Sociology of Gender
“Doing Gender” and “Gender Strategies”
We can’t avoid gender. It is our everyday interactions with others. An ongoing accomplishment rather than what we are. “Doing gender” is a performance and can depend on our situation and how it relates to us. We judge others based on their performances and are held accountable for our own (policing). We usually follow these gendered rules due to habit and policing. Additionally, we are rewarded on how we do gender. Gendered rules are a way to interact with others, whether we are masculine or feminine (gender binary). We learn the rules of how to belong and define ourselves. We learn the norms, values, and beliefs of society. We internalize and accept the rules of socialization and might even
…show more content…
At home, everyone is expected to help around. The book, Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions says that “… most two-parent families need two incomes to make ends meet… and few… can afford domestic help.” (Lisa Wade, 2015). This shows that most working-class families usually work together to help themselves. Helping at home is rewarding as you can contribute in helping the family. In my house, while we all do our share of housework, women do most the work. My mother is typically the one that does the cleaning around the house. Gender: Ideas, Interaction, Institutions supports this by saying, “…women are still held disproportionately responsible for housework…men… may feel uncomfortable taking on that role.” (Lisa Wade, 2015). My gender strategy involves sharing the amount of housework done with my brother. In terms of ethnicity, the amount of work done is similar to the working class. Both Hispanic men and women tend to share work but women are more likely to do a larger amount than men. This works with the idea that the more you work the higher you get in life. Organizations can benefit on this because job competition can help in moving up the
Sexual violence is sometimes thought of as a natural part of life. That men have an inherit biological trait that predisposes them to violence and that it cannot be helped. The famous quote is “boys will be boys” meaning that men have no control over their actions and that if they sexual assault someone, that it is just human nature. This is in fact false. There is nothing in the biological makeup of males that can explain away sexual violence. It is a learned cultural behavior generated by gender norms and the medias perpetuation of sexual violence.
Where does a boy learn to be a man and a girl learn to be a woman? If is impossible for one to pinpoint the exact moment in time where they learned what it means to be a boy or a girl. The reason? Gender roles are a result of constant exposure to gender socialization. From birth forward, we become susceptible to society’s opinion on what a male or female should consist of. The way we dress, the way we act, the choices we make, and the way we interact with others can all be linked in some way back to the gender roles present in our lives. While that may not seem like such a bad thing, gender roles can prove to be quite detrimental to the growth and development of a child. This is because gender roles provide stringent guidelines that one feels compelled to adhere to, leaving little choice and autonomy for a child growing up in our society.
Gender theorists and researchers analyze gender partly to understand the perpetuation of inequality and propose changes to diminish inequality. A central question researchers explore is whether challenges to gender inequality need to occur at the interactional or institutional level. The status characteristic and doing gender approach investigates power, agency and change within social interactions. Gendered organizational theories examine power, agency and structure within institutions. Each approach shifted research and theory on gender in interactions and institutions, and challenged the notion that gender is static. The two approaches scrutinize the social construction of gender, biological determinism created
There are a variety of perspectives which are used in Gendered Worlds to examine gender. First, the androcentric perspective views male as being the moral norm. Creating this standard creates a society in which women are seen as deviant since in theory women do not fit the standard. Examples of this would be using words such as “mankind” or using “he” when talking about both females and males (Aulette, Wittner, p. 60). Another example would be using male-oriented words such as “guys” when referring to a classroom full of diverse students. Another perspective is gender polarization which refers to the way that diverse aspects of the human experience are linked to sex differences. Men are supposed to be withdrawn, unemotional, and dominating, while women are supposed to be emotionally submissive and irrational. Certain traits are imposed upon individuals because of their specific sex. If society had decided that pink was a color that was for males and blue for females then that would be the new social norm, and that would be the new characteristics of gender. An alternative viewpoint of gender would be essentialism which views gender as a fixed biological or psychological trait that does not vary among individuals over time. However, a female might start adopting behaviors that are considered masculine such as having short hair or walking with hands in the pockets to avoid the harassment she might encounter on the streets. This female would be doing gender according to
The world one lives in it happens to grasp that all humans are designed as equals. This is far-off from reality based on how this society is operating. The principle of equality does not imply that everyone is the same, nevertheless that everyone should be treated as equals unless special circumstances apply. When it comes to the two sexes, everything that comes in its bounds is either biased intentionally or unintentionally, either way it continues. A gender role is a set of societal norms dictating what is acceptable or appropriate for a person’s sex. One could be aware of the characteristics and factors of identity that enables others to treat another differently by analyzing the aspects of society through race, religion, language, sexual orientation, economic status and also the level of education. The theory of equality is somewhat understandable, but what about the female population? Where is their equality in this society?
Sociology 101- Oka Name: Bui Duc Tai Discussion topic Week #1. Being influenced by society is inevitable. As the society developed, it shaped us in many different ways. Doubtlessly, our social background has affected our behavior, attitude and more importantly, life chances. Consequently, our life is altered in either good or bad from those configurations of the society.
How do we define gender? Gender identity is a person's private sense and subjective experience of their own gender. All societies have gender categories usually falling under male or female. Gender identity is usually formed by age three and is extremely difficult to change after that. Gender identity is formed as society teaches you how your gender should act or look. Before a child is born their gender is socialized. When the doctors tells you if you are carrying a boy or girl it all starts. For girls you smother them in pink! Pink clothes, pick room, pink everything. For boys they get blue thrown at them. Who is to say they would even like those colors. These colors are used to help the child be identified by others. Blue and pink distinguish the child putting them either in the category male or female. Everything in the baby’s life is distinguished upon by they binary view of male or female. The baby girl’s nursery usually consist of flowers or princesses. The baby boy’s room is usually sports or animals themed. I conducted an experiment to test the sociological claim that gender is largely learned through socialization.
Human beings have been, and always will be, dichotomized into either male or female. When determining a person’s sex we often look for differences in facial features, body shape or mannerism’s, but another promising way to determine a persons sex and one that is most often used today, is through gender roles. Gender roles are behaviors that portray masculinity or femininity. The theory behind gender roles through multidisciplinary viewpoints is the focus of this paper. Throughout history and in every culture these roles have shifted and transformed into what society says is expectable. In this analysis, gender roles will be examined through a sociological, biological and evolutionary scope.
The Kaleidoscope of Gender: Prisms, Patterns, and Possibilities written by Joan Z. Spade and Catherine G. Valentine is a book about the sociology of gender and the construct thereof. The writers use a metaphor of a kaleidoscope to illustrate their interpretations of the topic. A kaleidoscope is a toy consisting of a tube containing mirrors and pieces of colored glass or paper, whose reflections produce changing patterns that are visible through an eyehole when the tube is rotated. Utilizing the similitude of the kaleidoscope, this collection presents gender as a result of always transforming patterns get under way by prisms that underlie change, both straightforward and complex, bringing about an extensive variety of possibilities. The book
In “Gender as a Social Structure: Theory Wrestling with Activism”, the author Barbara Risman explains her theory to readers about how gender should be thought of as a social structure. Thinking of it as such would allow people to examine how gender is ingrained in almost every part of society, thus putting gender on an equal level of importance with economics and politics. In society, gender dictates many of the opportunities and limitations that an individual may face in his or her lifetime. Barbara Risman points out the three aspects of the gender structure that happen at an individual, interactional, and institutional level (Risman, pg. 446). First, gender contributes to how a person will develop themselves in life. This is the “individual level”. At an interactional level, men and women face different expectations that are set by society. The individual and interactional level are linked because sometimes, changes to one level can affect the other. The third level, the institutional level, notes that gender is affected by laws, rules, and organizational practices that dictate what
The terms sex, gender and sexuality relate with one another, however, sociologists had to distinguish these terms because it has it’s own individual meaning. Sex is the biological identity of a person when they are first born, like being a male or female. Gender is the socially learned behaviors and expectations associated with men and women like being masculine or feminine. Gender can differentiate like being a man, woman, transgender, intersex, etcetera. Sexuality refers to desire, sexual preference, and sexual identity and behavior (1). Sexuality can differentiate as well like being homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, etcetera. Like all social identities, gender is socially constructed. In the Social Construction of Gender, this theory shows
Social Construction of Gender Today’s society plays a very important role in the construction of gender. Gender is a type of issue that has raised many questions over the years in defining and debating if both male and female are equal. Today, gender is constructed in four different ways. The The first way gender is defined is by the family in which a child is raised.
Gender is such a ubiquitous notion that humans assume gender is biological. However, gender is a notion that is made up in order to organize human life. It is created and recreated giving power to the dominant gender, creating an inferior gender and producing gender roles. There are many questionable perspectives such as how two genders are learned, how humans learn their own gender and others genders, how they learn to appropriately perform their gender and how gender roles are produced. In order to understand these perspectives, we must view gender as a social institution. Society bases gender on sex and applies a sex category to people in daily life by recognizing gender markers. Sex is the foundation to which gender is created. We must understand the difference between anatomical sex and gender in order to grasp the development of gender. First, I will be assessing existing perspectives on the social construction of gender. Next, I will analyze three case studies and explain how gender construction is applied in order to provide a clearer understanding of gender construction. Lastly, I will develop my own case study by analyzing the movie Mrs. Doubtfire and apply gender construction.
Gender is defined as the scopes of genetic, physical, mental and behaviour characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and feminity, meanwhile inequality is defined as in a situation where there is an unfair situation or treatment in which certain people have more privileges or better opportunities or chances than other people. Thus, from the definition stated gender inequality refers to unequal or unfair management, treatment, or perceptions of persons or individuals are based on their gender. In a parallel sense, gender inequality can be said as the world in which there was discrimination against anyone based on gender. In this introductory, the general understanding of gender inequalities will be discussed further into three significant factors that influence the allocation of housework between men and women. Household chores can be classified as cleaning, cooking and paying bills. Division of housework serves as an important element in the continuation of the function of a family and it requires contribution from both spouses (Tang, 2012). However, current society’s perception on housework is based on gender, so the three major factors that influence the division of household chores within the couples are education level, economic resources, and time availability (refer to Figure1 in Appendix 1).
Society has stamped an image into the minds of people of how the role of each gender should be played out. There are two recognized types of gender, a man and a woman, however there are many types of gender roles a man or a woman may assume or be placed into by society. The ideas of how one should act and behave are often times ascribed by their gender by society, but these ascribed statuses and roles are sometimes un-welcomed, and people will assume who they want to be as individuals by going against the stereotypes set forth by society. This paper will examine these roles in terms of how society sees men and women stereotypically, and how men and women view themselves and each other in terms of stereotypes that are typically ascribed, as well as their own opinions with a survey administered to ten individuals. What I hope to prove is that despite stereotypes playing a predominant role within our society, and thus influencing what people believe about each other in terms of their same and opposite genders, people within our society are able to go against these ascribed stereotypes and be who they want and it be okay. Through use of the survey and my own personal history dealing with gender stereotyping I think I can give a clear idea as to how stereotypes envelope our society, and how people and breaking free from those stereotypes to be more individualistic.