The social construction of gender

Question 1

What is a social constructionist perspective?

Answer 1

• definitions of masculinity and femininity vary from culture to culture
• definitions of masculinity and femininity vary in any one culture over historical time
• gender definitions vary over the course of a person’s life
• masculinity and femininity will vary within any one culture at any one time, by race, class, ethnicity, age, sexuality, education, region of the country
• social constructionism offers an analysis of difference, power and the institutional dimensions of gender

Question 2

What is one thing to note about power?

Answer 2

• one of the central themes of this course is that gender is about difference as well as about inequality
• at the level of gender relations, gender is about the power that men as a group have over women as a group. some men have over other men and women have over other women
• it is impossible to explain gender without adequately addressing power - not because power is the consequence of gender difference, but rather that power is what produces those gender differences in the first place
• all theories of gender must explain both gender and domination. whereas other theories explain male domination as the result of sex differences. social constructionism explains differences as the result of domination

Question 3

what is the crucial dimensions to the study of gender that was missing from West and Zimmerman’s article

Answer 3

• power
• the life course perspective
• a macro-level institutional analysis
• a micro-level interactional analysis

Question 4

how is gender a social construction?

Answer 4

• social construction is a process by which we make reality meaningful through shared interpretation
• the differences between females and males are not based in some biologically determined truth
• social construction refers simply to the social forces that shape differences
• it refers to the social practice of perceiving and defining aspects of people and situations inconsistently to force our observations to fit our social beliefs
• Not written in stone but these understanding change over time and can be formed in subgroups within societies, nature of how we come to these understanding of how the world works

Question 5

what role does biology play in the social construction of gender?

Answer 5

• This is not similar to the nature vs. nurture debate
• Social constructionist take this seriously and understand different bodies show characteristics differently and this can impact peoples lives differently
• Impact who we are, what we are and how we interact with our environment
• Biology is taken seriously but it is not the only factor in determining our gender identity

Question 6

What is the role of biology?

Answer 6

• biology is an important component of the social construction of gender
• we first conceive of a world of women and men and then look for the biological support
• cultural beliefs about gender/sex differences inform our scientific and social scientific research on gender and maximize the finding of difference
• the social construction of gender gives meaning to biological facts

Question 7

what role does socialization play in the social construction of gender?

Answer 7

• socialization is the process of learning the rules of the social group or culture to which we belong or hope to belong and learning to define ourselves and others within that setting
• most norms specify a range of acceptable behaviours, rather than one narrowly defined possibility
• through socialization we often internalize or accept as correct, the rules and definitions of the socializing group

Question 8

What is the injection model of socialization?

Answer 8

• an injection model of socialization in which genderless children are ‘dosed’ with a gender role in their childhood, never to fully recover, is wrong

why this model is bad
- first it suggests that socialization is somehow finished by the time we are adults
- second, it leaves no room for the possibility that we actively consider and resist gender rules
- third because the model fails to give people credit for actively resisting and changing gender rules, the injection model can’t explain cultural change

Question 9

What is the learning model of socialization?

Answer 9

• sociologists prefer a learning model of socialization that suggests that socialization is a lifelong process of learning and re-learning gender expectations as well as how to negotiate them

Question 10

What is an interactional view of biological and social factors?

Answer 10

• loopback interchange of bodily, behavioural, environmental, interactive and social structural factors
• pathways between biological and social are reciprocal
• nature vs. nurture ignores complexities underlying behaviours when in reality the two work in an interactive fashion
• there is no simple or single answer to the question of how human beings differ biologically or how women and men differ behaviorally

Question 11

What are some social structures?

Answer 11

• sociologists see social structures as recurring patterns of behaviour and interaction that are:
• constraining
• pervasive
• enduring
• invisible
• render social life predictable, orderly and familiar

Question 12

what is gender according to Peiss

Answer 12

• gender: is defined by socially constructed relationships between women and men, among women and among men in social groups
• gender is not a rigid or reified analytic category imposed human experience but a fluid one whose meaning emerges in specific social contexts as it is created and recreated through human actions
• analysis of gender relations necessarily goes beyond comparisons of the status and power of the sexes involving examination of the dynamic, reciprocal and interdependent interactions between and among women and men

Question 13

what are three components of reconceptualizing gender relations?

Answer 13

• boundaries
• negotiation (domination)
• consciousness

Question 14

what are the three components of consciousness?

Answer 14

• gender awareness
• female or male consciousness
• feminist or antifeminist/masculinist

Question 15

What did ridgeway and correll have to say about gender?

Answer 15

• gender is an institutionalized system of social practices for constituting people as two significantly different categories, men and women and organizing social relations of inequality on the basis of that difference
• gender is effectively salient, that is sufficiently salient for gender beliefs to measurably affect behaviour and evaluations in at least two types of social relations contexts
  1) gender becomes effectively salient in contexts where real and implied actors differ in sex category
  2) gender also becomes effectively salient in contexts that are gender typed in that the stereotypic traits and abilities of one gender or the other are culturally linked to the activities that are central to the context

Question 16

what is hegemony?

Answer 16

• refers to a historical process in which the dominant group exercises ‘moral and intellectual leadership’ throughout society by winning the ‘consent’ from people

Question 17

what is post-feminism?

Answer 17

• means the simultaneous incorporation, revision and depoliticization of many of the central goals of second wave feminism
  assumes the pastness of feminism constructing feminism as irrelevant to girl’s lives because the battle for gender equality has been won

Question 18

what is neoliberalism?

Answer 18

• a political and economic philosophy which advocates for a steady withdrawal of government support and social services, increased privatization, and veneration of individualism as the highest human achievement

Question 19

what is tactical polyvalence?

Answer 19

• suggests that discourses are never stable
• instead, Foucault describes discourse as ‘discontinuous segments’ that take on multiple and various meanings, sometimes from one moment to the next
• as a result, there is a ‘multiplicity of discursive elements that can come into play in various strategies’ undermining the seamless veneer of dominant narratives