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Gender Inequality
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GENDER
Inequality
Bases of Inequality
4.1
Gender: The social and cultural differences a society assigns to people based on their biological sex
Gender Roles: A society's expectations of people's behaviors and attitudes based on whether or not they are males or females
Gender Identity: The expectations or beliefs we develop about ourselves as males or females
Gender Binary: The belief that there are only two genders and that everyone fits neatly in one or the other.
Sex + Gender
4.1
Sex: Biological; anatomical
Gender: social; cultural
Femininity: Cultural expectations we have of girls and women
Masculinity: " " of boys and men
Do biological differences between sexes account for differences in behaviors and attitudes? Or do these stem from cultural expectations and socialization?
Biological explanations
Cultural Explanations
Biology
vs
culture
1) There is an evolutionary basis for traditional gender roles. (p.142)
2) Males' higher levels of aggression are due to their higher levels of testosterone. (p. 143)
1) Gender roles differ from one culture to another, not biologically determined. (p.145)
2) Gender and sexuality are socially constructed differently in different cultures, times, and places. (p.146)
IN WHICH INSTITUTIONS? HOW?
Gender
Socialization
SOcialization: the process whereby individuals learn the culture of their society.
The family
peers
schools
mass media
Religion
GENDER
Feminism +Sexism
4.2
Ism's
"I'm not a feminist, but..."
Feminism:
The belief that women and men should have equal opportunities in economic, political, and social life
Sexism:
A belief in traditional gender role stereotypes and in the inherent inequality between men and women
Glass Ceiling:
Glass Elevator
Sexism and discrimination in employment can be seen by the
where women are promoted in a job only to find they reach an invisible barrier once they reach a certain position,
whereas men encounter a
they can ride to the top of a company (women constitute only 16% of top executives)
Glass ceiling
vs
escalator
The triple burden
Refers to the intersectional nature of black women's marginalization and oppression, along lines of gender, class, and race.
FEminisms
Liberal feminism
Socialist feminism
radical feminism
multicultural feminism
4.5
The costs + benefits
of being male
being male
- BENEFITS:
- "In a patriarchal society, men automatically have advantages just because they are men, even if race/ethnicity, social class, and sexual orientaton affect the degree to which they are able to enjoy these advantages." (177)
- Where/how does male privilege show up?
- COSTS
- "Men pay the price for living in a patriarchy, facing a society that promotes male domination and traditional standards of masculinity such as assertiveness, competetiveness, and toughness." (178)
-Michael Kimmel-
Why gender equality is good for everyone--men included
- American sociologist, gender studies
- Distinguished Prof at Stony Brook in NY
- Founder and editor of Men and Masculinities
- Accused of sexual harassment during #MeToo
4.3
Global v local
Dimensions
Maternal Mortality: 590 per 100,000 23.8 per 100,000
Intimate Partner
Violence: 1/3 of women have More than 1 in 3
been raped or beaten raped, beaten,
stalked
FGM: 100 mil+ girls worldwide 1996 became felony
2019 15 states w/o
Sex Trafficking: Millions of children Tens of thousands
stolen/sold as sex slaves
Women's labor force participation continues to lag behind men's, but the gap has narrowed. However, the wage gap will take over 100 years.
the wage gap
sexual harassment
household inequality
Defined by federal guidelines and legal rulings and statutes as "unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or physical conduct of a sexual nature that is used as a condition of employment or promotion or that interferes with an individual's job performance and creates an intimidating or hostile environment."
Dimensions of gender inequality
Housework represents a significant dimension of gender-based household inequality, with most women picking up the "second shift" of unpaid work once they're home from their paying job.
the "triple burden"
Women of color face difficulties for their gender, their race, and often their class, and experience a gender gap and a racial/ethnic gap in earnings
Reducing
Gender inequality:
CULTURAL AND STRUCTURAL FACTORS
reducing inequality
- Reduce socialization by parents and other adults of girls and boys into traditional gender roles
- Confront gender stereotyping by the popular and news media
- Increase public consciousness of the reasons for, extent of, and consequences of rape and sexual assault, harassment, trafficking, and pornography
- Increase mentorship and other efforts to boost the number of women in traditionally male occupations and in positions of political leadership
Violence Against Women:
Rape and Sexual Assault
4.4
Violence
"Violence is directed against men not because they are men per se, but because of anger, jealousy, and sociological reasons discussed in Ch.8...But rape and sexual assault, domestic violence, and pornographic violence are directed against women precisely because they are women." (171)
Cultural Explanations for Rape:
1) Women enjoy being forced to have sex
2) Women "ask for it" or deserve to be raped
3) Men should be sexually assertive/aggressive
Structural Explanations: Emphasize power
differences between men and women in
patriarchal capitalist societies
Consent in capitalist america
WHat's in an age?: the Shifting age of consent + construction of race/Gender
Question: How are patterns of gender inequality, sex-gender relations, and sexual asymmetry institutionalized through the law?
Finding: The re/construction of age of consent laws in a given time depends on socio-spatial factors as they are cast onto racialized, gendered, classes, and sexed bodies.
(rape = use of force, lack of consent)
“I moved on her, and I failed. I’ll admit it… I did try and fuck her. She was married… I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn’t get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look...Yeah, that’s her. With the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful--I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything…Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
-Donald J. Trump
Consent as a product of systems of power
The infamous “Pussygate” video of Donald J. Trump bragging about sexual assault to television host Billy Bush was released exactly a month before the self-proclaimed offender was elected to the highest office in the United States. Although this incident is only one in a career of sexually degrading, violent, aggressive, cruel interactions with, and comments towards, women, it draws attention to the problematic nature of our main tool for drawing lines between sexually violent and acceptable interaction--consent.
By his own admission, Trump defines a key issue that has plagued the conceptualization of consent and brought into question its usefulness as a measuring tool to punish or allow sexual acts throughout American history--consent is shaped by systems of power.
Critical questions on consent
Who has the right to draw and maintain a line around a sovereign Self ?
To grant or deny others access to their person?
How has discourse on consent reproduced power relations?
What of the material reality of these ideological questions?
Legal and social discourse have often constructed consent along different combinations of affirmative and negative expressions: ‘no means yes,’ ‘no means no,’ ‘yes means yes,’ ‘yes means yes means yes means yes,’ and, emblazoned on t-shirts at recent festivals and college parties nationwide, ‘no means yes, yes means anal.’
- For a long time, the law writ large reflected cultural beliefs about marriage, women’s chastity, and their ‘natural’ ambivalence towards sex, suggesting that women were incapable of understanding the notion of consent, and thus unable to adequately define or prove it--that their “no means yes.”
- New discourse around consent emerged through consciousness-raising of the 1970’s, and during the neoliberalization of the second wave movement throughout the 1980’s, which first raised the issue of whether consent was even possible or meaningful under our social contract and conditions of male dominance.
- However, this radical notion was largely overshadowed by debates between anti-rape activists fighting for the belief that “no means no” on the one hand, and liberal and libertarian feminist backlash that “a woman’s ‘yes’ must be equally valued,” not left to paternalistic law that strips them of agency and the right to sexual liberation.
Consent in Colonial America
- Two witnesses and proof of verbal dissent = prerequisites to bringing a rape case
- Only guilty cases in Puritan MA= married victim; consent bypassable; victim under 10
- Two-tiered system for rape (capital offense in VA): protect white defendants' rights vs begrudgingly trying slave defendants (protection of property over property)
Consent in antebellum america
- Some Southern states explicity excluded both enslaved and free black women from protections, revising rape statutes by adding "white" before woman.
- Some recognized puberty as activating consent, and a few openly declared laws with different ages depending on the perceived race of the accused rapist.
consent in victorian america
- White anxieties abound;
- Ida B. Wells exposes the myth of the black male rapist
Barbara Risman
"Gender as Social Structure"
Reflexive relationship between structure and individual action, such that individual action is always responding to existing structures in ways that either reinforce or challenge these structures.
Gender as social structure
Material Processes
Cultural Processes
Based on physical bodies, laws, or geographical locations (and how they impact social lives)
Ideological or socially constructed ideas that orientate people’s perspectives and worldview
"Gender As Structure" graph
Judith Lorber:
The social construction of gender
Night to his day
"Talking about gender for most people is the equivalent of fish talking about water."
- "Gender, like culture, is a human production that depends on everyone constantly 'doing gender'."
- (West & Zimmerman 1987, in Lorber, pg. 54)
- "Gender signs and signals are so ubiquitous that we usually fail to note them--unless they are missing or ambiguous. Then, we are uncomfortable until we have successfully placed the other person in a gender status. Otherwise, we feel socially dislocated." (54)
- "By puberty, sexual feelings and desires and practices have been shaped by gendered norms and expectations." (pg.56)
gender as sameness
gender as difference
Gender as sameness,
difference
- Individuals are born sexed but not gendered, and they have to be taught to be masculine or feminine.
- The gendered practices of everyday life reproduce a society's view of how women and men should act.
- For society, the pervasiveness of gender as a way of structuring social life demands that gender statuses be clearly differentiated/perceived as different (58)
- When men and women do the same tasks, they're often spatially segregated and given different tites
Process
Stratification
Structure
Gender as practice, stratification, and structure
- As a process, gender creates the social differences that define "woman" and "man."
- "Gendered norms and expectations are enforced through informal sanctions of gender-appropriate behavior by peers, and threat of punishment by authority."
- As part of a stratification system, gender ranks men above women of the same race and class.
- In a gender-stratified society, what men do is usually valued more highly than what women do because men do it.
- As a structure, gender divides work in the home and in economic production, legitimates those in authority, and organizes sexuality and emotional life."