The dominant voice in sociology is white, heterosexual and male. This is certainly true of the “Classical” theorists and forefathers Georg Simmel and Max Weber. Over the years Sociology has recognized different voices in the tradition, opening the doors for feminist theory and theorists such as Candace West, Don H. Zimmerman, Judith Butler, Patricia Hill Collins, Dorothy E. Smith, and Raewyn Connell. These sociologists attempt to offer a different standpoint from the dominant one, a standpoint that can find some of its roots in the works of the sociological forefathers.
West and Zimmerman’s Doing Gender was a seminal sociological work. The authors asserted, “the essential male and female natures are an achieved status of objective fact, they provide the rationale for the differing fates of women and men” (Kivisto 2011: 319). Max Weber’s views on status compliment this idea. Weber states “a status group can exist only to the extent that others accord its member prestige or degrading, which removes them from the rest of social actors and establishes the necessary social distance” (Coser 1977: 229). West and Zimmerman go on to discuss the difference between sex, sex category, and gender. They also concentrate on gender, submitting that instead of an essential part of our nature it is an act we portray daily (Kivisto 2011).
West and Zimmerman take on gender was revolutionary but at its very foundation is the idea of status in American society. Generally, gender difference has been used to subjugate the female sex category. Georg Simmel also dealt with status in his essay on Fashion. He discussed the lower class acquiring material items to mimic higher classes. Similarly, West and Zimmerman discussed gender displays a...
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...2011). Many jobs that are considered masculine make more money, such as businessman and pro football players. While teachers, nurses, and cleaning ladies traditionally female positions barely make a enough to survive. It says a lot about what gender we value in society.
Arguing for a living wage from a feminist stand point, would highlight the contradictory act of teaching one thing and practicing another. The feminist perspective might point out that feminine and masculine are social constructions. This ideal would equalize the sex category female and male (Kivisto 2011). Making “female” activities as valuable as male activities. They would accept knowledge from all groups. Use a variety of standpoints to make decisions about wages (Kivisto 2011). Try to dismantle the gendered hierarchal structure of the university and disavow “masculine” and “Feminine”.
Gould explains that a life without the pressure of gender norms essentially frees a person to develop and mature with a lack of limitations. It is suggested that the idea that an individual’s sex should not matter until one might decide how they want to portray themselves. She recognizes that people may not understand or accept this life choice, but if one can live ignoring constant ridicule and criticism brought on by a society who value gender norms, they will ultimately be more well-rounded in all aspects of their life. (Gould, 1972) Richardson does not necessarily oppose Gould’s view, but rather focuses on how women specifically are negatively influenced by gender stereotyping. It is brought up that “Linguistic practice perpetuates in men their feelings of dominance over and responsibility for women.” (Richardson, 1981) While females are seen in society as dependent, incompetent, immature objects who are defined in terms of their relation to men, males are autonomous, independent beings who are defined primarily to the world of work. (Richardson, 1981) In Richardson’s view, gender stereotyping not only perpetuates hate and sexism towards women but also forces men to behave a certain way in order to uphold the patriarchy. This idea is so engrained in modern society that it would be difficult to raise a child in the idealistic way Gould
Kendall, D. (2012). Sociology in Our Times, 9th Edition [VitalSource Bookshelf version]. Retrieved from http://online.vitalsource.com/books/9781285309682
In Devor’s article, “Becoming Members of Society: Learning the social Meanings of Gender” one can better understand how society has a big impact on how gender is perceived. Understanding
The article The Complex Causes of the Gender Pay Gap written by Barbara Wagner, she shows “Economic research on the gender pay gap has found many reasons for the differences in pay between men and women, including different career and education choices, differences in work experience, and, yes, discrimination. Both male and female managers are equally likely to demonstrate gender bias in hiring and pay” (Wagner, 2015).
In this article, Shaw and Lee describe how the action of labels on being “feminine” or “masculine” affect society. Shaw and Lee describe how gender is, “the social organization of sexual difference” (124). In biology gender is what sex a person is and in culture gender is how a person should act and portray themselves. They mention how gender is what we were taught to do in our daily lives from a young age so that it can become natural(Shaw, Lee 126). They speak on the process of gender socialization that teaches us how to act and think in accordance to what sex a person is. Shaw and Lee state that many people identify themselves as being transgendered, which involves a person, “resisting the social construction of gender into two distinct, categories, masculinity and femininity and working to break down these constraining and polarized categories” ( 129). They write about how in mainstream America masculinity and femininity are described with the masculine trait being the more dominant of the two. They define how this contributes to putting a higher value of one gender over the other gender called gender ranking (Shaw, Lee 137). They also speak about how in order for femininity to be viewed that other systems of inequality also need to be looked at first(Shaw,Lee 139).
In their publication, “Doing Gender, ” Candance West and Don H. Zimmerman put forward their theory of gender as an accomplishment; through, the daily social interactions of a man or woman which categorize them as either masculine or feminine. From a sociological perspective the hetero-normative categories of just sex as biological and gender as socially constructed, are blurred as a middle ground is embedded into these fundamental roots of nature or nurture.To further their ideology West and Zimmerman also draw upon an ethnomethodological case study of a transsexual person to show the embodiment of sex category and gender as learned behaviours which are socially constructed.Therefore, the focus of this essay will analyze three ideas: sex, sex
“The Social Construction of Gender” talks about gender as a concept created by society. In it, the author explains why society felt the need to create gender as a social institution and how gender is embedded into everyday life. The labeling of people as male or female is used by societies as a way of deciding who takes over which responsibilities and who does which tasks. The author of the article concludes that gender and gender inequality is created by society
The category of gender identity was not determined by one’s biological sex; rather gender is a social construct, which can be resisted through social and political struggle.(73)
Suggested roles of all types set the stage for how human beings perceive their life should be. Gender roles are one of the most dangerous roles that society faces today. With all of the controversy applied to male vs. female dominance in households, and in the workplace, there seems to be an argument either way. In the essay, “Men as Success Objects”, the author Warren Farrell explains this threat of society as a whole. Farrell explains the difference of men and women growing up and how they believe their role in society to be. He justifies that it doesn’t just appear in marriage, but in the earliest stages of life. Similarly, in the essay “Roles of Sexes”, real life applications are explored in two different novels. The synthesis between these two essays proves how prevalent roles are in even the smallest part of a concept and how it is relatively an inevitable subject.
Society has females and males alike typecasted into roles which have basic characteristics that are the reverse of each other. Although this has begun to change over the past thirty years, typically the man was seen as superior to the female. This superior image is one that today, is slowly on its way to being reduced to one of complete equality between the two genders.
As Lorber explores in her essay “Night to His Day”: The Social Construction of Gender, “most people find it hard to believe that gender is constantly created and re-created out of human interaction, out of social life, and is the texture and order of that social life” (Lorber 1). This article was very intriguing because I thought of my gender as my sex but they are not the same. Lorber has tried to prove that gender has a different meaning that what is usually perceived of through ordinary connotation. Gender is the “role” we are given, or the role we give to ourselves. Throughout the article it is obvious that we are to act appropriately according to the norms and society has power over us to make us conform. As a member of a gender an individual is pushed to conform to social expectations of his/her group.
Kendal, Diana. "Sex and Gender." Sociology in Our Times 3.Ed. Joanna Cotton. Scarborough: Nelson Thomson, 2004. 339-367
In addition, women are paid less than men for the same type of work. According to Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg mentions that women were paid fifty-nine cents for every dollar men were paid in 1996, but women protested to raise the compensation to seventy-seven cents (6). This means that even though a woman and a man perform the same work such as an engineer does, both do the same assignments and have the same responsibilities in the technology place, men are paid twenty three cents more than women. Moreover, women suffer from “gender discount” which means women have to pay for being part of the workplace or society ...
Gender stratification is the cuts across all aspects of social life and social classes. It refers to the inequality distribution of wealth, power and privilege between men and women at the basis of their sex. The world has been divided and organized by gender, which are the behavioural differences between men and women that are culturally learnt (Appelbaum & Chambliss, 1997:218). The society is in fact historically shaped by males and the issue regarding the fact has been publicly reverberating through society for decades and now is still a debatably hot topic. Men and women have different roles and these sex roles, defined to be the set of behaviour’s and characteristics that are standard for each gender in a society (Singleton, 1987) are deemed to be proper in the eyes of the society. They are as a matter of fact proper but as time move on, the mind-set of women changes as well, women also want to move on. However the institutional stratification by the society has become more insidious that the stereotypical roles have created a huge barrier between men and women. These barriers has affected women in many aspects such as minimizing their access on a more superior position in workforce organization, limits their ownership of property and discriminates them from receiving better attention and care.
Moreover, the net earnings of the women always happen to be lower than those of men. Women