Sociology - Sex and Gender

How do Schools play a primary source of socialization and greatly impact gender role socialization.

Teachers treat boys and girls differently. This may teach children that there are different expectations of them, based on their sex.

How do Peer Groups play a primary source of socialization and greatly impact gender role socialization.

Teens are rewarded by peers when they conform to gender norms and stigmatized when they do not.

Feminist theorists + gender and society

Apply assumptions about gender inequalities to social institutions to illuminate how gender inequality affects all areas of social life.

How do Families play a primary source of socialization and greatly impact gender role socialization.

Babies and children learn behaviors and meanings through social interaction and internalize the expectations of those around them.

Why are women more likely than men to end up in poverty?

Due in part to the gendered gap in wages, the higher proportion of single mothers compared to single fathers, and the increasing cost of child care.

Interactionists + gender and society

Emphasize how the concept of gender is socially constructed, maintained, and reproduced in our everyday lives

Gender role socialization uses four main agents to teach people the definition of being masculine or feminine.

Families, schools, peers, and the media.

Sexism, gender inequality, and homophobia can be found in what timeline?

In both past and present societies.

Queer theorists

It emphasizes the importance of difference and rejects ideas of innate identities or restrictive categories of gender and sexual identity

Homophobia

It is is a fear of or discrimination toward homosexuals or toward individuals who display purportedly gender-inappropriate behavior.

Feminism

It is the belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes and the social movements organized around that belief.

Gender role socialization

It is the lifelong process of learning to be masculine or feminine

How does Media play a primary source of socialization and greatly impact gender role socialization.

It portrays that sex-role behavior is portrayed in a highly stereotypical manner in all forms of the media: television, movies, magazines, books, video games, and so on.

Sex

It refers to an individual's membership in one of two biologically distinct categories - male or female.

Gender Identity

It refers to an individual's self definition or sense of gender, while gender expression refers to an individual's behavioral manifestations of gender.

Feminization of poverty

It refers to the economic trend that women are more likely than men to live in poverty.

Gender

It refers to the physical, behavioral, and personality traits that a group considers normal for its male and female members.

Sexual orientation

The inclination to be heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. Those who are asexual may simply reject any sexual identity at all

Sex, gender, and sexuality are what to our society?

They are all the bases of hierarchies of inequality in our society.

Conflict theorists + gender and society

They believe men have historically had access to most of society's material resources and privileges. Therefore, it is in their interest to try to maintain their dominant position.

Functionalists + gender and society

They believe that there are social roles better suited to one gender than the other, and that societies are more stable when certain tasks are done by the appropriate sex.

Essentialists see gender biological/genetic or a social identity?

They see gender as biological or genetic.

Male liberationism originated in the 1970s to discuss the challenges of masculinity

To discuss the challenges of masculinity

According to Talcott Parsons: women are more suited for what role?

an expressive role (the person who provides the family's emotional support and nurturing).

According to Talcott Parsons, men are more suited for what role?

an instrumental role (the person who provides the family's material support and is often an authority figure).

Male liberationism splits into two movements

men's rights movement and the pro-feminist men's movement

Essentialists believe Gender to be what?

• a simple, two-category (binary) system • determined by your chromosomes, hormones, and genitalia • permanent and unchanging

Constructionist approach

An approach social scientists use to see sex, gender, and sexuality as social constructs

Women are disadvantaged in institutional settings in our society. List these:

- do a disproportionate amount of housework. - earn less than their male peers at work. - live in poverty

The three waves of women's movement in the US

1st wave: mid-19thC through 1920; focused on gaining suffrage for women 2nd wave: 1960s-1970s; focused on women's equal access to employment and education 3rd wave: 1980s-present; focused on diversity among women's experiences and identities