9 Gendered Oppression

Sexism

The production of unjust outcomes for people perceived to be biologically female.

Androcentrism

The production of unjust outcomes for people who perform femininity.

Patriarch/Property Marriage

A model of marriage in which women and children are owned by men. This lasted thousands of years and was practiced in the U.S. into the 1800s.

Breadwinner/Homemaker Marriage

A model of marriage that involves a wage-earning spouse (man) supporting a stay-at-home spouse (woman) and children. This emerged with industrialization.

Family Wage

An income, paid to a man, that is large enough to support a non-working wife and children.

Ideology of Separate Spheres

The idea that the home is a feminine space best tended by women and work is a masculine space best suited to men.

Heteronormative

Promoting heterosexuality as the only or preferred sexual identity, making other sexual desires invisible or casting them as inferior.

Mononormative

Promoting monogamy, or the requirement that spouses have sexual relations only with each other.

Pro-Natal

Promoting childbearing and stigmatizing choosing to go child-free.

Partnership Unions

A relationship model based on love and companionship between equals.

Hegemonic Masculinity

The form of masculinity that constitutes the most widely admired and rewarded kind of person in any given culture. It sits atop the hierarchy of men.

Second Shift

The unpaid work of housekeeping and childcare that faces family members once they return home from their paid jobs.

Time-Use Diary

A research method in which participants are asked to self-report their activities at regular intervals over at least twenty-four hours.

Ideal Worker Norm

The idea that an employee should devote themselves to their jobs wholly and without the distraction of family responsibilities.

Shared Division of Labor

An arrangement in which both partners do an equal share of paid and unpaid work.

Specialized Division of Labor

An arrangement in which one partner does more paid work than childcare and housework, and the other does the inverse.

Ideology of Intensive Motherhood

The idea that children require concentrated maternal investment.

Feminization of Poverty

A concentration of women, trans women, and gay, bisexual, and gender-nonconforming men at the bottom of the income scale and a concentration of gender-conforming, heterosexual, cisgender men at the top.

Glass Escalator

An invisible ride to the top offered to men in female-dominated occupations.

Job Segregation

The sorting of people with different social identities into separate occupations.

Androcentric Pay Scale

A positive correlation between the number of men in an occupation relative to women and the wages paid to employees.

Care Work

Work that involves face-to-face caretaking of the physical, emotional, and educational needs of others. It is the least valued form of feminized labor.

Male Flight

A phenomenon in which men start abandoning an activity when women start adopting it.

Stalled Revolution

A sweeping change in gender relations that started but has yet to be fully realized.

Freedom/Power Paradox

A situation whereby women have more freedom than men but less power, and men have more power than women but less freedom.

Domestic Outsourcing

Paying non-family members to do family-related tasks.

Global Care Chains

A series of nurturing relationships in which the international work of care is displaced onto increasingly disadvantaged paid or unpaid workers.

Sexism vs. Androcentrism

Sexism targets people perceived as biologically female; androcentrism targets anyone who performs femininity, devaluing both women and feminine men.

Marianne Weber vs. Talcott Parsons on Gender

Marianne Weber argued men and women share the same talents and should both participate in cultural work. Parsons argued men and women are "opposite" sexes with different strengths, making the breadwinner/homemaker marriage functional.

How the Breadwinner/Homemaker Marriage Failed

It made housewives bored and depressed, put immense pressure on men as sole providers, and excluded anyone who didn't fit the gender binary, heteronormative, or pro-natal mold.

How World War II and the Civil Rights Act Changed Gender at Work

WWII drew middle-class women into the workforce; the 1964 Civil Rights Act made sex discrimination in the workplace illegal, helping women gain more equal footing.

How the Second Shift is Divided

Time-use diaries show full-time working women do about an hour more of childcare and housework per day than full-time working men, amounting to an extra unpaid workday each week.

How Ideology and Institutions Push Couples to Specialize

Ideologically, intensive motherhood pressures women and the ideal worker norm pressures men. Institutionally, tax codes and workplace policies (like denying benefits to part-timers) reward specialization over sharing.

How Job Segregation Enables Institutional Discrimination

Because women and men are sorted into different jobs, and because androcentrism devalues feminized work, female-dominated occupations pay less regardless of skill or education. This accounts for 49% of the gender wage gap.

How Occupational Prestige Shifts with Gender

When men enter a female-dominated job, wages tend to rise. When women enter a male-dominated job, wages tend to fall (e.g., secretaries went from prestigious male role to low-paid female role; programming went from female to male and gained prestige).

The Connection Between Femininity, Masculinity, and Wages

People who perform masculinity (cis men, trans men, lesbians) earn more. People who perform femininity (cis women, trans women, gay men) earn less. This reflects androcentrism.

Freedom/Power Paradox

Women have more freedom to mix masculinity into their lives, but have less power. Men have more power and rewards, but are less free to embrace femininity without penalty.

How Privileged Women Escape the Second Shift

Class-privileged women often use domestic outsourcing, hiring nannies and housekeepers—disproportionately women of color and migrants—to do devalued care work. This creates global care chains that displace care work onto the most vulnerable.