Quiz 7 Flashcards
What is sex?
natural or biological differences that distinguish males and females
What is gender?
- Social distinction based on learned ideas about appearance, behavior, and mental/emotional characteristics
- It is percieved/constructed
Born with ____ socialized into ____
• Born with sex, socialized into gender
Why is sex so important to sociology?
- The role of biology
- Sociobiology ¨
- Cross-cultural and/or historical differences between men and women are too great for nature alone to explain behavior
- Not nature versus nurture, but nature AND nurture
What is gender socialization?
How gender roles are learned through social agents such as schooling, the media, and family
What are gender roles?
- sets of behavioral norms assumed to accompany one’s status as a male or female
- positive and negative sanctions
What is doing gender?
- Gender is something we create in interaction, not something we are
- Everything is involved when we “do gender,” from our actions to our clothing, mannerisms, speech, and body language
What does the social construction of gender involve?
Gender is more than males and females, but should include masculinities and femininities as well
What is hegemonic masculinity?
Masculinity associated with heterosexual, highly educated, European American men of upper-class economic status as the dominant, socially acceptable form of masculinity
What is the functionalist perspective on gender?
- Assumes that gender differences exist to fulfill necessary functions in society (e.g., promote social solidarity and integration)
- Sex role theory (Talcott Parsons)
What is the sex role theory?
- Sex role theory (Talcott Parsons): gender forms a complementary set of roles that links men and women to family units for carrying out various important tasks
- Men – instrumental
- Women – expressive
What is the conflict perspective on gender?
- Men have more power than women
- Conventional ideas about gender promote division
- Men seek to protect their privilege
- Women seek to challenge the status quo
- Radical feminism
What is feminism?
An intellectual, consciousness-raising movement based on the idea that men and women should be accorded equal opportunities and respect
What are the 3 historical waves of feminism?
Voting rights, employment and education, and diversity and the variety of identities
What are the 4 types of feminism?
Liberal, radical, black, and postmodern feminism
What is liberal feminism?
- Believes that gender inequality is produced by unequal access to civil rights and certain social resources based on sex
- Seeks solutions through legislation
What is radical feminism?
- Believes that gender inequality is the result of male domination in all aspects of social and economic life
- End inequality by overthrowing patriarchy (dominance of men over women)
What is multicultural/ black feminism?
- Highlights the multiple disadvantages of gender, class, and race that shape the experiences of nonwhite women
- Gender equality rests on racial and class equalities
What is postmodern feminism?
- Challenges the idea of a unitary basis of identity and experience shared by all women
- Celebrates the “otherness” of different groups and individuals
What is gender stratification?
- Systematic process by which people are divided into categories (based on sex) that are ranked on social worth
- Education, work, pay, family, politics, sexual harassment
How are millions of men missing?
- Missing from the job market
- Not working, not looking
What is gender segregation?
The concentration of men and women in different occupations
What is gender typing?
Women holding occupations of lower status and pay, such as secretarial and retail positions and men holding jobs of higher status and pay, such as managerial and professional positions
What act aimed to change working rights for women?
- 1963 Equal Pay Act
- Aimed to reduce difference in earnings between men and women
Why are women entering male - dominated fields but the reverse is not true?
- There is more of a stigma towards men moving into women’s fields
- Constrained about cultural assumptions about manhood and womanhood
- Manhood is more precarious than womanhood – hard to earn and easy to lose
Where is the pay gap particularly bad?
among doctors
Why is there a pay gap?
- Women - motherhood penality
- Men - fatherhood premium
- When couples have children: fathers are more likely to get raises to support their families and women are less likely to get raises because they are expected to pull back and focus on childcare
- Traditionally male dominated fields
What is the human capital theory?
individuals make investments in their own “human capital” to increase their productivity and earnings
What are sociological explanations for the gender pay gap?
- Gender socialization
- Women’s work devalued
- Discouragement and discrimination
What type of discrimination occurs in the workplace?
- Comparable worth discrimination (institutional discrimination): when female typed jobs are paid less than similarly productive male-types jobs
- Truck drivers vs nursing assistants, truck drivers make more
What limits women/ helps men in reference to work and mobility?
- The glass ceiling: a promotion barrier that prevents a woman’s upward mobility within an organization
- The glass escalator: men who work in female dominated fields are more likely to be promoted
What is sexuality?
Sexuality refers to desire, sexual preference, sexual identity, and behavior
What is the kinsey report?
- 1950s/40s
- First major investigation of sexual behavior in the US
- Shocking- found fairly promiscuous behavior
- Bias findings
What happened in the 1960s in reference to sexuality?
- sexual revolution
- Sexual freedom
- Invention of the pill separates sex from reproduction
- Rejection of double standard
What was the Laumann Study?
- 1994 Survey of Americans
- Major purpose to combat the transmission of AIDS
- Found Americans relatively sexually conservative, but there are still gender differences
What are the two types of sex education?
- Abstinence-only
- Comprehensive-sex education
What is sexual orientation?
The inclination to be heterosexual, homosexual, asexual, or bisexual
When did homosexuality emerge?
Mid 19th century
What is homophobia?
- a fear of or discrimination towards homosexuals or towards individuals
- Individual beliefs and behaviors
What is heterosexism?
- anti-homosexual beliefs and practices embedded in social institutions
- Hospital doesn’t recognize same sex couples
What is the relationship between gender and health?
- Women get sicker but men die quicker
- Women live longer than men in every developed country
- Women spend more years in poor health (self-perceived health worse)
Why do women get sicker but men die quicker?
- Biology
- Differential exposure to hardship, stress, and access to resources
- Gendered participation in health damaging behaviors
- Gendered response to stress
What is intersectionality?
The ways in which two or more identity categories (race, gender, class, S.O.) intersect to produce distinctive social experiences that are not reducible to their parts
What is race?
A group of people who share a set of characteristics, usually physical ones and are said to share a common bloodline
Race has _____
- No genetic basis
- Greater genetic variation within a racial category than between racial categories
How do notions of race vary?
across time and culture
Race is _____
socially constructed
- Race categories emerge from history and socialization
How has race arisen from history?
- Race as we know it didn’t exist until the 1400s
- White explorers needed a way to describe the different people they encountered
How is race socialized?
Peoples assignment to a race is many times arbitrary
What is racialization?
the formation of a new racial identity
What are historical efforts to explain races?
- Many biased due to ethnocentrism
- Social Darwinism
- Eugenics
- The one-drop rule
What are the consequences of race?
predjudice, discrimination, stereotyping/scapegoating
What are the 4 categories of racism?
- All-weather Liberal – not prejudiced or discriminatory
- Fair-weather liberal – discriminatory but not prejudiced
- Timid bigot – prejudiced
- Active bigot – prejudiced dricriminates
What is prejudice?
- Attitudes
- Positive/negative thoughts and feeling about an ethnic or racial group
- Belief that one group is superior to another
- Resistant to change
What is discrimination?
- Actions
- Harmful or negative acts against people deemed inferior on the basis of their racial category
What is stereotyping?
labeling people with fixed categories
What are scapegoats?
undeservingly blamed for social/economic problems
Racism is an _____
ideology
What is racism?
- Humans are divided into distinct bloodlines and or physical types
- These bloodlines or physical traits are linked to distinct cultures, behaviors, personalities, and intellectual abilities
- Certain groups are superior to others
How is racism now?
no longer overt, covert racism
What is institutional racism?
Racism so deeply ingrained that people don’t need to do anything for it to continue
