Introduction to Sociology: Gender, Race, Poverty, and Education

A comprehensive vocabulary review of 100 flashcards covering Dalton Conley's You May Ask Yourself chapters on Gender, Race, Poverty, and Education.

Sex

The perceived biological differences that society typically uses to distinguish males from females.

Gender

A social position consisting of a set of social arrangements and attributes that are built around sex categories.

Sexuality

Desire, sexual preference, and intimate behavior.

Essentialism

A line of thought that explains social phenomena in terms of natural, biological, or evolutionary inevitabilities, focusing on a two-sex binary.

Biological Determinism

An assumption underlying essentialism that dictates that social behavior and choices are directly determined by who a person is in the natural or biological world.

Möbius Strip Model

Feminist philosopher Elizabeth Grosz's 1994 model illustrating that biological sex (the inside) and social gender (the outside) form an inseparable, single-sided boundary where one flows into the other.

2025 NCAA Transgender Participation Policy

Regulations permitting student athletes to compete in men's sports regardless of sex assigned at birth or gender identity, while barring student athletes assigned male at birth from competing in women's sports.

Androgynous

Exhibiting gender traits or a bodily presentation that is neither masculine nor feminine.

Transgender

People whose gender identity does not correspond to their sex assigned at birth.

Cisgender

People whose gender identity corresponds to their sex assigned at birth.

Hegemonic Masculinity

A condition in which men are dominant and privileged, with that dominance and privilege remaining largely invisible and culturally normative.

Hybrid Masculinities

A concept identified by Bridges and Pascoe where men incorporate aspects of marginalized styles into their masculine presentation, which can inadvertently obscure racialized power inequalities.

Patriarchy

A nearly universal social system involving the subordination of femininity to masculinity.

Feminism

A social movement to get people to understand that gender is an organizing principle of society and to address gender-based inequalities that intersect with other forms of identity.

First Wave Feminism

A feminist movement beginning in the 19th century that concentrated on securing formal political equality, with voting rights serving as the central organizing objective.

Second Wave Feminism

A movement in the 1960s and 1970s arguing that gender is a structural system shaping unequal domestic burdens and workplace opportunities rather than just a personal identity.

Third Wave Feminism

A feminist movement emerging in the 1990s that critiqued earlier waves for focusing on White middle-class women and failing to address poor women, women of color, and lesbians.

Sexism

A form of prejudice occurring when a person's sex or gender is used as the basis for judgment, discrimination, or differential treatment.

Sexual Harassment

An illegal form of discrimination revolving around sexuality, ranging from inappropriate jokes to sexual barter (quid pro quo) to outright sexual assault.

Gender Wage Gap (2024 IWPR Analysis)

The disparity showing that women working full-time year-round earned $80.9$ cents for every dollar earned by men, down from $82.7$ cents in 2023.

Occupational Segregation

The concentration of women into feminized jobs (such as clerical work or public relations) that systematically yield lower pay, prestige, and benefits than male-dominated roles.

Glass Ceiling

Rosabeth Moss Kanter's concept of an invisible limit on women's climb up the occupational ladder, where women reaching executive levels face intense scrutiny as 'tokens.'

Glass Escalator

Christine Williams's concept of the accelerated promotion of men to the top of work organizations, especially within feminized occupations.

The Motherhood Penalty

The documented structural disadvantage where mothers are offered $7.9\%$ lower starting salaries and are perceived as less committed and competent compared to non-mothers.

Ashley Mears

A sociologist who investigated gender inequality, tokenization, and the inverted wage structure favoring women within the fashion modeling industry.

Parsons' Sex Role Theory

Talcott Parsons' structural-functionalist theory arguing that the heterosexual nuclear family is the ideal social arrangement because it fulfills the function of reproducing workers.

Conflict Theory of Gender

A theoretical perspective blending Marxism and feminism arguing that gender relations, through capitalism and patriarchy, divide power and leave women economically dependent on men.

'Doing Gender'

An interactionist theory positing that gender is not a static identity but an active, ongoing social performance that reproduces masculine dominance and feminine subordination.

Compulsory Heterosexuality

Adrienne Rich's concept describing heterosexuality as an institutionalized practice enforced to sustain male dominance and female unpaid domestic labor within capitalism.

Foucault's Theory of Sexuality

Michel Foucault's assertion that the body is not pre-social and that modern sexuality emerged through surveillance, medical discourses, and government regulation.

Race

A group of people who share a set of characteristics—typically physical ones—and are socially defined as sharing a common bloodline.

The Myth of Race

The sociological principle that race has no deterministic biological basis, functioning instead as a powerful social construction that orders reality and justifies inequality.

Racism

The belief that members of separate races possess different and unequal traits coupled with the power to restrict freedoms based on those perceived differences.

Naturalization Act of 1790

The first U.S. naturalization law passed by Congress, which explicitly limited the legal rights of citizenship to 'free White persons.'

Immigration Act of 1924

Legislation establishing a national origins quota system favoring northern and western European immigrants deemed to possess 'higher intelligence' over southern and eastern Europeans.

Ethnicity

One's voluntary, self-defined, nonhierarchical, and fluid affiliation based on cultural differences rather than physical traits.

Scientific Racism

Nineteenth-century theories that used empirical investigations and classifications to justify European imperial conquest, colonial exploitation, and racial hierarchies.

Ethnocentrism

The belief that one's own culture or group is superior to others, accompanied by the tendency to judge all other cultures from the perspective of one's own.

Phrenology and Physiognomy

Nineteenth-century pseudosciences that claimed external skull measurements and facial features reflected inner moral character, intellectual ability, and racial rank.

Social Darwinism

The application of Darwinian evolutionary theory to human societies, positing that some racial groups have evolved more than others and are naturally fitted to rule.

Herbert Spencer

The British philosopher (1820–1903) who coined 'survival of the fittest' and popularized Social Darwinist racial hierarchies.

One-Drop Rule

The U.S. legal principle asserting that any person with even one drop of Black blood is classified as Black, originally developed from anti-miscegenation laws.

Miscegenation

A historical legal and social term referring to interracial marriage, cohabitation, or sexual relations between individuals of different racial categories.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

The landmark Supreme Court ruling that legally validated the one-drop rule and upheld racial segregation under the 'separate but equal' doctrine.

Alondra Nelson

A sociologist who examines how molecular genetics and commercial DNA testing shape modern notions of race, ancestry reconciliation, and persistent biological stereotypes.

Racialization

The process of attributing racial identities and stereotypes to a religious, ethnic, or national group, such as the categorization of Muslims post-9/11.

Prejudice

Negative thoughts, feelings, and preconceived judgments held against an ethnic or racial group.

Discrimination

Harmful or negative actions directed against people deemed inferior on the basis of their racial category without regard to individual merit.

Merton's Typology of Prejudice and Discrimination

Robert Merton's 1949 matrix classifying individuals based on prejudice and discrimination: active bigot, timid bigot, fair-weather liberal, and all-weather liberal.

Color-Blind Racism

An ideology asserting that racial neutrality perpetuates inequality by ignoring institutional bias, historical disparities, and disparate impacts.

Institutional Racism

Institutions and social dynamics that seem race-neutral on the surface but disproportionately disadvantage racial minority groups.

Structural Racism

Systemic racial disadvantage reinforced across entire networks of societal institutions over time, as seen in the accumulation of the intergenerational wealth gap.

Straight-Line Assimilation

Robert Park's 1920s universal, linear model positing that immigrants arrive, settle, and achieve full assimilation into a homogenous host society.

Gordon's Stages of Assimilation

Milton Gordon's seven-stage model of immigrant adaptation: cultural, structural, marital, identification, attitude reception, behavior reception, and civic assimilation.

Pluralism

The presence and engaged coexistence of numerous distinct racial or ethnic groups within one society, exhibiting a low degree of assimilation.

Jennifer Lee

A sociologist who analyzes the changing racial landscape, contemporary immigration dynamics, and the conceptual boundaries separating race and ethnicity.

Poverty

A condition of economic deprivation, absolute or relative, severe enough that an individual cannot live with dignity in their society.

Structural View of Poverty

The sociological perspective viewing poverty as the outcome of structural forces—including labor market shifts, deindustrialization, and policy decisions—rather than individual moral failure.

Deindustrialization

The macroeconomic shift involving the loss of stable, well-paying manufacturing jobs in urban areas, leading to low-wage service sector expansion and economic precarity.

Federal Minimum Wage Stagnation

The erosion of low-wage workers' purchasing power caused by the federal base wage remaining at $\$7.25$ per hour ($\$15{,}080$ annually for full-time work).

Federal Poverty Threshold

The statutory minimum income benchmark for determining poverty eligibility, established at $\$31{,}200$ for a family of four.

Labor Unions (Wage Floor Function)

Worker organizations whose collective bargaining established historical wage floors, but whose private-sector density has dropped to under $6\%$ today.

Unite Here

The labor union representing Lehigh Sodexo food service workers that coordinated campus demonstrations demanding livable wages and workplace respect.

Social Capital

The resource of being embedded in diverse social networks that link individuals to influential people, opportunities, and job leads.

Economic Connectedness

The sociological finding that low-SES children raised in counties with cross-class connections comparable to high-SES peers experience an average $20\%$ adulthood income increase.

Moving to Opportunity (MTO) Experiment

A 1994 HUD social experiment that provided housing vouchers to families to move to lower-poverty neighborhoods, resulting in reduced stress, improved health, and better test scores.

Culture of Poverty Thesis

The controversial argument that poor people adopt specific survival practices differing from mainstream norms, which inadvertently trap them in economic hardship.

Welfare

Government assistance programs—such as food stamps, cash aid, and housing vouchers—designed to assist low-income households in meeting basic survival needs.

Learned Helplessness

The critique alleging that government welfare programs create dependency by reducing the incentive for recipients to seek stable labor market employment.

Perverse Incentives

Reward structures that unintentionally produce harmful results, such as the claim that cash assistance disincentivizes work and marriage.

Negative Income Tax Experiment

A U.S. guaranteed basic income experiment that found participants experienced longer unemployment spells and women used economic autonomy to leave unhealthy marriages.

The Underclass

Charles Murray's term characterizing the poor as not only disadvantaged but increasingly deviant, isolated, and dangerous to mainstream society due to welfare dependency.

David Grusky

A sociologist who examines social inequality and investigates whether substantial welfare safety nets cause people to opt out of the labor force.

PRWORA of 1996

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which ended federal entitlement welfare by devolving programs to states, imposing work mandates, and capping lifetime aid.

Eviction (Matthew Desmond)

The forced displacement of renters studied by Matthew Desmond, which consumes enormous emotional energy, forces missed work due to court dates, and entrenches poverty.

Absolute Poverty

The threshold at which a household's income falls below the necessary level to purchase food required to physically sustain its members.

Relative Poverty

A measurement of poverty based on earning below a specific percentage (typically $50\%$) of the median income in a given location.

CEO-to-Worker Pay Ratio

The pronounced corporate income disparity in the United States where top 500 company CEOs averaged $\$16.3\text{ million}$ in compensation in 2023.

International Poverty Comparison (OECD 2021)

Data indicating that the United States has a relative poverty rate of $0.151$, lagging significantly behind other wealthy nations like Finland ($0.057$).

Fragmented Political System (Poverty Impact)

The constitutional division of power between federal and state levels and three government branches that obstructs the establishment of a comprehensive national welfare safety net.

U.S. Child Poverty Rate Trends (2009–2023)

Census data showing that the official child poverty rate dropped from $20.7\%$ in 2009 to $15.3\%$ in 2023 (and from $17\%$ to $13.7\%$ under the Supplemental Poverty Measure).

Education

The formal and informal process through which academic, social, and cultural skills, knowledge, and values are developed.

Vocational Programs

Schooling tracks that impart direct, practical technical skills required for specialized trades such as carpentry or mechanical labor.

Professional Schools

Institutions of higher education designed to train credentialed specialists for high-status occupational roles such as law and medicine.

Human Capital

The knowledge, skills, and experience possessed by an individual or group that yield measurable economic and labor market benefits.

Socialization Function of Schooling

The institutional process by which schools transmit cultural norms, values, and patriotism to integrate youth into civic and economic life.

Hidden Curriculum

Ronald Meighan's term for the nonacademic and less overt socialization functions of schooling that teach conformity, punctuality, and obedience without explicit instruction.

Carlisle Indian Industrial School

A historic boarding school designed to strip Native American children of their indigenous culture and enforce assimilation into White, Christian norms.

Forced Assimilation (in Education)

The coercive institutional use of schooling to eradicate minority identities and impose dominant social, linguistic, and religious patterns.

Sorting Machine (Marxist Theory of Education)

The theoretical view that schools serve capitalist interests by stratifying students according to social origins and socializing them for subordinate or dominant labor roles.

The Coleman Report (1966)

A landmark sociological study finding that differences in academic achievement are primarily explained by family background and peer characteristics rather than school resource inequalities.

Project STAR (1985)

A four-year longitudinal study demonstrating that smaller class sizes yield higher test scores, fewer disciplinary incidents, and higher graduation rates, especially for disadvantaged students.

Catholic School Advantage

Research showing that Catholic private schools achieve higher academic outcomes for disadvantaged students than secular private and public schools through rigorous coursework and academic norms.

Social Capital in School Choice

The social connections and information networks possessed by affluent parents that enable them to navigate admissions and place children in elite schools.

Charter Schools

Publicly funded, privately run schools exempt from traditional district mandates with autonomy over curriculum, staffing, and budgets.

Educational Marketplace

A system promoted through charter school contracts where schools compete for enrollment and resources based on demonstrable student performance.

Student Pushout (Charter School Critique)

The practice where charter schools select higher-performing students or subtly push out struggling students to maintain high standardized test scores.

Paradox of Education (Paradox 13)

The contradiction that while schools are idealized as institutions providing equal opportunity, they end up sorting and stratifying students based on their socioeconomic origins.

Idris

A student featured in educational case studies highlighting the divergent academic sorting and institutional realities experienced in urban high schools.

Meritocracy

A social system where social positions, academic advancement, and economic rewards are allocated strictly according to individual ability and effort.