Study Notes on Social Stratification

Chapter 9

Gender

  • Definition: Socially constructed roles, behaviors, expressions, and identities of girls, women, boys, men, and gender diverse people.
  • Gender Identity: An individual's internal sense of being male, female, both, neither, or somewhere else along the gender spectrum.
  • Gender Expression: The external appearance of one's gender identity, usually expressed through behavior, clothing, haircut, or voice.
  • Gender Roles: Societal expectations about how individuals should act, think, and feel based on their assigned gender.
  • Cisgender: A person whose gender identity aligns with the sex assigned at birth.
  • Transgender: A person whose gender identity differs from the sex assigned at birth.
  • Non-binary/Genderqueer: Umbrella terms for gender identities that are not exclusively masculine or feminine
    ‍—‌identities that are outside the gender binary.

Sex

  • Definition: Biological distinctions between males and females, including chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive anatomy.
  • Primary Sex Characteristics: Refers to anatomical characteristics relating to reproduction (e.g., ovaries, testes).
  • Secondary Sex Characteristics: Non-reproductive sexual characteristics, such as female breasts and hips, male voice quality, and body hair.
  • Intersex: Refers to individuals born with any of several variations in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, or genitals that do not fit the typical definitions for male or female bodies.

Sexuality

  • Definition: A person's sexual attraction, practices, and identity.
  • Sexual Orientation: An enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions to men, women, or both sexes.
    • Heterosexuality: Attraction to the opposite sex.
    • Homosexuality: Attraction to the same sex.
    • Bisexuality: Attraction to both sexes.
    • Asexuality: Lack of sexual attraction to others.
    • Pansexuality: Attraction to people regardless of their gender.

Key Concepts

  • Patriarchy: A social system where men hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property.
  • Matriarchy: A social system where women hold primary power; historically rare or nonexistent as a dominant societal structure.
  • Sexism: Prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.
  • Heteronormativity: The belief that heterosexuality is the only natural or moral sexual orientation.
  • Gender Socialization: The process by which individuals learn culturally approved gender roles and behaviors.
  • Gender Binary: The classification of sex and gender into two distinct, opposite and disconnected forms of masculine and feminine.
  • Androgyny: The combination of masculine and feminine characteristics in an individual.
  • Gender Dysphoria: The distress a person experiences as a result of the incongruence between their gender identity and their sex assigned at birth.
  • Homophobia: Fear, prejudice, or hatred directed toward gay, lesbian, and bisexual people.
  • Transphobia: Fear, prejudice, or hatred directed toward transgender and gender non-conforming people.
  • Sexual Scripts: Socially learned ways of responding in sexual situations; blueprints that guide sexual behavior.
  • Intersectionality: The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.

Theories of Gender

  • Structural Functionalism: Views gender as a means to organize social life; emphasizes complementarity of roles (e.g., family stability).
  • Conflict Theory: Views gender as a system of power relations where men dominate women; focuses on economic and political exploitation.
  • Symbolic Interactionism: Focuses on how gender is constructed and maintained through everyday interactions and symbols; emphasizes the performance of gender.
  • Feminist Theory: Expands on conflict theory by looking at how gender inequality is built into social structures; focuses on patriarchy and the oppression of women.
  • Queer Theory: Challenges the idea of fixed identity categories (gender, sex, sexuality) and questions heteronormativity and the gender binary.