Lecture Notes Sociological Perspective on Gender Some vocabulary sex gender and sexuality 2 24 14 The Constructionist Perspective Constructionism vs Essentialism Elements of Gender Constructs Gender Cultural definitions of masculinity and femininity Sex Presumed biological distinctions between men and women Intersexed individuals and individuals who identify as transgender complicated the idea that sex solely refers to men and women A lot of people use the term gender when they really mean sex Gender Sex We re not born with gender Gender is a construct Masculinity and femininity are social agreements not ontological facts What does it mean to be constructed What does it mean to be a construct Pants are a social construct People come to an agreement about what are and are not pants Thinness as a feminine ideal is a social construct People come to an agreement about ideal body types This changes over time The color pink as inherently feminine is a social construct People come to an agreement about markers of femininity Gender Essentialism The belief in hard wired essential differences between men and women that stem from in born biological and evolutionary distinctions There s nothing in inherently masculine or manly about gambling As women attain economic and social parity with men we will see a rise in female gamblers Sociologists tend to reject gender essentialism because it is ahistorical Essentialist arguments fail to account for historical change Sociologists tend to reject gender essentialism because it downplays cultural factors Gender Constructionism Elements of Society that Construct Gender History biology social structure socialization culture History Biology sets limits and possibilities Social Structure work economy law politics Socialization learning gender from parents and other agents of socialization helps establish self fulfilling prophecies and gender ideologies Culture messaging and images establishes hegemonic standards for men and women 2 26 14 Hegemony Implies dominance of one group over another The reason we don t simply say dominance is because hegemony describes a condition where the subordinate group is dependent upon the powerful group and in some way buys into the criteria of judgment or the culture set forth by the majority group Resocialization Preexisting roles identities and norms are changed in a new environment Agents of Socialization Individuals groups and other elements of the environment that impart values norms and ideology to individuals e g parents educators peers and mass media What Does Gender Socialization Do self fulfilling prophecies institutional discrimination glass ceilings Self fulfilling prophecy A prediction that causes itself to be true Ex Girls are bad at math Don t study Bad math scores Institutional Discrimination discrimination that has been a part of the structures processes and procedures of organizations Glass Ceiling Invisible and unbreakable barriers to economic advancement face by otherwise qualified women and racial and ethnic minorities 3 3 14 The term socialization describes the process of social learning Humans learn how to behave and act through socialization Socialization occurs throughout the course of a human s life but early infancy is a critical period of socialization All humans except for so called feral children experience socialization Gender socialization learning to fulfill the cultural expectations of manhood and womanhood typically starts immediately after birth Sociologists show how gender socialization contributes to sex inequality inequality between men and women through the creation of self fulfilling prophecies for so called men s work and women s work There are multiple approaches to study gender sex and sexuality Sociologists often focus on inequality and power differences between men and women Sociologists often study these inequalities with a social constructionist framework The social constructionist framework does not see gender as the simple or inevitable fulfillment of biological genetic or evolutionary drives Instead different components of our society produce and come to an agreement about what it means to act and live as a real man or a real woman Different components of our society construct gender Socialization constructs gender e g a newborn girl is put in a pink blanket a son is encouraged to study dinosaurs and daughter is encouraged to play house Culture constructs gender Watching movies and wanting to be as thin as Kristen Stewart or as muscular as Taylor Lautner advertising that associates femininity with thinness Social structure constructs gender The ratio of men to women in Congress the wage gap feminization of poverty Women at a Higher Risk of Falling Below the Poverty Line Compared to Men 2011 Women 34 percent more likely to be poor than men 2010 Women 29 percent more likely to be poor than men Hegemonic masculinity and hegemonic femininity refer to the dominant or prevailing definitions of manhood and womanhood Hegemonic masculinity and femininity are social constructs They change over time and vary cross culturally Sociologists and social critics show how hegemonic masculinity and hegemonic femininity produce harmful outcomes The beauty standards embodied in hegemonic femininity help explain high rates of eating disorders among women The aggressiveness inherent in hegemonic masculinity helps explain high rates of violent crime among men The sociological approach to understanding gender and sex differences differs from the gender essentialism Gender essentialism often expressed in sociobiology evolutionary psychology and or mass media explains sex gender as a product of evolutionary drives genetics and brain chemistry A Gender Ideology femininity domesticity A Gender Ideology Women are naturally domestic 3 12 14 3 5 14 The Research Question Should Fit the Methodology Quantitative Use of surveys or datasets e g Census to find patterns in social life Use of statistical techniques like to make sense of quantitative data Qualitative Use of interviews field research aka ethnography and participant observation and ethnography to say something about social life Document Analysis Use of written material to say something about social life Can be quantitative or qualitative Historical sociology a major area of sociology uses document analysis Quantitative generalizability macro breadth Qualitative Verstehen micro depth Donna Frietas hookup culture a lifestyle of unemotional