Sociology unit 7 (Gender)

Biological approach to gender

Argues that sex determines gender and both are innate

If you’re born with “female parts” you will be expected to look and act those ways

Men are from mars, women are from Venus

Argues that woman and men have distinct biologically and physically driven styles of communication, feeling, and action.

Social construction of gender

1. Classifying experiences and acting on the basis of these categories

2. Forgetting we have created these divisions and seeing them as natural and unchangeable

5 ways gender varies

1. Meanings and categories vary across cultures

2. Meanings and experiences of being a certain gender vary overtime

3. Gender never exists by itself, it’s shaped

4. Meaning of masculinity and femininity change over the course of someone’s life

5. Meanings of gender are inconsistent among different groups of men and women

Gender roles

Roles we preform in society based on our gender, gender does not come automatically from inherent personality characteristics, but is the result of cultural norms and practices that are reinforced in everyday life

Goffmans dramaturgical perspective

We preform roles in our daily lives, often front stage is where we preform to live up to gender role expectations, while back stage is where we don’t need to preform and can engage in different gender displays

Doing gender

Gender is the social process of how we categorize people as male or female in everyday life, doing gender is a situated interaction all process, we achieve this by communicating our sex category to others

Doing gender processes

1. We are always men or women, we take gender with us wherever we go

2. We are accountable to others, to be accepted we have to do gender and people have to deem this doing of gender to be natural

Doing gender theory

This theory focuses on how gender is an outcome of PRE EXSISTING social arrangements, but it can also shape these social arrangements. Doing gender makes sex categorization seem natural and normal.

Butler- Preformativity

Gender performance is not a singular act, but a sustained set of actions that involves repetition and ritual. WE create gender through our actions and interactions

Real consequences

Social construction of gender is hierarchical, meaning we value men and masculinity more than women and femininity

Hegemonic masculinity

Society’s idealized dominant form of masculinity, context dependant and socially constructed, it can have positive and negative impacts on men

Complicit masculinity

Where a man may not fit into all the characteristics of hegemonic masculinity but doesn’t challenge it either

Marginalized masculinity

Follows the cultural “norm” but can’t fully access it, ex: men of colour or disabled men

Subordinate masculinity

Displays opposite qualities, Effeminate and gay men.

Intersectionality

Made by Kimberle Crenshaw, shows how different types of inequality are connected (sexuality, racial identity, gender, disability)

Equality

EQUAL enjoyment of socially valued goods, opportunities, and resources. Regardless of gender, race, etc…

Equity

Allocating resources, programs, and decision making fairly and without discrimination. Addressing imbalances doesn’t mean making the same resources available to everyone!

Feminism

Concerned with the equality between women and men. Focused on attaining equality in politics, the economic system, and through social and cultural change

Feminist theory

Looks at how gender inequality arises in society and how gender roles are created and recreated. It has been influential in a wide range of disciplines

3 waves of feminist activism

1. 1800-1900 Focused on legal and political inequalities like the right to vote

2. 1960-1990 social and cultural issues like reproductive right and workplace equity

3. 1990 onward, creating a diverse movement, focuses on media representation and gender norms