Final Exam Prep Flashcards
Module 9-13
Gender
- not binary, but represents a sliding scale of roles and identities
- much of the critical work in gender has been conducted by woman (particularly women of colour)
- refers to the cultural meaning that societies attach to sex categories. Relates to behaviour considered “normal” for a person of a particular sex
Sex
- biological traits that societies use to categorize individuals as male or female
Sexuality
- feelings of sexual desire and attraction and how these are expressed
- like sex and gender, sexuality is fluid and may change over time
Gender roles
- set of attitudes and expectations concerning behaviour that relates to the sex we are assigned at birt
Cisgender
- someone who feels affinity with the socially constructed sex category they were assigned at birth, male or female
Transexual
- someone with the physical characteristics of one sex category with a drive to belong to another
Two-spirit
- umbrella term to describe those who identify with one of the many gender roles beyond male and female
feminism
- theoretical approach that advocates for the rights of women in society
- feminist sociologists carried out much of the critical work on gender theory
- feminism evolved in a series of waves (previous chapters)
Liberal feminism
- seeks to secure equal rights for women in all phases of public life
- is is associated with the fight to pay equity
- criticism: reflects mainly the concerns and interests of white middle-class heterosexual cisgender women
Essentialist Feminism
- differs by arguing that women and men are essentially different in the way they think
- the different world views were boiled down to the fact that men view the world with competition while women view it with unity
- Kachuck had 3 main criticisms for this:
1. it universalizes women and their worldview
2. confused natural instincts with strategies that women have devised for coping with commands of patriarchal society
3. encourages us to see women “as social housekeepers in worlds that men build”
Social feminism
- looks at intersections of oppression between class and gender
- criticism: race, ethnicity, ableism, and sexual orientation get overlooked in the focus on class
Postmodernist feminism
- argues that there is no natural basis for identities based on gender, ethnicity, race, and so on
- Criticism: postmodernists generally problematize, but fail to arrive at conclusions
How does society organize itself in ways that are “gendered”
- separate clothing stores for men and women
- different places for men and women to get their hair cut
- pink is always and option in products for woman but not men
what is “the feminization of work”
- occurs when a particular job, profession, or industry is predominantly associated with women
- feminization of an industry is linked to lower earnings, less job protection, fewer benefits
gendered work today (female dominated fields)
- women made up 53% of the workforce and outnumbered men by at least 15% in the following categories:
- finance and insurance
- educational services
- accommodation and food services
- healthcare and social assistance
gendered work today (male dominated fields)
- in 2000, men outnumbered women by a ratio of at least 2 to 1 in the following occupations
- forestry, fishing, mining, and oil and gass
- manufacturing
- construction
- agriculture
Connell’s four performances of masculinity
- Hegemonic masculinity: practices that normalize and naturalize men’s dominance and women’s subordination
- Subordinate masculinity: practices that could threaten the legitimacy of hegemonic masculinity
- Marginalized masculinity: adaptation of masculinities to issues such as race and class
- Complicit masculinity: practices that do not embody hegemonic processes, but benefit from them
Sargent’s (2005) research
- found that being a minority on a gendered job can have profound impact on one’s gender performance at work
Nuclear family
- parent(s) and children
Extended family
includes parents, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins
Simples households
unrelated adults with or without children
complex households
two or more adults who are related but not married to each other and hence could reasonably be expected to live separately
How are families in Quebec different form the rest of canada
- they have the highest cohabitation rate at 37%
- lowest marriage rate at 2.9 per 100,000
- highest divorce rate at 69.2%
- highest number of divorces among couples married less than 30 years (61%)
- 2011 greatest number of births to single mothers
conjugal (marital) roles
distinctive roles of husband and wife that result in division of labor in a family
Bott Hypothesis
- how Elizabeth Bott characterized conjugal roles as:
- segregated: tasks, interests and activities that are clearly different
- joint: many tasks, interests and activities are shared
How did Beaujot add to Botts hypothesis
- argued that society is moving from complimentary to companionate roles
- complementary roles (Bott’s segregated): men as primary breadwinners and woman at home doing childcare
- Companionate roles (Bott’s joint): breadwinning and caretaking roles overlap
Double ghetto
- the marginalization that working woman experience inside and outside of the home
Gender strategy
- Nakhaie (1995) thought this was the key to correcting gender imbalances (proposed by Arlie Hochschild)
- plan of action through which a person tried to solve problems at hand, given cultural notions of gender at play
occupational segregation
- encouraged by childcare responsibilities
- woman choose occupations that have greatest flexibility in terms of childcare-related work interruptions
How does ethnicity impact segregated conjugal roles
- recent immigrants in some ethnic groups adhere to segregated conjugal roles more frequently
- a sign of assimilation would be as they adopt the western approach
endo and exogamy
- endogamy: marrying someone of the same ethnic, religious, or cultural group as oneself
- exogamy: marrying outside of ones own group
What factors have changed families over the years
- industrialization
- rise of digital technology
- demographic changes
- ideological differences
- change in status of women
- changing relationship between private sphere of family and the public
- government interest
- societal recognition of different family forms
Explain the concept of religion
- powerful, deeply felt, influential force in human society
- shapes relationships
- a cultural institution that is an instrument for the satisfaction of needs
how did emile durkheim define religion?
a unified system of beliefs, rituals, and practices that define and express the nature of sacred things in relationship to the profane things of the world
what is religion from the weberian POV?
- any set of coherent answers to human existential dilemmas which make the world meaningful
what is theism?
- belief in god
- pivot around a belief in a sacred higher power which has control over human behaviour
- monotheism: belief in one divine power or god
- polytheistic religion: belief in many gods
- Animism: belief in ghosts or spirits which may be forces for good and evil
- Totemism: this is associated with small scale tribal societies, clan cultures
Atheism
- the opposite of theism that disputes against belief in any form of supernatural influence in the affairs of humans
- Agnosticism: Derived from from Greek agnōstos, “unknowable” and rooted in the works of Vladmimir Lenin, advocates the doctrine that humans cannot know of the existence of anything beyond the phenomena of their experience.
what are the 4 structural elements of religion?
- beliefs
- ritual
- emotions
- organization
Beliefs
- strongly held conviction by people who are adherent to a religion that their object of warship can solve their problems
Ritual
- religious acts, ceremonies, and practices
- way of venerating and honoring the sacred
- reaffirm the total commitment of adhering to their belief in the sacredness of the object of worship
- often have special types of behaviour at them
Emotions
- the spirit of reverence, humility, ecstasy, frenzy, and even terror that is evoked in the believed as they present themselves in the presence of the sacred
- should evoke a behaviour that is deemed appropriate for the occasion