RGS Authors Main Ideas

Weber argues that

race, class, gender, and sexuality are intersecting, persistent social systems of power that structure inequality and maintain privilege for dominant groups across institutions and over time.

Collins argues that

race, class, and gender are interlocking systems of oppression that operate simultaneously across institutions, culture, and individual experience, and that challenging inequality requires both intersectional thinking and collective action.

Desmond and Emirbayer argue that

race is a socially constructed and historically contingent symbolic category that is misrecognized as natural, and that racism persists today as racial domination operating through both institutional structures and everyday interactions, intersecting with other forms of inequality such as class and gender.

Crawley, Foley, and Shehan argue that

sex and gender are socially constructed through cultural messages, dualistic thinking, and everyday practices that shape bodies and identities over time, making gender not biologically innate but very real in its social consequences and inequalities.

Susan Wendell argues that

disability is socially constructed through the interaction of biological conditions and social factors—such as cultural norms, expectations of performance, institutional design, and unequal access to resources—so that much disability is created or intensified by how societies are organized rather than by bodies alone.

Gerda Lerner argues that

social class is historically and fundamentally gendered—constructed through the commodification and control of women’s sexual and reproductive capacities, marriage, inheritance, and education—so class cannot be understood without analyzing how patriarchy, race, and sexuality structure unequal access to power and resources over time.

Zuberi argues that race is a historically constructed system of domination that emerged from European colonialism and racialized slavery, later reinforced by scientific and statistical classifications to justify inequality, exploitation, and racial stratification in societies that claimed to value democracy and freedom.

race is a historically constructed system of domination that emerged from European colonialism and racialized slavery, later reinforced by scientific and statistical classifications to justify inequality, exploitation, and racial stratification in societies that claimed to value democracy and freedom.

FitzGerald and Cook-Martin argue that

the United States, despite its founding liberal democratic ideals, established and long-maintained racist immigration and naturalization policies, beginning with the 1790 law restricting naturalization to "free whites," demonstrating a deep paradox between its inclusive principles and exclusive practices.

Katz argues that

the concepts of heterosexuality and homosexuality are not timeless or natural but are specific historical and social constructions, invented in the late 19th century as part of changing economic, medical, and social relations.

Quinn argues that

the common workplace practice of "girl watching" is a performative act among men that reinforces masculine identity and camaraderie, an act that depends on deliberately ignoring or suppressing empathy for the women who are objectified, which explains why men often fail to see such behavior as harmful sexual harassment.

Acker argues that

capitalism is not a gender-neutral or race-neutral economic system, but rather a fundamentally gendered and racialized social organization, historically built by and for white men through segregated labor forces, unequal wages, and ideologies of masculinity that devalue unpaid caring work and perpetuate racial and gender inequalities.