Sex and Gender

#Sociology

Sex, Sexuality, and Gender §

• Sex - biological differences that distinguish males and females
  • Intersex - Ambiguous genitalia. Hermaphrodites
  • Male
  • Female
• Gender - attitudes and behaviors expected of us because of our sex
  • Transgender, nonbinary - challenges the idea that there is only two categories
• Sexuality - sexual desire and preference
  • Who you wanna go to bed with
  • Homosexuality - challenges the traditional heterosexuality and is another group now
• Many believe that there are only two sexes and that all people fall into one group or the other
  • Reality has more than two rigid and distinct categories
  • About 1 in 1000 babies are born intersexed, having an abnormal chromosomal makeup and mixed or uncertain male and female sex characteristics
  • People who are intersexed are often forced into one category or another by the people around them even though they don’t particularly fit into one or the other

Gender §

• Many believe that male is definitely masculine or female definitely feminine, and that all aspects of sex and gender are consistent
• Evidence shows that gender roles (not gender identity) have more to do with social status than biology
  • Gender Role - what society tells you is appropriate for your gender
• The study of gender boils down to seeing how nature and nurture overlap and shape each other
• To some extent gender differences are real and imagined or created
• Essentialists - opposing biological inevitabilities
  • Affects people’s experiences and opportunities
• Social Construction - nature/nurture as a two way street
  • Story of David Reimer. If you raise someone as a girl, they will become a girl regardless of their biology.
• In thinking about sex and gender, nature and nurture are inseparable
• Gender as learned behaviors
  • We acquire our gender identity through socialization and day to day interactions
  • Rigid boundaries are imposed to maintain a gender order
  • Your peers “supervise” your gender behavior and call you out if somethings “off”
  • We live in a gendered world: gender is an organizing principle of life
  • Gender is a social system that greatly affects how people live daily. It is also institutionalized, making it hard to challenge
  • A small number of nonwestern societies accommodate alternative genders
    • Two-spirited people in Native American culture
    • Hijras in India
• Gender behaviors are socially constructed
  • Meaning of men and women varies across cultures and over time
  • A woman used to be the stay at home mom who cooks and cleans etc., now a woman is someone who leads companies. Stuff changes

The Woman Question §

What explains universal male dominance? §

• Functionalism
  • Parson’s Sex Role Theory - men and women perform their roles as breadwinners and housewives because the nuclear family is the ideal arrangement in modern societies
  • This is a natural/biological division of labor
  • Men play instrumental roles, earning money, and women play expressive roles, taking care of kids etc.
  • Criticisms of this perspective
    • Exaggeration of sex differences in personalities and abilities. Some men want to take care of the kids some women want to earn money. Same for skills.
    • Many women have had to work outside the home due to necessity. So it’s just not inherently true that the men are the breadwinners, sometimes its both
    • Doesn’t allow for the possibility that other structures could fulfill the same function. Grandparents can take care of kids while parents work for example
• Conflict Theory
  • Division of labor is a social vehicle devised by men to ensure privilege and power over women
  • If we are living in a world with full gender equality, who would stand to lose power and status? Men would. Because of that, men try to keep their power.
  • Two kinds of division of power/label
    • Horizontal division - Most work is sex-typed. Some work is suitable for men, some is for women
      • Women =/= CEO
      • Men =/= Teacher
      • Women’s work is mainly supportive
    • Vertical division - women do more unpaid or low paid work
      • Teachers are usually women’s jobs and usually lower paid
  • Problems with conflict theory
    • It casts conventional families as morally evil. Casts men as evil for having women stay at home and be the housewife.
• Feminism
  • Patriarchy - a few men dominate all others including women, children, and less powerful men
  • It is men who run governments, control education systems ,earn most of the money, and who are generally consider the movers of society
  • Black feminism highlights intersectionality
    • Class, race, and gender intersect in a way that privileges some women over others, though most women are still subordinate to most men
    • Patricia Hill Collins identified the matrix of domination which highlights how black women face unique oppressions that white women don’t
• Postmodern Theorists
  • Question the whole notion of “woman” as a separate stable category
  • Why do we want to differentiate between groups of people unless we want to treat them differently?
• Symbolic Interactionism
  • Gender is a product of social interaction
  • Through communication we learn about what qualities and activities our culture prescribes to our sex
  • “Doing Gender” - Gender is a matter of active doing, not simply a matter of natural being
  • Gender is a social institution
  • Gender is something that you are constantly aware of and that constantly affects your decision making

Gender at Work §

• Ads tell women that what’s most important is how they look, and they surround us with the image of “ideal” (but unattainable) female beauty
  • If there is only one kind of beauty then other kinds of beauty and important qualities are completely excluded and ignored.
  • Lower self image, self hate for women
  • For men: unrealistic expectations placed on women
• Ads often turn women’s bodies into “things” and “objects”
  • Objectification creates a climate in which there is widespread violence against women. This leads to violence being acceptable when its not.
  • It’s not about being a human being with identity and dignity
• This affects not only how men feel about women, but also how men feel about everything that gets labeled feminine by the culture
• Hegemonic masculinity - the perceived ideal type of male within a particular culture at a particular time
• Toxic masculinity - behave in aggressive, abusive and sexist ways to feel like and be perceived by others as proper men

Natural differences between sexes §

• Studies of children
  • Girls are better with words, boys are better with numbers. This has some biological support
  • Aggression levels differ between girls and boys, but this could be due to social environment
  • Both biological and environmental influences cause differences
• Cross cultural studies
  • Experiment comparing patriarchal and matrilineal societies
  • Suggests competition is a learned form of gender behavior
  • More research is needed
• Study of Vietnam veterans
  • Veterans with high levels of testosterone were more likely to engage in antisocial and aggressive behavior as children
  • Social class a determining factor - correlation between testosterone and aggression is stronger in men from lower social classes than in men from higher social classes.
  • Testosterone levels impact behaviors, and behaviors impact testosterone levels
  • Culture can magnify or override biological differences
  • Important to consider data rather than ideology

Inequalities of Gender §

• In the World of work…
• Women make up half of the U.S. labor force today
• Gender pay gap - at all ages and education levels, women earn less than men. This is true historically as well.
• Four reasons explaining gender pay gap
  1. Segmented labor market
     • Horizontal division - most work is sex-typed; female dominated jobs are undervalued and underpaid
     • Vertical division - different hierarchical positions
     • The sex that is associated with the work provides its prestige - not the work itself
  2. Gender discrimination at work
     • Motherhood penalty, glass ceiling, gender bias, sexual harassments
  3. Family Responsibilities
  4. Workplace choice
• In leadership role
  • The model woman today is both feminine and masculine
  • A women who performs too much masculinity attracts criticism
  • Feminine apologetic -the requirement that women balance their adoption of masculine interest, traits, and activities with feminine performance
• Costs and consequences of gender stratification
  • Lack of health care coverage for women, which impacts both women and their children
  • Social divisiveness leads to alienation

Conclusion §

• Men and women are more similar than different
• There are fairly persistent differences between men and women
• But most differences are not biologically predetermined or not permanently psychologically coded, they are much more a matter of style, skills, habits, and external expectations