Chapter 8 – Gender Inequality

Social Construction of Genders

• Gender vs. Sex
• These two terms are often confused.  People often use them as synonyms, but they mean very different things.
• Sex refers to the biological and anatomical differences distinguishing females from males.
• In contrast, gender refers to the social expectations about behavior regarded as appropriate for the members of each sex.
• Thus, gender does not refer to sexual organs, but to traits that we categorize as masculine and feminine.  There have been many attempts to explain masculinity and femininity as products of human biology, body, and DNA.  
• Because of this, people tend to think that certain gender differences are “natural”, even though they’re not.  
• Here we refer to differences such as little girls playing with barbie dolls, boys playing with toy guns, women choosing “nurturing” careers such as nursing, and men choosing careers in science and technology.  Instead, these last gender differences mentioned are the product of the process of socialization.   

Social Construction of Gender and Gender Socialization 

• Because the behaviors, identity, dispositions and aspirations that are attributed to men and women are  learned, gender is a social construction.
• By this, we mean that these attributes were determined by people in society, not by nature.  
• For example, in our society, men don’t wear skirts.  It is not that men are naturally predisposed to dislike wearing skirts.  Men in our society don’t wear skirts because if they did, they would face numerous sanctions. 
• We learn how to perform masculinity and femininity from a very young age.  We learn how to act as men and women.  These are not derived from our biology.  We are socialized into these roles from the moment we are given a name (which is usually gender specific) to the toys and clothes we are given as children.

This would also include the roles we see men and women play in television, and of course the ways in which we observe and interact with the women and men in our lives have an effect.  

The Role of Biology

• There are studies that show that biology does play a role in shaping gender differences. 
• Anthropological studies seem to show that across different cultures men do show more aggression than women.  A study on chimpanzees showed that males tend to be more aggressive than females.  While this evidence suggests that biology does play some role in gender differences, this conclusion is often exaggerated. 
• Regarding aggression, even though there’s some evidence of men being more aggressive than women, we must first recognize that not all men are more aggressive than all women.  Many societies have exaggerated findings like this to create policies that exclude women from certain job positions and the military.  
• Clearly, women can be very aggressive and better at fighting than many men.  If the policies we create are based on a person’s ability to fight or to defend themselves, then many of these women should be included in police forces, military, etc.  
• Furthermore, society often underestimates the role that culture and socialization play in creating these gender differences.  Boys are praised more for being more physically aggressive.
• This is very different from what we expect from women who feel pressure to be petite and skinny.  Furthermore, women receive negative sanctions for being aggressive. 
• Thus, there are many pressures that women experience to fit their role as feminine, and many pressures that men experience to fit their role as masculine.  
• In some ways, this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy; if you tell a boy that boys don’t cry, then that boy may stop crying in order to not be made fun of, and now everybody believes that boys cry less than girls.  
• Most sociologists are not convinced by the “nature” arguments that men and women are “wired” to be very different.  

Theory and Gender

• Functionalist approaches in sociology focus on understanding how society remains stable and together.
• The principle behind functionalism is that those aspects of society that exist and persist do so because they somehow provide something that reinforces the stability and togetherness of society.
• Functionalist approaches to gender were prevalent in the middle of the 1900s, and were strongly based on biological determinist ideas. 
• When looking at the gendered division of labor where men worked outside the home, and women were homemakers, functionalist posited that this division existed because it somehow helped society.  
• Their argument was that women were biologically suited for nurturing children and that men were more biologically suited for the “tough challenges” of the outside world.  
• The biological distinctions were used to exaggerate the roles that men and women should play in society.
• Because women gave birth to children and had breasts to feed them milk, it was assumed that it was “natural” for them to be the primary caretakers of the children.  Because men were perceived as stronger, they were assumed to be “naturally” better fit to work outside the home.  

Feminist theories

• Feminism is the belief that women deserve the same rights and opportunities as men.  
• Liberal feminism: liberal feminism is particular in two ways: its analysis of the roots of women’s oppression and the method in which change is brought about.  
• Liberal feminists find the roots of women’s oppression in a multitude  of factors including unequal pay, the media, etc.  They method in which they seek change is through the system by changing laws.  This includes working to get the right politicians elected and working to pass laws that get rid of women’s inequality. 
• Radical feminism: differs from liberal feminism in both ways as well.  Unlike liberal feminists, radical feminists find the root of women’s oppression in a system of patriarchy. By this we refer to the entire society, its people, its culture, its institution, and its norms.  Whereas liberal feminists would like to change laws, radical feminists look to get rid of the entire system.  This could include getting rid of the concept of gender to begin with, which would mean raising children completely equally without pronouns such as “he” or “she” and dressing in gender neutral ways.  It would also include changing the institution of “family”, as it is seen as a center of women’s oppression.
• Radical feminists also differ from liberal feminists in their methods.  They don’t just seek to change laws through voting, but take on more direct action through protests, and working outside the system.  Because the system is seen as inherently patriarchal, working within it is seen as a limited form of change that may only gain partial improvements rather than full liberation from men’s oppression.  
• Black Feminism: criticizes liberal and radical feminism for trying to explain all women’s oppression without taking into consideration the different experiences of black women and women of color.  Black feminists are not limited to patriarchy as a form of oppression, but also pay attention to white supremacy.  Since liberal and radical feminism were strongly rooted in a white, middle class experience, they miss the main the variety of experiences that exist.  See bell hooks example on page 285 in the textbook.  
• Postmodern Feminism: is similar to black feminism in that it challenges liberal and radical feminisms’ argument that all women’s oppression can be explained through a single narrative.
• Instead, postmodern feminism emphasizes that there are many different points of views of women’s oppression that are equally valid.  A rich female actor will not have the same experience of oppression as a Muslim, disabled woman.  A lesbian woman’s oppression experience will be quite different from an undocumented female immigrant’s experience.  

Gender Inequality in Families

Gender Inequality in Families

• The traditional domestic division of labor relegated women to their homes to play the role of homemakers.  this position oppressed women as their homes and families metaphorically became their prisons with little else to strive for in life.  Wives became the servants of their families in many ways.  
• Today, although women have entered the workforce, there is still a sense that it is a woman’s duty to continue to take care of the household chores even if she also works for an income outside the home.  Thus, although women’s situation has changed,  it is still very far away from equality.  in the past 50 years, women’s hours of housework on average decreased form 32hrs. to 18 hours per week.  Men began to do more housework, but not enough: their hours increased from 4 to 10hours per week of housework (Parker and Wang 2013).  

Gender Inequality at Work

• Despite all the gains that women have made to find equality in the labor force, they still face many challenges that will not simply resolve themselves.  One of these challenges is the glass ceiling.
• The glass ceiling is a promotion barrier that prevents women’s upward mobility within an organization.  This is especially true in male-dominated occupations.  There is some upward mobility for women, but it is very common for them to hit a ceiling that prevents them from moving on up to upper level management positions.  This can be due to a combination of reasons.  First, often times when groups such a upper managers are made up mainly of men, these men equate competency with people like themselves, so they don’t give others a chance.  Also, often times women are discriminated against in the firm if they become pregnant or have hopes of starting a family.  Male counterparts often think that this will get in the way of the woman being able to do a good job.  
• The Gender Pay Gap – women currently earn around 80 cent for every dollar earned by a man.  This is the narrowest it has been in history, but this gap has shown persistence and does not disappear too easily.  Some of the possible explanations for this include sex segregation.  
• Sex segregation refers to the concentration of women and men in different group.  While there has been gender integration in jobs, we still find that many jobs are mainly made up of men (mechanics, machinists, etc.) and others made up by women (secretary, child care worker, etc.).  While this may explain some of the pay gap, we find the work that is done by women tends to be valued less than men.  For example, a study found that as an occupation becomes more female dominated, its wages tend to decrease.  Also, when we look at many workers within the same workplace doing the same work, men also tend to make higher incomes than women.