5 Gender and Sexuality
Sean Ashley
One of the first questions that was likely asked about you, before you drew your first breath, was whether you were a boy or a girl. Before you had a name or face, you were likely assigned a gender. In the 21st century, gender reveal parties became popular in North America and Europe, with sometimes disastrous results, such as starting forest fires as expectant parents ignite explosives to create blue or pink smoke (Snowden, 2021). But even before the gender reveal craze, parents were eager to know the sex of their child. Cultures the world over pass on folk wisdom regarding if a yet-to-be born person is male or female – such as whether the baby is resting high or low in the stomach, or more complex methods like the Chinese Birth Chart. More modern methods, such as ultrasounds and genetic tests, allow even more precise techniques for establishing in advance whether a baby is a boy or a girl.
While such practices can be fun, sociologically what is being uncovered is not the gender of a child but rather their sex. Sex refers to physiological differences between males and females, including both primary sex characteristics (the reproductive system) and genetic composition. Gender refers to identities, behaviours, and social positions that society attributes to being a man, woman, nonbinary, or any other forms of gender identification. The terms sex and gender are not synonymous.
The binary construction of gender (i.e., the idea that someone is either male or female) is culturally specific and not universal. Around the world and throughout time, societies have recognized and continue to differentiate third, fourth, and even fifth gender categories. For example, members of the Hijra community in India present as neither male nor female. Hijras live in communal houses comprised of people who were born male but who now present more as female. While this may look similar to being a transgender woman in Europe or China, it represents something different from those who would identify primarily as a woman. Both hijras and transgender women exist within Indian society, with hjiras representing a third gender, one recognized by cultural tradition and, since 2014, by law, as people who wish to identify outside the gender binary can choose to have an X written on official documents, instead of M or F (“India recognizes third transgender”, 2014). The neighbouring countries of Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan also legally recognize the existence of a third gender. Similarly, in Canada, people who identify as nonbinary can choose to have an X represent their sex or gender on their identification cards and passports (Burza, 2019).
Gender Identity
Gender identity is a person’s deeply held internal perception of their own gender. While gender roles are often prescribed by the societies we live in, most allow for some level of flexibility when it comes to acting out gender roles. Men can assume some feminine roles and women can assume some masculine roles without interfering with their gender identity. Gender identity can also change over the course of a person’s life, either at designated points of maturity (as is the case in traditional Navaho society, where movement into third and fourth gender identities are marked during special rites of passage) or through a highly personalized experience (as is commonly the case for people who transition genders in North America today). For transgender people, the sex assigned at birth and their gender identity are not necessarily the same. A transgender woman is a person who was assigned male at birth but who identifies and/or lives as a woman; a transgender man was assigned female at birth but lives as a man. The term “transgender” does not indicate sexual orientation or a particular gender expression, and we should avoid making assumptions about people’s sexual orientation based on knowledge about their gender identity (GLAAD 2021).
Those who identify with the sex they were assigned at birth are often referred to as cisgender, utilizing the Latin prefix “cis,” which means “on the same side.” (The prefix “trans” means “across.”) Because they are in the majority, many cisgender people do not self-identify as such. This is in itself a form of privilege. As with transgender people, the term or usage of cisgender does not indicate a person’s sexual orientation. And as many societies are heteronormative– that is they take heterosexuality to be the default norm–societies are also cisnormative, which is the assumption or expectation that everyone is cisgender, and that anything other than cisgender is not normal.
Transgender people come to be aware that their gender identity does not align with their sex at different ages. Even if someone does not have a full (or even partial) understanding of gender terminology and its implications, they can still develop an awareness that their gender assigned at birth does not align with their gender identity. Many people feel that children are too young to understand their feelings, and that they may “grow out of it.” Yet children do have strong feelings about their gender identities and experience real suffering when their identities are denied (Travers, 2018). Some children, like many transgender people, may feel pressure to conform to social norms, which may lead them to suppress or hide their identity.
Nonbinary people reject the idea of the gender binary altogether and do not identify as either a man or woman. Darwin (2020) found that there was some ambivalence among nonbinary people regarding whether to identify as transgender or not. She found that those people who do not identify as transgender either do not consider themselves to be “trans enough” or consider their gender experience to be distinct from the transgender experience. Nonbinary people who do identify as transgender do so with the understanding of that “transgender” operates as an umbrella term for all gender variance, but can also feel as though they are not-trans-enough. The range of responses Darwin found in her interviews illuminates the diverse gender identities that coexist among nonbinary people. Research on the sociology of gender must expand to reflect the reality of gender diversity
Gender Roles
The term gender role refers to society’s concept of how people are expected to look and how they should behave. These roles are based on norms created by society. As we grow, we learn how to behave from those around us. In this socialization process, children are taught what it means to be a man or a woman. In European societies, masculine roles are usually associated with strength, aggression, and dominance, while feminine roles are usually associated with passivity, nurturing, and subordination. In patriarchal societies, the traits that are associated with being male are generally elevated in prestige and rewarded more than those deemed feminine. This lopsided valuation supports gender inequality the world over.
You may have heard the phrase “boys will be boys.” It is often used to justify behaviour such as pushing, shoving, or other forms of aggression from young boys. The phrase implies that such behaviour is unchangeable and something that is part of a boy’s nature. Aggressive behaviour, when it does not inflict significant harm, is often accepted from boys and men because it is congruent with the cultural script for masculinity. This “script,” written by society, is in some ways like a script written by a playwright. Just as a playwright expects actors to adhere to a prescribed script, society expects women and men to behave according to the expectations of their respective gender roles. Scripts are generally learned through a process known as socialization, which teaches people to behave according to social norms.
Learning which scripts are associated with which genders start with socialization at birth. Recall that one of the first stages for a child developing their sense of self is to role play, which often involves taking on male and female roles. Children therefore begin to learn gender roles through play. Parents often shape this experience, supplying boys and girls with different types of toys. For example, boys may receive sports equipment or toy guns, which are active toys that promote motor skills and aggression. Girls are more often given nice clothing or dolls that role play and nurturing. Sometimes parents who encourage their children to play with gender non-specific toys are confused when their child still shows a preference for toys that align with their genders. It is important to remember however that parents are only one source for gender socialization, and that children receive messages early on from others about the gender expectations of their societies from other sources as well.
Attitudes about what toys are appropriate for which gender is typically based on stereotypes, which are oversimplified notions about members of a group. Gender stereotyping involves overgeneralizing about the attitudes, traits, or behaviour patterns of women or men. Gender stereotypes don’t just structure identity and play; they also contribute to the legitimation of sexism.
Sexism refers to prejudiced beliefs that value one sex over another. It varies in its level of severity. In parts of the world where women are strongly undervalued, young girls may not be given the same access to nutrition, healthcare, and education as boys. Further, they will grow up believing they deserve to be treated differently from boys (UNICEF 2011; Thorne 1993). While it is illegal in the United States when practiced as discrimination, unequal treatment of women continues to pervade social life. It should be noted that discrimination based on sex occurs at both the micro- and macro-levels. Many sociologists focus on discrimination that is built into the social structure; this type of discrimination is known as institutional discrimination (Pincus 2008).
Gender socialization occurs through four major agents of socialization: family, education, peer groups, and mass media. Each agent reinforces gender roles by creating and maintaining normative expectations for gender-specific behaviour. Exposure also occurs through secondary agents such as religion and the workplace. Repeated exposure to these agents over time leads men and women into a false sense that they are acting naturally rather than following a socially constructed role.
Family is the first agent of socialization. There is considerable evidence that parents socialize sons and daughters differently. Generally speaking, girls are given more latitude to step outside of their prescribed gender role (Coltrane and Adams 2004; Kimmel 2000; Raffaelli and Ontai 2004). However, differential socialization typically results in greater privileges afforded to sons. For instance, boys are allowed more autonomy and independence at an earlier age than daughters. They may be given fewer restrictions on appropriate clothing, dating habits, or curfew. Sons are also often free from performing domestic duties such as cleaning or cooking and other household tasks that are considered feminine. Daughters are limited by their expectation to be passive and nurturing, generally obedient, and to assume many of the domestic responsibilities.
Even when parents set gender equality as a goal, there may be underlying indications of inequality. For example, boys may be asked to take out the garbage or perform other tasks that require strength or toughness, while girls may be asked to fold laundry or perform duties that require neatness and care. It has been found that fathers are firmer in their expectations for gender conformity then are mothers, and their expectations are stronger for sons than they are for daughters (Kimmel 2000). This is true in many types of activities, including preference for toys, play styles, discipline, chores, and personal achievements. As a result, boys tend to be particularly attuned to their father’s disapproval when engaging in an activity that might be considered feminine, like dancing or singing (Coltrane and Adams 2008).
The reinforcement of gender roles and stereotypes continues once a child reaches school age. Until very recently, schools were rather explicit in their efforts to stratify boys and girls. The first step toward stratification was segregation. Girls were encouraged to take home economics or humanities courses and boys to take math and science. Studies suggest that gender socialization still occurs in schools today, though perhaps in less obvious forms (Lips 2004). Teachers may not even realize they are acting in ways that reproduce gender differentiated behaviour patterns. Yet any time they ask students to arrange their seats or line up according to gender, teachers may be asserting that boys and girls should be treated differently (Thorne 1993).
Even in levels as low as kindergarten, schools subtly convey messages to girls indicating that they are less intelligent or less important than boys. For example, in a study of teacher responses to male and female students, data indicated that teachers praised male students far more than female students. Teachers interrupted girls more often and gave boys more opportunities to expand on their ideas (Sadker and Sadker 1994). Further, in social as well as academic situations, teachers have traditionally treated boys and girls in opposite ways, reinforcing a sense of competition rather than collaboration (Thorne 1993). Boys are also permitted a greater degree of freedom to break rules or commit minor acts of deviance, whereas girls are expected to follow rules carefully and adopt an obedient role (Ready 2001).
Mimicking the actions of significant others is the first step in the development of a separate sense of self (Mead 2015). Like adults, children become agents who actively facilitate and apply normative gender expectations to those around them. When children do not conform to the appropriate gender role, they may face negative sanctions such as being criticized or marginalized by their peers. Though many of these sanctions are informal, they can be quite severe. Boys, especially, are subject to intense ridicule for gender nonconformity, which often takes the form of homophobic remarks and harassment (Pascoe, 2011).
Mass media serves as another significant agent of gender socialization. In television and movies, women tend to have less significant roles and are often portrayed as wives or mothers. When women are given a lead role, it often falls into one of two extremes: a wholesome, saint-like figure or a malevolent, hypersexual figure (Etaugh and Bridges 2003). This same inequality is pervasive in children’s movies. Research indicates that in the ten top-grossing G-rated movies released between 1991 and 2013, nine out of ten characters were male (Smith 2008). Do you think this is still the case? Or have children’s stories today become more inclusive?
Television commercials and other forms of advertising also reinforce inequality and gender-based stereotypes. Women are almost exclusively present in ads promoting cooking, cleaning, or childcare-related products (Davis 1993). Think about the last time you saw a man star in a dishwasher or laundry detergent commercial. In general, women are underrepresented in roles that involve leadership, intelligence, or a balanced psyche. Of particular concern is the depiction of women in ways that are dehumanizing, especially in music videos and video games. Even in mainstream advertising, however, themes intermingling violence and sexuality are quite common (Kilbourne 2000).
Gender and Inequality
The drive to adhere to masculine and feminine gender roles continues into later life, and results in a gendered division of labour. There is nothing about engineering that requires that it should be a male dominated occupation, but children learn which job is gender appropriate through mass media, peers, and the hidden curriculum. Men therefore come to outnumber women in higher professions such as engineering, policing, and politics, while women tend to outnumber men in the (lower paying) care-related occupations such as childcare, healthcare (even though the term “doctor” still conjures the image of a man), and social work.
While some people believe that all women need to do is to choose jobs in higher paying fields, this may not be enough to reduce the pay gap. It may surprise you to learn that historically wages decline in fields when women begin to become predominant and rise as more men enter the field (Levanson, England and Allison, 2009). For example, between 1950 to 2000, the field of recreation (which includes working in parks and leading camps) in the United States went from predominantly male to predominantly female. Over this period, median hourly wages in the field dropped 57% (accounting for inflation). The same thing happened when larger numbers of women became designers (wages fell by 34%) and biologists (where they dropped 18%). The reverse was true when men became dominant in a field. Computer programming was once seen as menial labour and a field dominated by women, who were seen as better suited for the work. When male programmers began to outnumber female programmers, pay rose and the field became more prestigious (Miller, 2016). Today, young women are often encouraged to go into computer programming if they would like to make more money, though sociology tells us that women’s individual choices may not be the root of the problem.
When women do enter male-dominated fields they often encounter a glass ceiling, which is an invisible barrier that blocks them from receiving promotions to the highest levels. For example, in 2021, only 23 of the world’s largest 500 businesses were run by women, or 4.6%. While this sounds low, it was actually a record, with 9 more women than in 2019 (Hincliffe, 2021). In part, this was a latent effect of the global pandemic, as women are more likely to be elevated to positions of leadership in times of crisis. While in some ways this can be seen as a positive effect of troubled times, women are also taking on a higher risk of failure and more likely to not succeed than if they entered the position in times of a stability, a phenomenon known as the glass cliff (Bruckmuller and Branscombe, 2010).
The pay gap between men and women exists in every country. In Canada in 2018, women on average earned 87% per hour compared to what men made on average (Statistics Canada, 2019). This is due in part to occupational distribution (with men overrepresented in higher paying fields), and the fact women are overrepresented in part-time work. However, Statistics Canada (the national statistics agency of Canada) found that two thirds of the gap remain “unexplained” even after one takes into account the different types of work, suggesting that gender discrimination in the workplace is still at play. In Vietnam, women make even less relative to men, bringing home 70% of what men make on average, with a similar “unexplained” gap observed when one accounts for different types of occupations (United Nations, 2021).
One reason for the persistence of the gender wage gap pertains to different gendered expectations around who should care for children and perform household tasks such as cleaning and cooking. Women are often seen as mothers first and suffer a penalty in the workplace when there is conflict between their role as mother and their role as employee. Generally, men do not share this difficulty, since the assumed role of a men as fathers does not seem to conflict with their perceived work role. Men who are fathers (or who are expected to become fathers) do not face the same barriers to employment or promotion (González 2019). This is sometimes referred to as the “motherhood penalty” versus the “fatherhood premium,” and is prevalent in many higher income countries (Bygren et. al., 2017). Men’s pay typically increases as they become parents, while the earnings of women decrease.
In many parts of the world, women are also expected to complete a second shift of work at home after leaving their workplace, while men are given more permission within the dominant gender ideology to relax after a hard day at the office or factory. This second shift is required even if a woman has also had a hard day at the office or factory. For socialist critics such as Friedrich Engels (1884), this expectation of free labour represents the double exploitation of women under capitalism, as they are expected to work hard to increase profits for their employer (receiving on average less than male workers) before returning home to raise the next generation of workers, receiving no pay whatsoever for their domestic labour.
Sexuality
Sexuality refers to a person’s capacity for sexual feelings and their emotional and sexual attraction to other people. Sexuality or sexual orientation is typically divided into four categories: heterosexuality, the attraction to individuals of the opposite sex; homosexuality, the attraction to individuals of one’s own sex; bisexuality, the attraction to individuals of either sex; and asexuality, no attraction to either sex. Heterosexual and homosexual people may also be referred to informally as “straight” and “gay,” respectively. North America is a heteronormative society, meaning it supports heterosexuality as the norm, referred to as heteronormativity. A good example of heteronormativity is that homosexual people are often asked, “When did you know you were gay?” but heterosexual people are rarely asked, “When did you know that you were straight?” (Ryle, 2011).
As with gender, sexuality is often viewed in terms of a binary, yet there is exists a great deal of variety, as can be seen in the acronym LGBTQI+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, plus others). In North America, it is also common to recognize two-spirit (2S) people within the acronym (2SLGBTQI+), as the term is used within some Indigenous communities to describe their sexual, gender and/or spiritual identities.
Sexuality has long been recognized by the scientific community as something more fluid than the cultural binaries typically suggest. In the 1940s, pioneer sexologist Alfred Kinsey (1948) argued that we should view sexuality as a continuum rather than a strict dichotomy of gay or straight. To classify this continuum of heterosexuality and homosexuality, Kinsey created a six-point scale that ranges from exclusively heterosexual to exclusively homosexual. While his model is itself somewhat limiting today, it highlighted the fact that when looked at in terms of behaviour rather than identity, sexuality is more fluid than binary cultural constructions would have us believe.
The Kinsey scale
There is no scientific consensus on what leads a person to have a particular sexual orientation, and sociology in general is less interested in the cause of sexual preference than the social consequences of categorization. While same-sex desires have existed throughout time, the identities that present themselves to us as possibilities are always culturally specific. In fact, Michel Foucault (1980) explains that thinking of people as being homosexual or heterosexual in Europe only emerged during the 19th century. Before that, people still had same-sex and opposite-sex relations, but people were not seen as a different type of person for doing so. Rather, they were seen as engaged in an (perhaps culturally defined immoral) act, but they were not a distinct type of person, as they became in the 19th century with the rise of psychiatry and other related medical fields. Out of these fields comes our current understanding that someone is either a homosexual or a heterosexual (and later bisexual).
Homosexuality as a category emerged as a problem within the medical fields, something psychiatrists and psychologists viewed as abnormal at the time. Indeed, the American Psychological considered homosexuality as a mental illness until 1973, while in China homosexuality did not cease to be classified as a mental disorder until 2001. The prejudice against homosexuality continues today and is legitimated by law. In 2021, only 29 countries the world over recognized same-sex marriages, while 69 countries continue to criminalize homosexuality (“Homosexuality,” 2021).
Homophobia (antipathy and discrimination towards homosexual people) and transphobia (antipathy towards transgender people) remain pressing social problems the world over. In Britain, hate crimes related to sexual orientation have increased every year since 2011, from 4,345 reported crimes in 2011 to 14,491 in 2019. Attacks on transgender persons also rose dramatically during this time, from 313 in 2011 to 2,333 in 2019 (Home Office, 2019). Brazil has also seen a dramatic rise in attacks on its LGBT population. In 2018, there were 429 violent deaths among LGBT people, the equivalent of 1 murder every 20 hours (Mendes and Silva, 2020).
Across the world there are rising levels of violence towards LBGT people, with particularly sharp rises for transgender people. The flexible substitutability of gender and sexual identities in these attacks indicates that they are as much about policing the boundaries of gender as they are about enforcing heteronormative sexuality. They are part of a general culture of hegemonic masculinity, which elevates particular forms of masculinity (that of the aggressive, violent, cisgender heterosexual) over other competing forms of masculinity, such as those embodied by transgender and gay men (Connell, 2005).
Theoretical Paradigms
Structural Functionalism
Structural functionalism provided one of the most important perspectives of sociological research in the 20th century and has been a major influence on research in the social sciences, including gender studies. Viewing the family as the most integral component of society, assumptions about gender roles within marriage assume a prominent place in this perspective.
Functionalists argue that gender roles were established well before the preindustrial era when men typically took care of responsibilities outside of the home, such as hunting, and women typically took care of the domestic responsibilities in or around the home. These roles were considered functional because women were often limited by the physical restraints of pregnancy and nursing, and unable to leave the home for long periods of time. Once established, these roles were passed on to subsequent generations since they served as an effective means of keeping the family system functioning properly.
While structural functionalists tend to highlight the complimentary nature of these roles, tensions can nevertheless emerge. Talcott Parsons (1943) argued that the contradiction between occupational roles and kinship roles of men and women in North America created tension or strain on individuals as they tried to adapt to the conflicting norms or requirements. The division of traditional middle-class gender roles within the family — the husband as breadwinner and wife as homemaker — was functional for him because the roles were complementary. They enabled a clear division of labour between spouses, which ensured that the ongoing functional needs of the family were being met. Within the North American kinship system, wives’ and husbands’ roles were equally valued according to Parsons. However, within the occupational system, only the husband’s role as breadwinner was valued. There was an “asymmetrical relation of the marriage pair to the occupational structure” (Parsons, 1943, p. 191). Being barred from the occupational system meant that women had to find a functional equivalent to their husbands’ occupational status to demonstrate their equality to their husbands. As a result, Parson theorized that these tensions would lead women to become expressive specialists in order to claim prestige (e.g., showing “good taste” in appearance, household furnishings, literature, and music), while men would remain instrumental or technical specialists and become culturally narrow. He also proposed that the instability of women’s roles in this system would lead to excesses like neurosis, compulsive domesticity, garishness in taste, disproportionate attachment to community or club activities, and the “glamour girl” pattern: “the use of specifically feminine devices as an instrument of compulsive search for power and exclusive attention” (Parsons, 1943, p. 194).
Symbolic Interactionism
Symbolic interactionism aims to understand human behaviour by analyzing the critical role of symbols in human interaction. Symbolic interactionists often study how gender is portrayed in movies or advertisements, as these cultural artifacts hold up representations of gender that are at times exaggerated or hyper-real, but which both reflect and shape a society’s expectations around gender roles and scripts (Goffman, 1979).
Symbolic interactionism typically sees gender as something we do rather than something that we are. When people perform tasks or express themselves in the gender role assigned to them, they are said to be doing gender. This notion is based on the work of Candace West and Don Zimmerman (1987). Whether we are expressing our masculinity or femininity, West and Zimmerman explain that we are always “doing gender.” Thus, gender is something we do or perform, not something we are.
Renowned feminist and queer theorist Judith Butler explains, “Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory framework that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being” (Butler, 1990, p. 33). This “congealing” creates a durability which, as Butler points out, is taken for “nature,” though is in fact the result of our socialization. Thinking about gender as in this fashion, however, does not mean that it is a choice, nor that it is easy to disrupt the inequalities that are written into the script. Nevertheless, because gender is a performance that relies on repetition (i.e., we perform our gender every day, moment after moment), it is possible to intervene and disrupt the recreation of gender, a fact that leads Butler to see subversion in practices such as drag shows which exaggerate and play with societies gendered expectations (Butler, 1990).
Conflict Theory
According to conflict theory, society is a struggle between social groups that compete for valued resources. When sociologists examine gender from this perspective, we can view men as the dominant group and women as the subordinate group, with men receiving more of the resources in a society (money, prestige, property, political power). According to conflict theory, social problems are created when dominant groups exploit or oppress subordinate groups.
Feminist theory is a type of conflict theory that examines inequalities in gender-related issues and has been highly influential in terms of understanding sexuality as well. It uses the conflict approach to examine the maintenance of gender roles and inequalities, though also focuses on the way gender is socially constructed.
Patriarchy is a key concept within feminist theory. Under patriarchy, men’s contributions are seen as more valuable than those of women. Patriarchy is the set of institutional structures (like property rights, access to positions of power, and relationship to sources of income) which are based on the belief that men and women are dichotomous and unequal categories. Patriarchal perspectives and arrangements are widespread and taken for granted. As a result, women’s viewpoints tend to be silenced or marginalized to the point of being discredited or considered invalid.
The idea of patriarchy as an overarching form of social organization was first formulated in the nineteenth century by the anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan in his book Ancient Society (1877). Morgan was interested in the evolution of human societies and traced a path from what he believed to be the promiscuous life of early human beings through to the monogamy practiced by civilized peoples, and the concomitant evolution from matriarchy through to patriarchy. Today we would recognize this view of social evolution as being ethnocentric, but Morgan’s book was hugely influential in his day, and was picked up by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who used his idea of patriarchy to elaborate upon the negative influences of private property on gender relations (Delap, 2020).
Understanding the link between gender and property in this way represented an important development, but it tended to suggest that the sexism was the product of capitalism, subsuming the struggle for gender equality to that of fighting capitalism. However, as anyone who lives in a socialist country today knows, gender inequality did not disappear after the revolution. Feminism today recognizes the importance of understanding gender in relation to property, but also highlights the fact that the construction of gender itself can contribute to the inequalities that exist under structures of patriarchy.
Feminism is a global movement, and its meaning depends somewhat on the particular context of its local struggles. For example, while Western feminists have sometimes been critical of Islamic veiling practices, Islamic feminism has long supported women’s rights and education amongst Muslims in the Middle East, South Asia, and across Southeast Asia. As feminist historian Lucy Delap notes, “To understand Muslim women in headscarves or veils as necessarily impelled by male subjection, as so many critics have done, ignores their own sense of choice and complex reasons for covering their heads” (Delap, 2021, p. 220).
Given the range of feminisms that weave together to form the global movement, perhaps it is best to follow bell hooks who defines feminism simply as the “struggle to end sexist oppression” (hooks 2015, 26). As hooks clarifies, the aim of feminism is not to benefit women over men; feminism is about liberation for both genders. Men as well as women experience the damaging effects of living in a patriarchal society, even though men enjoy the unearned privileges that come from being male in an androcentric world. Feminist sociology pays attention to the way masculinity is constructed, and the way that the socialization of men to not express emotions, engage in violent behaviour, and be sexually aggressive towards women. This system is known as toxic masculinity as it has a negative effect on everyone (Pascoe, 2016).
Feminist sociology shares a commitment to ending sexist oppression. Feminism informs a wide range of research, from studies of consumer culture (Martens, 2009) to research on domestic homicide (Whynacht, 2021). Feminist scholars today often take an intersectional approach to studying gender, which recognizes that structures of oppression often intersect in the lives of individuals, so that a Black working-class woman living in New York does not experience sexism in the same way that a Chinese upper-class woman living in Beijing would. Intersectional feminism teaches that we cannot separate the effects of race, class, gender, ability and other attributes. Patricia Collins (2000) refers to the way these intersecting identities heightens inequality as the matrix of domination. The intersecting nature of inequality is important to keep in mind as we turn to examine the dynamics race, ethnicity, and social class play in society today.
Conclusion
In this chapter we considered gender and sexuality from a sociological perspective. These topics have become hot-button political issues in North America today, and parents and young people find that very personal questions of identification have suddenly become the focus of vitriolic culture wars. Sociology can help us tease apart the assumptions and frameworks that people are using to make sense of gender, and provide insights into both the possibilities and constraints that exist for gender expression as we move forward together a global community.
Study Question
- What distinguishes a functionalist from a conflict theories of gender roles?
- Why do sociologists find it important to differentiate between sex and gender? Why do you think this differentiation has become so polarizing in contemporary society?
- How does the way homosexuality was constructed in the 19th century relate to homophobia today?
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A term that refers to social or cultural distinctions of behaviors that are considered male or female.
A term that denotes the presence of physical or physiological differences between males and females.
An adjective that describes individuals who identify with the behaviors and characteristics that are other than their biological sex.
A person’s deeply held internal perception of one's gender.
A term that refers to individuals whose gender identity matches the gender and sex they were assigned at birth.
Society’s concept of how men and women should behave.
The prejudiced belief that one sex should be valued over another.
The process wherein people come to understand societal norms and expectations, to accept society’s beliefs, and to be aware of societal values.
The informal teaching done in schools that socializes children to societal norms.
The difference in earnings between men and women.
An invisible barrier that women encounter when trying to win jobs in the highest level of business.
Where women are likelier to be promoted in chaotic times, and therefore more likely to fail at the role.
An ideology and a set of institutional practices that privilege straight people and heterosexuality over other sexual orientations.
People born with sex characteristics (including genitals, gonads and chromosome patterns) that do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies.
An aversion to gay, lesbian, bisexual, or all LGBTQ people, which often manifests as prejudice and bias.
Society’s concept of how men and women should behave.
The performance of tasks based upon the gender assigned to us by society and, in turn, ourselves.
Institutions of male power in society.