Gender, Race, Ethnicity, and Socialization

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms and concepts across gender, race, ethnicity, culture, socialization, and social interaction.

Gender

The range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity, including biological sex, sex-based social structures, or gender identity.

Sex

The biological distinction between males and females.

Intersexed

Individuals that possess some combination of the physical features that typically distinguish males and females, occurring in close to two percent of children born in the U.S.

Gender Fluidity

Identity which refers to a gender that varies over time, where an individual may identify as male, female, gender neutral, or another non-binary identity.

Gender Stratification

The unequal distribution of wealth, power, and privilege between men and women.

Sexism

The belief that one sex is innately superior to the other, involving individual attitudes as well as institutional operations.

Sexual Harassment

Unwanted comments, gestures, or physical contact of a sexual nature.

Glass Ceiling

Subtle discrimination that effectively blocks the movement of women into the highest positions in organizations.

Gender Wage Gap

The difference between the earnings of women who work full-time year-round as a group and those of men who work full-time year-round as a group.

Occupational Segregation by Gender

The concentration of men and women in different occupations.

Feminism

The belief that social equality should exist between the sexes, and the social movements aimed at achieving that goal.

First Wave Feminism

The surge of women's rights activism beginning in the 1830s and culminating around the campaign for women's suffrage, which ended or went into abeyance in 1920 with the passage of the 19th Amendment.

Second Wave Feminism

The resurgence of women's organizing in the 1960s that ended or suffered major setbacks with the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1982.

Third Wave Feminism

The resurgence of feminist activism in the 1990s, especially by younger feminists who came of age after the second wave.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Feminist who organized the first women's rights convention in the U.S. in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848.

Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments

Document produced in 1848 that enumerated over a dozen ways that men established "tyranny" over women.

Alice Paul

First wave feminist and leader of the National Woman's Party (NWP) who was a key figure in the women's suffrage movement of the early 20th century.

19th Amendment

Constitutional amendment that provided women with the right to vote.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Journalist who led an anti-lynching campaign in the late nineteenth century, organized the Alpha Suffrage Club among Black women in Chicago, and participated in the 1913 suffrage parade in Washington, D.C.

National Organization for Women (NOW)

Organization founded in 1966 by Betty Friedan to address women's issues in mid-century America.

Betty Friedan

Feminist who founded NOW and authored The Feminine Mystique, a text credited with inspiring the second wave of the feminist movement in the U.S.

Equal Rights Amendment

Proposed constitutional amendment stating that equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Stop ERA

Movement led by Phyllis Schlafly opposing the Equal Rights Amendment, centered around three major themes: God, country, and family.

Radical Feminism

A woman-centered, revolutionary politics that is conscious of how men in particular and patriarchal institutions in general benefit from control over women's lives and bodies.

The Personal is the Political

Phrase coined in 1969 by radical feminist Carol Hanisch highlighting how many gender-related "personal" problems are rooted in social and political institutions.

Feminist Separatism

Women's conscious and willful separation from various forms of patriarchal control.

The Woman-Identified Woman

A woman who commits herself to other women for political, emotional, physical, and economic support.

Matrix of Domination

Concept by Patricia Hill Collins describing multiple axes of privilege and oppression (race, class, gender, sexual orientation) and how these intersecting oppressions are organized.

Intersectionality

Concept by Kimberle Crenshaw referring to particular forms of intersecting oppressions, showing that oppression cannot be reduced to one fundamental type.

Socially Lived Knowledge

Knowledge gained from everyday life experiences, contrasted with knowledge garnered from formal education or training.

Subjugated Knowledges

Knowledges of subordinate groups that have been ignored, silenced, or deemed less credible by dominant groups.

Disciplinary Feminism

Term describing how feminism restricts social practices and authoritatively sits in judgment on women's ideas and practices.

Polyvocality

The inclusion of many voices and vantage points to construct a sense of social reality.

Post-Feminism

The notion that feminism is over, irrelevant, and no longer needed, accompanied by increasing anti-feminism among women.

Rebecca Walker

Prominent voice of Third Wave Feminism who proclaimed "I am the Third Wave" in a 1992 article in Ms. magazine.

Sexual Orientation

A person's romantic and emotional attraction to another person.

Heterosexuality

Sexual attraction to someone of the other sex.

Homosexuality

Sexual attraction to someone of the same sex.

Bisexuality

Sexual attraction to people of both sexes.

Asexuality

The absence of sexual attraction to people of either sex.

Sexuality

A term used to encompass sexual identity, attraction, and relationships.

Transgender

Appearing or behaving in ways that challenge conventional cultural norms concerning how females and males should look and act.

Transsexual

A term used to refer to people who use surgery and hormones to change their sex to match their preferred gender.

Androgyny

When people display a melding of masculine and feminine characteristics such that the performance of distinct gender roles is no longer visible or necessary.

Gender Dysphoria

The sensation of being a man trapped in a woman's body or a woman trapped in a man's body.

Homophobia

An aversion to or hostility towards people thought to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual.

Heteronormativity

The assumption that heterosexuality is natural, normal, and right.

Compulsory Heterosexuality

The institutional, ideological, and normative enforcement of heterosexuality to achieve women's subservience through emotional and erotic loyalty to men.

Queer

A critique of all things oppressively normal, especially conventional ideas about sex, and an embrace of sexual and gender difference.

Gender Binary

The idea that humans exist in two essential, biologically determined forms: male and female.

Genderqueer Movement

Movement emphasizing the potential benefits of breaking free of the gender binary by celebrating those who play with, live between, or embody multiple or no genders.

Performativity

Judith Butler's concept describing gender and sexuality as coming into being through repeated performance of signs, norms, and conventions.

Michel Foucault

Poststructuralist philosopher and author of The History of Sexuality credited with laying the groundwork for gender and sexual identities being artificial, unstable, and performative.

Race

A socially constructed identity where the content and importance of racial categories are determined by social, economic, and political forces (Omi & Winant).

Ethnicity

Shared cultural heritage, typically involving common ancestors, language, and religion.

Nationality

Legal relationship between an individual person and a state that affords state jurisdiction and protection.

Ethnocentrism

A worldview whereby one judges other cultures by the standards of one's own culture and regards one's own way of life as normal and superior.

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach

Researcher who divided the human species into five races in 1779 (Caucasian, Mongoloid, Malay, Negroid, American) and founded crania research.

Racism

A belief structure, ideological segment, or racial project holding that racial differences are inherent and rationalizing structures of domination and inequality.

Racial Project

A concept that simultaneously interprets, represents, or explains racial dynamics and attempts to reorganize and redistribute resources along racial lines.

Craniology

The scientific study of the shape and size of the skulls of different human races.

Social Darwinism

The pseudoscientific theory applying evolutionary natural selection to human society, asserting races evolved into separate subspecies.

Eugenics

The science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase desirable heritable characteristics, developed largely by Francis Galton.

Dred Scott Decision

1857 Supreme Court ruling that slaves were property and not entitled to the rights of citizens.

Stereotyping

The generalization of a set of characteristics to all members of a group.

Discrimination

The unequal treatment of individuals on the basis of their membership in a group.

Institutionalized Discrimination

Discrimination enshrined in law, public policy, or common practice that operates routinely in major social institutions.

Segregation

The physical and social separation of categories of people.

De Jure Segregation

Segregation supported or encouraged by law.

De Facto Segregation

Segregation existing by fact rather than by legal requirement.

Restrictive Covenants

Contractual agreements that restrict the use of land to preserve neighborhood property values.

Minority

Any category of people, identified by physical or cultural traits, that a society subjects to disadvantages.

Genocide

The systematic killing of one category of people by another.

Assimilation

The process by which minorities gradually adopt cultural patterns from the dominant majority population.

Cultural Pluralism

Condition where smaller groups within a larger society maintain unique cultural identities while accepted by the wider culture.

Immigrant Analogy

Analogy positing a common dynamic where racial minorities become incorporated into national consensus similarly to historical European ethnic groups.

Systemic Racism

The foundational, large-scale hierarchical system of US racial oppression devised and maintained by whites against people of color.

White Privilege

Societal privileges that benefit people identified as white beyond what non-white people experience under identical circumstances.

Microaggressions

Everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults communicating hostile or negative messages to marginalized groups.

Critical Race Theory

Approach where social analysts of color use a structural-racism perspective to discern how legal institutions support a racist social system.

White Racial Frame

A generic meaning system that rationalizes the system of material racial oppression.

Racial Realism

Perspective questioning the progress of race-based human rights and claims of substantial advances toward racial equality.

Interest Convergence Hypothesis

Derrick Bell's thesis stating that Americans of color only make progress against oppression when some whites significantly gain.

Color Blind Racism

Ideology theorized by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva explaining contemporary racial inequality as an outcome of nonracial, market, or cultural dynamics.

Culture

The beliefs, norms, behaviors, and products common to the members of a particular group.

Material Culture

Physical objects created, embraced, or consumed by society that help shape people's lives.

Nonmaterial Culture

Abstract creations of human cultures, including ideas about behavior, language, and social practices.

Norms

Accepted social behaviors and beliefs; common rules governing behavior of culture members.

Mores

Strongly held norms whose violation seriously offends acceptable conduct standards of a culture.

Folkways

Fairly weak norms passed down from the past whose violation is not considered serious.

Taboos

Powerful mores whose violation is considered serious and unthinkable within a culture.

Values

Abstract and general standards in society that define ideal principles governing right and wrong.

Laws

Codified norms or rules of behavior.

Language

A symbolic system composed of verbal, nonverbal, and written representations conveying meaning.

Subculture

Culture existing together with a dominant culture but differing from it in important respects.

Multiculturalism

A commitment to respecting cultural differences rather than trying to submerge them into a dominant culture.

Etic Perspective

The perspective of the outside observer.

Emic Perspective

The perspective of the insider.

Cultural Relativism

Worldview where practices of a society are understood sociologically in terms of that society's norms and values.

Socialization

The process of internalizing society's norms and ideologies to attain social and cultural continuity.