Test 3 Flashcards
What is biological determinism?
The idea that an individual’s personality or behaviour is caused by their particular genetic endowment, rather than by social or cultural factors—by nature rather than nurture
What is social constructionism?
Characteristics typically thought to be absolute & biological (e.g. gender, race, class, ability, and sexuality) are products of human interpretation shaped by culture and history
Determining gender based on biology
- Unchangeable
- Innate fact
- Categorizations sorted by biological determinants
Determining gender based on identity
- Identity claim: present info
- Interpretation of info presented
- Categorized as gender
- Categorizations as agreed upon (through interaction
What is sex?
A term that denotes the presence of physical or physiological differences between males and females.
What is gender?
A term that refers to social or cultural distinctions of behaviours that are considered male or female.
- men = masculinities
- female = femininities
- gender is separate from sex, not biological, it is a matter of social construction/convention
What is gender identity?
- An individual’s sense of being either masculine or feminine or non-binary
- refers to a persons internal, deeply held sense of their gender
What is gender role?
Society’s concept of how men and women should behave.
What is doing gender?
When people perform tasks based upon the gender assigned to them by society.
What is socialization?
The process through which we come to understand social norms, expectations, beliefs, and values.
What is symbolic interactionism?
- Act toward things based on the meanings that things have;
- Meanings derived from social interaction; and
- These meanings are dependent on, and modified by, an interpretive process of the people who interact with one another
4 main agents of socialization
- Family
- Peers
- School
- Media
Other agents of socialization
- Religion
- Gov’t
- Work
- Ethnicity
- Culture
More female oriented jobs
- teacher
- speech-language pathologist
- secretaries
- dental hygienists
- nurse
- food servers (waitress)
More male oriented jobs
- lawyer
- dentist
- computer software engineers
- electricians
- carpenters
Gender Pay gap
This “gender pay gap” exists the most at the high end of pay for top jobs.
Gender pay gap still exists, but now is not due to women having less education than men, as women are more likely to pursue secondary education.
We socialize and raise women to not reach for “risk” because they are the caretakers for our children, so they are less likely to reach for these “top jobs” and ask for promotions etc.
Violence against women
- not only a women’s issue, it is a mans issue, otherwise men tend to ignore it
- must recognize that the dominant group (men) is involved, and this issue does not solely revolve around women
- structure is set up to blame the victim, asking questions about women such as where was she, what was she wearing etc, but we should be asking why is the man assaulting the woman?
- men need to speak up about it because women’s voice aren’t always heard, standing with women rather than against them (its not a battle of the sexes)
- its not only women who are affected by this violence, young boys are traumatized by assault or their mothers assaults
- women and men are both victims to mens violence
What is dominant gender schema?
An ideological framework that states that there are only two possible sexes, male and female, and two possible genders, masculine and feminine.
What is sexual orientation?
- who you are sexually attracted to
- heterosexual = attracted to people of the other gender (most common)
- homosexual = attracted to same gender
- bisexual / pansexual = attracted to both genders
- asexual = don’t experience sexual attraction at all
- varies person to person and society to society
Sexuality - symbolic interactionism perspective
- sexuality is socially constructed
- physically identical acts can have radically different social and subjective meanings
- sexual scripts = cultural prescriptions that dictate the when, where, how, and with-whom of sex, and what that sex means when it happens
