Gender Flashcards
Consciousness-raising movement to get people to understand that gender is an organizing principle of life; underlying belief is that women and men should be accorded equal opportunities and respect
Feminism
Biological differences that distinguish males from females
Sex
Desire, sexual preference, and sexual identity and behavior
Sexuality
Social position; the set of social arrangements that are built around normative sex categories
Gender
Line of thought that explains social phenomena in terms of natural ones
Essentialism
Line of thought that explains social behavior in terms of who you are in the natural world
Biological determinism
Condition in which men are dominant and privileged and this dominance and privilege is invisible
Hegemonic masculinity
Sets of behavioral norms assumed to accompany one’s status as a male or female
Gender roles
Nearly universal system involving the subordination of femininity to masculinity
Patriarchy
Theoretical tradition claiming that every society has certain structures that exist to fulfill some set of necessary functions
Structural functionalism
Talcott Parson’s theory that men and women perform their sex roles as breadwinners and wives/mothers because the nuclear fault is the ideal arrangement in modern societies fulfulling the function of reproducing workers
Sex role theory
Gender is the driving force of history; gender inequality is first and foremost about power inequalities–groups are pitted against each other in the struggle for resources
Conflict theory
Gender roles have open-ended scripts; individuals are free to act some in unexpected ways that change the course of the play
Microinteractionist theory
Occurs when a person’s sex or gender is the basis for judgment, discrimination, and hatred against him or her
Sexism
Illegal form of discrimination involving everything from inappropriate jokes on the hob to outright sexual assault to sexual “barter” intended to make women feel uncomfortable and unwelcome on the job
Sexual harassment
