cottin 1979; Fleming et al. 2003). In colonial times, growing old was seen as an accomplishment because so few people made it to old age. With no pensions, the elderly continued to work at jobs that changed little over time. They were viewed as storehouses of knowledge about work skills and sources of wisdom about how to live a long life.

The coming of industrialization eroded these bases of respect. The better sanitation and medical care allowed more people to reach old age, and no longer was being elderly an honorable distinction. Industrialization’s new forms of mass production also made young workers as productive as the elderly. Coupled with mass education, this stripped away the elderly’s superior knowledge (Cowgill 1974; Hunt 2005).

A basic principle of symbolic interactionism is that we perceive both ourselves and others according to the symbols of our culture. When the meaning of old age changed from an asset to a liability, not only did younger people come to view the elderly dif- ferently but the elderly also began to perceive themselves in a new light. This shift in meaning is demonstrated in the way people lie about their age: They used to say that they were older than they were, but now claim to be younger than their true ages (Clair et al. 1993).

However, once again, the meaning of old age is shifting—and this time in a posi- tive direction. This is largely because most of today’s U.S. elderly can take care of themselves financially, and many are well-off. As the vast numbers of the baby boom generation enter their elderly years, their better health and financial strength will contribute to still more positive images of the elderly. If this symbolic shift contin- ues, the next step—now in process—is to celebrate old age as a time of renewal.

How have Americans’ ideas about the elderly changed over time?

304 CHAPTER 10 Gender and Age

Old age will be viewed not as a period that precedes death, but, rather, as a new stage of growth.

Even theories of old age have taken a more positive tone. A theory that goes by the mouthful gerotranscendence was developed by Swedish sociologist Lars Tornstam. The thrust of this theory is that as people grow old they transcend their limited views of life. They become less self-centered and begin to feel more at one with the universe. Coming to see things as less black and white, they develop subtler ways of viewing right and wrong and tolerate more ambiguity (Manheimer 2005; Hyse and Tornstam 2009). However, this theory seems to miss the mark. I have seen some elderly people grow softer and more spiritual, but I have also seen others turn bitter, close up, and become even more judgmental of others. The theory’s limitations should become apparent shortly.

The Influence of the Mass Media In Chapter 3 (pp. 77, 79–80), we noted that the mass media help to shape our ideas about both gender and relationships between men and women. As a powerful source of symbols, the media also influence our ideas of the elderly, the topic of the Mass Media box on the next page.

In Sum: Symbolic interactionists stress that old age has no inherent meaning. There is nothing about old age to automatically summon forth responses of honor and respect, as with the Abkhasians, or any other response. Culture shapes how we perceive the elderly, including the ways we view our own aging. In short, the social modifies the biological.

Read

Growing Old in an Arab American

Family by Hani Fakhouri

on mysoclab.com

How is the meaning of “old age” changing today?

Stereotypes, which play such a profound role in social life, are a basic area of sociological investigation. In contemporary society, the mass media are a major source of stereotypes.

PE A

N U

TS ®

C ha

rle s

M . S

ch ul

z

The Functionalist Perspective Functionalists analyze how the parts of society work together. Among the components of society are age cohorts—people who were born at roughly the same time and who pass through the life course together. Age cohorts might seem to be merely an abstract term, but they have a huge impact on your life. When you finish college, for example, if the age cohort nearing retirement is large (a “baby boom” generation), more jobs will be available to you and your peers. In contrast, if it is small (a “baby bust” generation), fewer jobs will be open.

Let’s consider people who are about to retire or who have retired recently. We will review theories that focus on how people adjust to retirement.

Disengagement Theory Think about how disruptive it would be if the elderly left their jobs only when they died or became incompetent. How does society get the elderly to leave their positions so younger people can take them? According to disengagement theory, developed by Elaine Cumming and William Henry (1961), this is the function of pensions.

The Functionalist Perspective 305

Pensions get the elderly to disengage from their positions and hand them over to younger people. Retirement, then, is a mutually beneficial arrangement between two parts of society.

Evaluation of the Theory. Certainly pensions do entice the elderly to leave their jobs so a younger generation can step in. I think we all know this, so it isn’t much of a theory. Critics have also pointed out that the elderly don’t really “disengage.” People who quit their jobs don’t sit in rocking chairs and watch the world go by. Instead of disengaging, the retired exchange one set of roles for another (Jerrome 1992). They find these new ways of conducting their lives, which often center on friendship, no less satisfying than their earlier roles. In addition, the meaning of retirement has changed since this “theory” was developed. Less and less does retirement mean an end to work. Millions slow down, staying at their jobs, but putting in fewer hours. Others work as consultants part-time. Some switch careers, even in their 60s, some even in their 70s. If disengagement theory is ever resurrected, it must come to grips with our new patterns of retirement.

Activity Theory Are retired people more satisfied with life? (All that extra free time and not having to kowtow to a boss must be nice.) Are intimate activities more satisfying than formal ones? Such questions are the focus of activity theory. Although we could consider this theory from other perspectives, we are examining it from the functionalist perspective because its focus is how disengagement is functional or dysfunctional.

What is disengagement theory? What are its criticisms?

Mass Media in Social Life

The Cultural Lens: Shaping Our Perceptions of the Elderly The mass media profoundly influence our perception of people. What we hear and see on television and in the movies, the songs we listen to, the books and magazines we read—all become part of the cultural lens through which we view the world. The media shape our images of minorities and dominant groups; men, women, and children; people with dis- abilities; those from other cultures—and the elderly.

The shaping of our images and perception of the elderly is subtle, so much so that it usu- ally occurs without our awareness. The elderly, for example, are underrepresented on television and in most popular magazines. This leaves a covert message—that the elderly are of little consequence and can be safely ignored.

The media also reflect and reinforce stereotypes of gender age. Older male news anchors are likely to be retained, while female anchors who turn the same age are more likely to be transferred to less visible positions. Similarly, in movies older men are more like- ly to play romantic leads—and to play them opposite much younger rising stars.

The message might be subtle, but it is not lost. The more television that people watch, the more they perceive the elderly in negative terms. The elderly, too,

internalize these negative images, which, in turn, influences the ways they view themselves. These images are so powerful that they affect the elderly’s health, even the way they walk

(Donlon et al. 2005). We become fearful of growing old, and we

go to great lengths to deny that we are losing our youth. Fear and denial play into the hands of advertisers, of course, who exploit our con- cerns. They help us deny this biological reality by selling us hair dyes, skin creams, and other products that are designed to conceal even the appearance of old age. For these same rea- sons, plastic surgeons do a thriving business as they remove telltale signs of aging.

The elderly’s growing numbers and affluence translate into economic clout and political power. It is inevitable, then, that the media’s images of the elderly will change. An indication of that change is shown in the photo at left.

For Your Consideration↑

What other examples of fear and denial of growing old are you familiar with? What examples of older men playing romantic leads with younger women can you give?

Of older women and younger men? Why do you think we have gender age?

Aging is more than biology. In some cultures, Mariah Carey, 43, would be considered elderly. Carey is shown here with her husband, Nick Cannon, 31.

Evaluation of the Theory. A study of retired people in France found that some people are happier when they are more active, but others prefer less involvement (Keith 1982). Similarly, most people find informal, inti- mate activities, such as spending time with friends, to be more satisfying than formal activities. But not everyone does. In one study, 2,000 retired U.S. men reported formal activities to be as important as informal ones. Even solitary tasks, such as doing home repairs, had about the same impact as intimate activities on these men’s life satisfaction (Beck and Page 1988). It is the same for spending time with adult children. “Often enough” for some parents is “not enough” or even “too much” for others. In short, researchers have discovered the obvious: What makes life satisfying for one person doesn’t work for another. (This, of course, can be a source of intense frustration for retired couples.)

Continuity Theory Another theory of aging called continuity theory focuses, as its name implies, on how the elderly continue ties with their past (Wang and Shultz 2010). When they retire, many people take on new roles that are simi- lar to the ones they gave up. For example, a former CEO might serve as a consultant, a retired electrician might do small electrical repairs, or a pensioned banker might take over the finances of her church. Researchers have found that people who are active in multiple roles (wife, author, mother, intimate friend, church member, etc.) are better equipped to handle the changes that come with growing old. Social class is also signifi- cant: With their greater resources, people from higher social classes adjust better to the challenges of aging.

Evaluation of the Theory. The basic criticism of continuity theory is that it is too broad (Hatch 2000). We all have anchor points based on our particular experiences in life, and we all rely on them to make adjustments to the changes we encounter. This applies to peo- ple of all ages beyond infancy. This theory is really a collection of loosely connected ideas, with no specific application to the elderly.

In Sum: The broader perspective of the functionalists is how society’s parts work together to keep society running smoothly. If the younger workers had to fight to take over the jobs of the elderly, it would be disruptive to society. To make this process work smoothly, the elderly are offered pensions, which entice them to leave their posi- tions. Functionalists also use a narrower perspective, focusing on how individuals adjust to their retirement. The findings of this narrower perspective are too mixed to be of much value—except that people who have better resources and are active in multiple roles adjust better to old age (Crosnoe and Elder 2002).

Because U.S. workers do not have to retire by any certain age, it is also important to study how people decide to keep working or to retire in the first place. After they retire, how do they reconstruct their identities and come to terms with their changed lives? As the United States grows even grayer, these should prove productive areas of sociological theory and research.

For a unique view of continuity into old age, one I think you will enjoy, read the Down-to-Earth Sociology box on the next page.

The Conflict Perspective As you know, the conflict perspective’s guiding principle is how social groups struggle to control power and resources. How does this apply to society’s age groups? Regardless of whether the young and old recognize it, say conflict theorists, they are opponents in a struggle that threatens to throw society into turmoil. Let’s look at how the passage of Social Security legislation fits the conflict view.

Researchers are exploring factors that can make old age an enjoyable period of life, those conditions that increase people’s mental, social, emotional, and physical well-being. As research progresses, do you think we will reach the point where the average old person will be in this woman’s physical condition?

What is activity theory? Continuity theory?

The Conflict Perspective 307

Fighting for Resources: Social Security Legislation In the 1920s, before Social Security provided an income for the aged, two-thirds of all citizens over 65 had no savings and could not support themselves (Holtzman 1963; Crossen 2004). Destitution in old age loomed even larger for workers during the Great Depression, and in 1930 Francis Townsend, a physician, started a move- ment to rally older citizens. He soon had one-third of all Americans over age 65 enrolled in his Townsend Clubs. They demanded that the federal government impose a national sales tax of 2 percent to provide $200 a month for every person over 65 ($2,100 a month in today’s money). In 1934, the Townsend Plan went before Congress. Because it called for such high payments and many were afraid that it would destroy people’s incentive to save for the future, members of Congress looked for a way to reject the plan without appearing to oppose the elderly. When President Roosevelt announced his own, more modest Social Security plan in 1934, Congress embraced it (Schottland 1963; Amenta 2006).

Down-to-Earth Sociology

Feisty to the End: Gender Roles among the Elderly

This image of my father makes me smile—not because he was arrested as an old man, but, rather, because of the events that led to his arrest. My dad had always been a colorful character, ready with endless ribald jokes and a hearty laugh. He carried these characteristics into his old age.

In his late 70s, my dad was living in a small apartment in a complex for the elderly in Minnesota. The adjacent building was a nursing home, the next destination for the residents of these apartments. None of them liked to think about this “home,” because no one survived it—yet they all knew that this would be their destination. Under the watchful eye of these elderly neighbors, care in the nursing home was fairly good. Until they were transferred to this unwelcome last stopping-place, life for them went on “as usual” in the complex for the elderly.

According to the police report and my dad’s account, here is what happened:

Dad was sitting in the downstairs lounge with other residents, waiting for the mail to arrive, a daily ritual that the residents looked forward to. For some reason known only to him, my dad hooked his cane under the dress of an elderly woman, lifted up her skirt, and laughed. Understandably, this upset her, as well as her husband, who was standing next to her. Angry, the man moved toward my father, threatening him.

I say “moved,” rather than “lunged,” because this man was using a walker. My dad started to run away from this threat. Actually, “run” isn’t quite the right word. “Hobbled” would be a better term.

My dad fled as fast as he could using his cane, while the other man pursued him as fast as he could using his walker.

Wheezing and puffing, the two went from the lounge into the long adjoining hall, pausing now and then to catch their breath. Tiring the most, the other man gave up the pursuit. He then called the police.

When the police officer arrived, he said, “Uncle Marv, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to arrest you.” (This event occurred in a small town, and the officer assigned this case

turned out to be Dad’s nephew.) Dad went before a judge, who could

hardly keep a straight face. He gave Dad a small fine and warned him to behave himself. The apartment manager also gave Dad a warning: One more incident, and he would have to move out of the complex.

Dad’s wife wasn’t too happy about the situation, either.

This event was brought to mind by a newspaper account of a fight that broke out at the food bar of a retirement home (“Melee Breaks . . .” 2004). It seems that one elderly man criticized the way another man was picking through the salad. When a fight broke out between the two, several elderly people were hurt as they tried either to intervene or to flee.

For Your Consideration↑

People carry their personalities, values, and other traits into old age. Among these characteristics are gender roles. What examples of gender roles do you see in the events related here? Are you familiar with how old people continue to show their femininity or masculinity?

During their elderly years, men and women continue to exhibit aspects of the gender roles that they learned and played in their younger years.

How do the elderly continue “doing gender”?

308 CHAPTER 10 Gender and Age

To provide jobs for younger people, the new Social Security law required that workers retire at age 65. It did not matter how well people did their work, or how much they needed the pay. For decades, the elderly protested. Finally, in 1986, Congress eliminated mandatory retire- ment. Today, almost 90 percent of Americans retire by age 65, but most do so voluntarily. No longer can they be forced out of their jobs simply because of age.

Let’s look at what has happened to this groundbreaking legislation since it was passed.

Intergenerational Competition and Conflict Social Security came about not because the members of Congress had generous hearts, but out of a struggle between competing interest groups. As conflict theorists stress, equilibrium between competing groups is only a temporary balancing of oppositional forces, one that can be upset at any time. Following this principle, could conflict between the elderly and the young be in our future? Let’s consider this possibility.

If you listen closely, you can hear ripples of grumbling— complaints that the elderly are getting more than their fair share of society’s resources. The huge costs of Social Security and Medicare are a special concern. As incredible as it may seem, three of every five tax dollars (60 percent) is spent on these two programs (Statistical Abstract 2012:Tables 474, 475). (Total U.S. government receipts are $2,173,000,000, and the total outlay for Medicare and Social Security is

$1,307,000,000.) As Figure 10.15 shows, Social Security payments were $781 million in 1950; now they run 950 times higher. Now look at Figure 10.16 on the next page, which shows the nation’s huge—and growing—medical bill to care for the elderly. Like gasoline poured on a bonfire, these soaring costs may well fuel an intergenerational showdown.

Figure 10.17 on the next page shows another area of concern that can fuel an intergenerational conflict. You can see how greatly the condition of the elderly improved as the government transferred resources to them. But look also at the matching path of children’s poverty. You can see that it is higher now than it was in 1967—and in all the years in between. Our economic crisis is having a severe toll on the nation’s children.

Did the decline in the elderly’s rate of poverty come at the expense of the nation’s children? Of course not. Congress could have decided to finance the welfare of children just as it did that of the elderly. It chose not to. Why? Following conflict theorists, the reason is that the elderly, not the children, launched a broad assault on Congress. The lobbyists for the elderly put a lot of grease in the political reelection machine.

Figure 10.17 could indicate another reason for coming intergenerational conflict. If we take a 9 percent poverty rate as a goal for the nation’s children—to match what the government has accomplished for the elderly—where would the money come from? If the issue gets pitched as a case of taking money from the elderly to give it to children, it can divide the generations. To get people to think that they must choose between pathetic children and suffering old folks can splinter voters into opposing groups. Would improving the welfare of children ever be presented in such a crass way? Ask yourself this: Do politicians ever try to manipulate the emotions of voters to get elected?

In Sum: Age groups are one of society’s many groups that are competing for scarce resources. At some point, this competition may break into conflict.

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

B ill

io ns

o f

D ol

la rs

900

1,000

$1,100

1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 20201950

Year

Source: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States 1997: Table 518; 2012:Table 474. Broken line indicates the author’s projections.

FIGURE 10.15 to Beneficiaries

Social Security Payments

Why might Social Security lead to conflict between the generations?

The Conflict Perspective 309 Pe

rc en

ta g

e

1967 0

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

1971 1975 1979 1983 1987 1991 1995 2000

35%

2005 20152010

Elderly (65 and over)

Children (under 18)

Year

Source: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States, various years, and 2012:Table 713. Broken lines indicate the author’s projections.

FIGURE 10.17 Age and Trends in Poverty

B ill

io ns

o f

D o

lla rs

0 20 40 60 80

100 120 140 160 180 200 220 240 260 280 300

520 540 560 580

$600

420

320 340 360 380 400

440 460 480 500

1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2010 20152005

Me dic

are

Me dic

aid

Year

1970 19751967

Note: Medicare is intended for the elderly and disabled, Medicaid for the poor. About 72 percent of Medicare ($373 billion) and 20 percent of Medicaid payments ($63 billion) go for medical care for the elderly (Statistical Abstract 2012:Tables 144, 151).

FIGURE 10.16 Health Care Costs for the Elderly and Disabled

Source: By the author. Based on Statistical Abstract of the United States various years, and 2012:Tables 144, 151. Broken lines indicate the author’s projections.

Why might Medicare and Medicaid lead to conflict between the generations?

Explore

Living Data

on mysoclab.com

310 CHAPTER 10 Gender and Age

More and more, the goal of the elderly is to enjoy themselves—and with more resources at their disposal, more and more are able to do so. The goal of the Red Hat Society, with chapters around the nation, is simply for women to have fun.

What new views of aging are developing?

Looking toward the Future Let’s not lose sight of one of the major changes stressed in this chapter—that for the first time in human history huge numbers of people are becoming elderly. It is inevitable that such a fundamental change will have a powerful impact on societies around the world, so much so that it might even transform them. We don’t have space to explore such potential transformations, which are only speculative at the moment, so let’s try to catch a glimpse of a new approach to aging.

New Views of Aging As huge numbers of Americans move into old age, the elderly have begun not only to challenge the demeaning stereotypes of the aged but also to develop new perspectives of aging. These new approaches build on the idea that old age should not be viewed as “a-time-close-to-death,” but, rather, as a new period of life, one with its specific chal- lenges, to be sure, but also one to be enjoyed, even celebrated. This new time of life provides unique opportunities to pursue interests, to develop creativity, and to enhance the appreciation of life’s beauty and one’s place in it.

This approach to aging is new, so we don’t know the directions it will take. But if this emphasis continues, it will change how younger people view the elderly—as well as how the elderly view themselves. Negative stereotypes of weak old people living out their last years while they get ready to die might even be replaced with stereotypes of robust, engaged, thriving older adults (Manheimer 2005). No stereotype will encom- pass the reality of the elderly, of course, as the aged differ among themselves as much as younger people differ.

Looking toward the Future 311

Percentage of college students who are women

1970

42% NOW

57%

Percentage of dental school graduates who are women

1970

1% NOW

46%

Percentage of medical school graduates who are women

1970

8% NOW

49%

Women make up this percentage of the U.S. labor force

1970

38% 1890

18% NOW

47%

Percentage of men’s salary earned by women

1970

59% NOW

72%

OTHER NUMBERS Number of U.S.

senators since 1789

MEN

2,000 WOMEN

38

Number of workers paying into Social Security

for each beneficiary

1950

16 NOW

4

Life expectancy of the average

American

1900

47 YEARS

NOW

78 YEARS

Annual Social Security payments

to beneficiaries

NOW

BILLION

$720 1950

MILLION

$781

Median age in the United States

NOW

37 1900

23 2050

39

Americans age 65 and older

NOW

13% 1900

4% 20% 2050

ChildrenElderly Percent in poverty

NOW

20% 1970

16% NOW

9% 1970

25%

312 CHAPTER 10 Gender and Age

Summary and Review10CHAPTE R

Issues of Sex and Gender What is gender stratification? The term gender stratification refers to unequal access to property, power, and prestige on the basis of sex. Each society establishes a structure that, on the basis of sex and gender, opens and closes doors to its privileges. P. 276.

How do sex and gender differ? Sex refers to biological distinctions between males and females. It consists of both primary and secondary sex characteristics. Gender, in contrast, is what a society con- siders proper behaviors and attitudes for its male and female members. Sex physically distinguishes males from females; gender refers to what people call “masculine” and “femi- nine.” P. 276.

Why do the behaviors of males and females differ? The “nature versus nurture” debate refers to whether dif- ferences in the behaviors of males and females are caused by inherited (biological) or learned (cultural) character- istics. Almost all sociologists take the side of nurture. In recent years, however, sociologists have begun to cau- tiously open the door to biology. Pp. 276–279.

Gender Inequality in Global Perspective How did females become a minority group? Patriarchy, or male dominance, appears to be universal. The origin of discrimination against females is lost in history, but the primary theory of how females became a minority group in their own societies focuses on the physical limitations imposed by childbirth. Pp. 279–283.

What are some forms of global violence against females? The major forms discussed are honor killings and female circumcision. Pp. 284.

Gender Inequality in the United States Is the feminist movement new? In what is called the “first wave,” feminists made political demands for change in the early 1900s—and were met

with hostility, and even violence. The “second wave” began in the 1960s and continues today. A “third wave” has emerged. Pp. 284–288.

What forms do gender inequality in health care and education take? Physicians don’t take women’s health complaints as seri- ously as those of men, and they exploit women’s fears, performing unnecessary hysterectomies. More women than men attend college, and each tends to select fields that are categorized as “feminine.” Pp. 288–292.

How does gender inequality show up in the workplace? All occupations show a gender gap in pay. For college graduates, the lifetime pay gap runs over a million dollars in favor of men. Sexual harassment also continues to be a reality of the workplace. Pp. 292–296.

What is the relationship between gender and violence? Overwhelmingly, the victims of rape and murder are females. Conflict theorists point out that men use violence to maintain their power and privilege. Pp. 296–297.

What is the trend in gender inequality in politics? Women continue to be underrepresented in politics, but the trend toward greater political equality is firmly in place. Pp. 297–298.

Aging in Global Perspective How are the elderly treated around the world? There is no single set of attitudes, beliefs, or policies regard- ing the aged. Rather, they vary around the world, from exclusion and killing to integration and honor. The global trend is for more people to live longer. Pp. 299–302.

The Symbolic Interactionist Perspective What does the social construction of aging mean? Nothing in the nature of aging produces any particular set of attitudes. Rather, attitudes toward the elderly are

Summary and Review 313

rooted in society and differ from one social group to another. Pp. 302–304.

The Functionalist Perspective How is retirement functional for society? Functionalists focus on how the withdrawal of the elderly from positions of responsibility benefits society. Disengagement theory examines retirement as a device for ensuring that a society’s positions of responsibility are passed smoothly from one generation to the next. Activity theory examines how people adjust when they retire. Continuity theory focuses on how people adjust to growing old by continuing their roles and coping techniques. Pp. 304–306.

The Conflict Perspective Is there conflict among different age groups? Social Security legislation is an example of one genera- tion making demands on another generation for limited resources. As the number of retired people grows, there are relatively fewer workers to support them. The mushrooming costs of social security, Medicare, and Medicaid are growing concerns. Pp. 306–310.

Looking toward the Future What trends indicate the future for gender and aging? The trends are positive: Increasing equality and political par- ticipation for women and, for the elderly, longer lives, less poverty, and the development of creative aging. P. 310.

Thinking Critically about Chapter 10 1. What is your position on the “nature versus nurture”

(biology or culture) debate? What materials in this chap- ter support your position?

2. Why do you think that the gender gap in pay exists all over the world?

3. How does culture influence our ideas about the elderly?