The Social Construction of Gender

Sex vs Gender

Sex
- biological identity of a person(male, female, intersex)
Gender
- Socially learned behaviors + expectations associated w/ men + women(kind of an older
definition)
- Socially constructed categories that, in many societies are based on a binary system that
differentiates between masculinity and femininity and men and women
- Recently new gender identities(transger, androgynous, genderqueer categories) have been
embraced + advanced

Men and Women are given certain expectations

Men: masculine, strong, breadwinner, handy, stoic, promiscuous, aggressive, competitive, outgoing,
violent, risk-taking

Women: feminine, emotional, expressive, domestic, chaste, submissive, dainty, cooperative, quiet,
peaceful, weak, irrational

Many are actually opposite

Gender is a relational concept → a change in one gender means a change in the other gender

When women started asserting “masculine” traits → some men got decentered so they formed the
men’s rights movement → argues it is men not women who are oppressed in America

Now we ask which traits are more socially valued?

The “masucline” traits are more valued → we teach kids that it is better to be a man then a woman
→ a sexist society results

A Sexist Society
Work + Economy
- In 2017, women earned 82 cents to every dollar men made (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
- Women tend to be segregated into lower paying jobs (Urban Institute, 2017)
- Sexual harassment affects 40-60% of working women(American Association of University
Women)
Family + Intimate Relationships
- ⅓ women have been a victim of some form of physicalviolence by a partner (National
Coalition against Domestic Violence, 2010)
- Women spend on average 2.19 hours/day on household activities while men spend 1.41
hours (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
Government (Center for Women in Politics, 2019)
- 25/100 U.S. Senators are women, 102/435 U.S. representatives are women
- 9/50 U.S. governors are women
- Women hold 28.7% of state legislature seats in the U.S.
Education
- Teachers tend to pay less attention to girls + women
- 56% of girls in grades 5-12 are sexually harassed at school
- 20% of college women experience sexual assault
Religion
- Women constitute 58% of religious workers but 18% of clergy
Medicine + Health Care
- Women constitute 80% of healthcare workers but 32% of physicians

Death of Men
- Men tend to die earlier
- 2013, in single offender/single victim cases, 88% of homicide victims were males killed by
other males (women rarely kill other women)
- Often victim precipitated(the person who started the fight is killed)
- Often bc men refuse to back down so it escalates until somebody dies
- 2017, 36,782 men committed suicide, compared to 10,391 women, despite the fact that
women attempt suicide 3x as much as men
- Often because of the method men use → men often use a gun
- Often done by middle age white men(they blame themselves for their faults + don’t
have social support)
- 2015, 11.726 male passenger vehicle drivers died in auto accidents, compared to 4,750
women.
- In terms of blood alcohol content(BAC), 3,943 of maledrivers who died had a BAC
of 0.8 or higher compared to 999 women
- Has to do with risk taking behavior

Going back to the expectations, they are true and not true
The expectations are all human traits → they come out depending on socialization, social
institutions, interactions, etc
→ we accept some traits and repress others → leads to dehumanization → i.e. men can only cry for
big reasons, for women the sexual double standard
Does your action cause your gender to be challenged/questioned

Socially constructed
- Society, not biological difference, is the basis of gender identity
- Biologically, gender doesn’t exist
- More variation within genders than between gender

Biological Determinism and Reductionism Biological Reductionism

- Cross cultural research
- Margaret mead in papua new guinea saw differences in genders in these societies
- Gender fluidity
- Third genders(two spirit people)

Level One: Gendered Selves(individual)

- Gender resides in our personalities
- Can be through socialization, psychologically, etc
- Sex role theory
- Reinforced day in and day out by the way we are raised
Level Two: Gendered Social Structure and Gendered Institutions(Institutional)
- Gender is an organizing principle in society and the organization shapes our behavior
- Men and women behave differently bc they are in different positions in social structure not
only bc of socialization
Level Three: Doing Gender(Interactional)
- Gender is an accomplished activity that creates, recreates, and justifies gender inequality
- We perform our gender(we don’t show/prove each other our genitals)
Theories of Gender Socialization

Identification Theory - sigmund freud

- Children develop depending in stages
- People have: id, ego, superego
- Id: it wants it gets
- Ego: controls the in
- Superego: makes us feel guilty

Nancy Chodorow - object relations school of psychology

- Our main thing is to form relationships
- Biggest fear is loneliness
- Women mother differently
- Mothers fuse their personality 2/ the daughter and treat songs as separate + distinct
- Girls grow up to develop selves that emphasize connectedness + relationships
- Boys develop selves that are based on independence + autonomy
- Boys must reject their 1st love object in order to adopt masculinity
- Therefore boys reject femininity and all those traits in their selves considered feminine

Social Learning Theory

- We learn gender like anything else
- Models of Behavior
- Child imitates those behavior
- Actions will continue through reinforcement or punishment
Cognitive Development Theory
- Children start off gender neutral
- Gender identity: recognizes they are a boy or girl at 2
- Gender stability: at around 4 they realize their gender is relatively fixed
- Gender constancy: around 5-7, understands cosmetic changes doesn’t make them a boy or
girl
- Then recognizes what is appropriate for boys and girls

Enculturated Lens Theory

- Cultural assumptions about gender are embedded into social institutions + cultural practices
- Assumptions enculturate children through metamessages: underlying messages concerning
what is culturally valued
- Three important lenses
- Gender polarization: males and females are fundamentally different
- Androcentrism: male superiority, masculine is the normative standard
- Biological essentialism: gender polarization + androcentrism are natural and due to
biological differences
- To solve this - must change the lens

Gender and Work

- Wage gap between women and men
- 1960 - 60.7 cents to 1 dollar
- 2017 - 80.5 cents to 1 dollar

- Difference in wages for racial groups, and gender even with the same education

Job Segregation

Women usually have Pink Collar jobs

- Of the 25 lowest paying jobs, 18 are dominated by women
- Women are segregated into lower paying jobs
- Cashier, hotel workers, lunch lady, etc
Wage differences
- Even with the same jobs, there is a gender wage gap
Theories of Job Segregation
- The socialization hypothesis: men and women respond to gender stereotypes when planning,
treating, and applying for jobs
- Network hypothesis: social networks are gendered(men ask men, women ask women)
 - Employer selection hypothesis: employers want men in certain jobs, women in certain jobs
- Desertion hypothesis: workers tend to leave jobs that are not within gender
stereotypes(people can be treated with hostility/stigma)

Androcentric Pay Scale: the relationship between the status and pay of a job and the gendering of
the profession
- When a profession becomes women dominated, wages go down
- I.e. flight attendants + clerical workers used to be men but as women went in, the status and
pay went down

Jobs dominated by women usually require more emotion work - must control own emotions +
others (nurses, flight attendants, waitstaff, etc)
- Emotional labor has a value to the value of the worker(Marx and alienated labor)
- We sell our emotional labor

The glass ceiling

- The limits women and minorities experience in job mobility
- First thought it was because of different socialization
- 2017 → women were 22.2% of fortune 500 board seats, in 2018 → 4.8%
Why>
- Women are tokens → under more scrutiny + behaved more cautiously
- Characteristics of low power bosses attributed to gender → when women are more
controlling, it is attributed to their gender
- Men schmoozing → men can talk with the boss, socialize, etc, for women it can come off as
flirting/inappropriate

Gender, crime, and deviance

Myths of Rape
- Women want to be raped(women secretly desire rape and violence in intercourse)
- The woman “asks” or “deserves” to be raped(wearing skimpy clothes, going to bars, etc)
- Rape is an act of passion or lust(men can’t help themselves) - 71% of all rapes are planned,
60% of rapists over 25 have partners
- Rape usually happens in dark, isolated places at night(usually where women feel safe)
- Women falsely accuse men of rape
- It can’t happen to me

Facts of Rape
- Every 92 sex another american is sexually assaulted
- ⅙ american women have been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her
lifetime(14.8% completed, 2.8% attempted)
 - 1/33 or around 3% of american men have experienced an attempted or completed rape in
their lifetime
- Females age 16-19 are 4x more likely than the general population to be victims of rape,
attempted rape, or sexual assault
- Women ages 18-24 are 3x more likely than the general population to experience sexual
violence
- 21% of TGQN(trans, genderqueer, nonconforming) college students have been sexually
assaulted, compared to 18% of non TGQN females, and 4% of non TGQN males
- Likelihood that a person suffers suicidal/depressive thoughts increase after sexual violence
- People who have been sexually assaulted are more likely to use drugs than the general public
- Sexual violence also affects victims relationships with their family, friends, and coworkers
- Victims are at risk of pregnancy and STI
- American indians are 2x as likely to experience a rape/sexual assault compared to all races
- 14,900 military members experienced unwanted sexual contact in fiscal year 2017
- Around 8,600 inmates experience sexual violence(often men raping other men)
- 8/10 rapes are committed by someone known to the victim
- 19.5% by a stranger
- 39% by an acquaintance
- 33% by a current/former spouse, bf or gf
- 6% by someone they can’t remember
- 2.5% by non spouse relative
- Marital rape didnt become illegal in all states until the early 90s
- Out of every 1000 rapes
- 995 perpetrators walk free
- 230 reported to the police
- 46 reports lead to arrest
- 9 cases referred to prosecutors
- 5 cases lead to a felony conviction
- 4.6 rapists are incarcerated

Rape and Fraternities

- Mixing of alcohol, sex, and lack of consent
- Some fraternities have strong rape culture
- Low risk houses
- Equal number of men and women
- Men and women interact, dance, have normal conversations
- Dancing often in groups, often have committed relationships
- Clean bathrooms
- No bragging about sex the next day
- High risk houses
- Skewed gender ratios
- Sometimes men have to pay, women have to pay
- Sometimes men have to bring two women
- Ups access to women
- Gender segregation - men and women interact separately
- Conversations centering around sex
- More hostility/behaving crudely
- Filthy bathrooms
- Bragging about sex and the “walk of shame”
-