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Introductory Sociology
Chapter 7
Gender
Learning Objectives
• Explore the meaning of the terms sex and gender and their societal relevance
• Learn how gender shapes how we look at and experience the social world
• Differentiate between the ways that conflict theory, feminism, functionalism,
and symbolic interactionism approach gender inequality
• Examine how gender intersects with experiences at home, at work, and at school
• Critically investigate how women are the victims of violence and the factors leading toward victimization

Introduction

• Defining Sex and Gender
• Gendering and Transgendering
• Theoretical Approaches to Gender Inequality
• Gender at Home, at Work, and at School
• Gender-Based Violence

Defining Sex and Gender
• Sex: the biological markers of males and females
• Gender: The social and cultural expectations associated with different categories (including but not limited to men and women), often associated with sex and the body, in terms of emotions, intellect, psychology, appearance, behaviours,preferences, and social roles and expectations.

• Gender inequality: differences that exist in education, income, and other opportunities based on a person’s gender or sexual orientation

• Binary: Anything separated into two distinct and clear-cut categories. Involving a
choice between.
• Gender identity: An inner sense of belonging to one, several, or no particular gender(s).
• Gender queer: A term that describes a person who identifies with many genders, with no gender at all, or with a mixture of different components of many genders. Some genderqueer folks many not identify with the gender binary at all, and others may prefer not to choose a gender with which to identify.

• Genderfluid: describes a person whose gender identity changes over time and contexts.

Two-Spirited (or 2S):
• Two-Spirited (or 2S): A person who identifies as having both a masculine and a feminine spirit. The word is used by Indigenous people to describe one or more of their sexual, gender, or spiritual identity.

Here Elder Ma-Nee Chacaby talks about Two Spirit Identity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juzpocOX5ik

Defining Sex and Gender, cont’d
• Gender roles: the behaviours, attitudes, and markers ascribed to men and
women by society
• Performativity: The idea that sex and gender are socially and culturally constructed and that we constantly repeat—or “perform”—the norms associated with our assigned gender identities in order to be understood as
“coherent” or “normal.”
• Performativity: “...Men and women adhere to rigid social roles and rules of
masculinity and femininity in order to gain acceptance into society” (p.361).
Dominant ideology and hegemony
• “Normalizing” gender roles.
• White-male heterosexual as the norm.
• Institutionalized: politics, worship, education, the “traditional” family etc.
• Hegemonic Masculinity:
• A social construction of gender that in the North American context traditionally
includes stereotypical behaviours and attitudes such as being strong, brave, and
rational.
• Hegemonic Femininity:
• A social construction of gender that in the North American context traditionally
includes stereotypical behaviours and attitudes such as being emotional, caring,
and nurturing.
Identity
• “Identity is to describe the way individuals and groups define them- selves and
are defined by others on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, language, and
culture” (Deng 1995, 1).
• Identity is “people’s concepts of who they are, of what sort of people they are,
and how they relate to others” (Hogg and Abrams 1988, 2).

• Nationality, Gender, Ethnicity, Race, Sexuality, Social Construction, Status, etc.
Intersectionality
• the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and
gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating
overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.
• Use in a sentence:
"through an awareness of intersectionality, we can better acknowledge and ground the
differences among us”
Oxford Dictionary
Kimberlè Crenshaw introduced intersectionality theory .
American lawyer, Black feminist scholar, civil right advocate, professor at the UCLA
School of Law and Columbia Law School.
It was introduced by scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 to understand the particular
oppression (as black and as women) faced by Afro-American women in the United
States
MICROAGRESSIONS: strategies FOR INTERVENTION
• “Microaggressions are more than just insults, insensitive comments, or
generalized behavior” (Vox, 2015).
• Indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a
marginalized group.
• They're something very specific: the kinds of remarks, questions, or actions that
are painful because they have to do with a person's membership in a group
that's discriminated against or subject to stereotypes (Vox, 2015).
“I’ve committed a microaggression”
what IS MIGROAGRESSION?
• Microaggressions = brief and commonplace verbal, behavioral, or environmental
indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate derogatory
or negative slights towards members of underrepresented groups (Sue, 2010).
• Can be ambiguous or seemingly innocuous
• Might be unintentional – causality is unimportant
• Impact is central
• Cumulative impact = critical
• MICROaggressions MACRO Impact
• SOME GET BITTEN “A LOT MORE” THAN OTHERS!

Policies, procedures, rituals or other types of patterns that may – even if unwittingly –
put some groups in marginalized roles – such as:
§ Assuming all students have access to and are proficient in the use of computers
and applications for academic work
§ Not seeing people of color in prominent positions (i.e., leadership)
§ The exclusion of relevant contributions (e.g., music or literature) representing
one’s racial group from areas such as film, libraries, or course curricula
§ More surveillance by university employees such as resident assistants and
campus police
§ Workplace -> Meetings scheduled at 8 am or at 5pm (i.e., may interfere with
childcare responsibilities).
§ A person can experience both privilege and marginalization
§ Wanda Sykes, Sam Smith & DeGeneres are members of many privileged groups.
§ Race & Gender – “You sure get angry easily”
§ Gender & Sexual orientation – “You’re too masculine to be gay”
§ Gender & Religion – “It’s so sad she has to wear a hijab”
What can “targets” do?
• GOAL -> Make the “invisible” visible.
• Name it and call it out
§ “You speak excellent English.”
§ “I hope so, I was born here.”
• Disarm the microaggression.
§ “She only got the job because she is...”
§ “I don’t agree with your view.”
• Educate the perpetrator.
§ “I don’t see color.”
§ “I know you didn’t realize it but you missed a part of myself that I am very
proud to represent.”
Seek external reinforcement.
§ “I don’t want ...taking care of me.”
§ Seek out help from your supervisor. Join a support group.
What can “bystanders” do?
• Active Bystander: person who witnesses a problematic event/situation,
recognizes it as a problem, and does something about it
• An ‘active bystander’ is NOT -->
– (Always) direct confrontation & conflict
– Being a “savior”
Gendering and Transgendering

• Transgender: describes a discrepancy between the gender that individuals
identify with and the biological sex they were identified as at birth
• Cisgender: A term that describes harmony between the gender that an individual
identifies with and the biological sex they were assigned at birth.
• Identifying as transgender can involve a desire to move away from traditional
ideas of the male and female gender binary
• Transgender people often are the target of bullying, discrimination, and hate
crimes.
• Trans PULSE Project (2015): of those who had been victims of physical or sexual
assault, 56% considered suicide and 29% attempted suicide (Bauer & Scheim,
2015)
• Bill C-279 adds gender identity to the Canadian Human Rights Act and was
passed by the Senate in June 2017 (Cossman & Katri, 2017)
Theoretical Approaches to Gender Inequality
• Conflict theorists note that capitalism demands the low-cost social reproduction
of a workforce from one generation to the next
• Families are the best and most convenient way to raise new workers, and
women (as mothers) provide the cheapest family labour
• Women have the job of keeping the family earners and earners-to-be healthy—
well fed, housed, and cared for emotionally—at no cost to employers.
Functionalism
• Functionalist theorists starting with Parsons and Bales (1955) might say that
social gendering is universal and inevitable as the most effective and efficient
way to carry out a society’s tasks of reproduction and socialization
• It may even have evolutionary survival value for the human race
• A mother, by her early attachment to her child (e.g., via pregnancy and
breastfeeding), is well suited to raising the family’s children. Since she is at home
with the children anyway, the mother is also well suited to care for the
household while the husband is at work outside the home
Symbolic Interactionism
• Symbolic interactionists are concerned with the ways that gender differences or
gender roles become gender inequalities
• E.g., the ways that young women become objectified and turned into sex
objects
• Symbolic interactionists are also interested in the social construction of
gendered concepts such as femininity and masculinity, and with the role of
families, schools, and the mass media in the propagation of such ideas

Feminist Theory
• Feminist theory focuses on how gender differences are socially constructed and
highlights the range of inequalities that these social constructions elicit for
women in a wide range of social spheres
• Intersectionality: theoretical approach that examines the interlocking nature of
social identity categories (such as ethnicity, class, and gender) that creates more
complex, interdependent systems of oppression and marginalization.
• #MeToo movement
• African American activist Tarana Burke intended the movement to be about
listening to and acknowledging the experiences of vulnerable groups—
particularly Black girls and women.
• Yet #MeToo gained momentum only when a tweet from white Hollywood actor
Alyssa Milano went viral.
• Hill (2017) criticizes the movement because there was little outrage and
empathy for Black girls and women, whereas the experiences of white women
were amplified by the hashtag.
Gender at Home, at Work, and at School
• In hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies women and men worked to support
their families
• In industrial societies, men were more likely to be in paid employment while
women were more likely to be homemakers
• A second shift includes women’s unpaid housework and caretaking in addition to
paid employment outside the home
Workplace
• The average wage of women (across all occupations) according to the United
Nations is about 72% of what men receive
• Some possible explanations:
• Some women who work “full-time” may take more time off work to
attend to family business
• Women in a particular occupation may have less experience and seniority
than men in the same occupation—perhaps because the women had to
take maternity leave, losing time that would otherwise count towards
experience
• A pay gap also exists between women:
• Racialized women earn 12% less than their white female peers
(Conference Board of Canada, 2017b)

• Immigrant women earn 23.2% less than their Canadian-born women
counterparts (Conference Board of Canada, 2017a)
• Indigenous women are at the bottom of the hierarchy of pay by ethnicity
in Canada
• Transgender women also earn less
• Lesbian women earn more
Technology, Gender and Education
• STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics; commonly used to
refer to education, research, and employment in this sector
• Hidden curriculum: the implicit lessons in social roles, values, and expectations
that are communicated in schools
• E.g., how students are taught in educational institutions such as high
schools demonstrates gender inequalities that are not explicitly
communicated, but are implicit in how men and women are treated
differently in the classroom
Gender-Based Violence
• Women are often the victims of violence at the hands of people they know—
family members; former, current, or potential romantic partners, and so on—
rather than strangers
• Data from Statistics Canada (Sinha, 2015) indicate that roughly 88% of women
who have been sexually assaulted in the past 12 months do not report their
assault to the police
• Levels of sexual assault (Schmalleger and Volk, 2014: 74; Gannon, 2006):
• Level 1: category of least physical injury and can include unwanted sexual
touching
• Level 2: involving the use of a weapon or threats to use a weapon, or
results in bodily harm
• Level 3: aggravated sexual assault resulting in wounding, maiming, or
disfiguring the victim, or endangering his or her life
• Digital environments have been no exception when it comes to violence against
women
• Comments against women that would be condemned during in-person
interactions are common on YouTube, blogs, and personal web pages
• Video games have been at the centre of much attention because women report
being the victims of verbal abuse, bullying, and harassment
Intimate Partner Violence and Victimization

• A survivor of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), by definition, is someone who has
been repeatedly assaulted emotionally, physically, or sexually, or some
combination of these, by their intimate partner.
• Emotional abuse and controlling behaviour can lead to long-term debilitating
effects such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression, low self-
esteem, anxiety, and suicidal ideation (Doherty & Berglund, 2012)
Intimate Partner Violence and Victimization, cont’d
• Why people stay in abusive relationships:
• Some who manage to escape end up returning to their batterers or are
dragged back against their will
• Many stay because they cannot imagine leaving and living without their
partner
• Many do not leave after the first assault because they think the situation
is temporary and may improve
• Feelings of guilt and shame, at least in the early stages of abuse, are
mixed with a hope that things will get better
• A lack of sufficient resources
Victimization of Indigenous Women
• In Canada, as in the United States and elsewhere, Indigenous people are
overrepresented as victims of violence, including intimate partner violence
• The intersection of inequalities that Indigenous women in Canada experience
creates a unique circumstance that accounts for the increased risk of violence
that they face
• General Social Survey data (Perreault, 2015) from 2014 show a sexual assault
rate in Indigenous women of 115 incidents per 1,000 population, much higher
than the rate of 35 per 1,000 recorded by their non-Indigenous counterparts
Chapter summary
• Gender, including the binary dichotomy, is a social construction created and
reinforced through cultural norms and expectations
• We learned how transgender individuals move beyond or outside of the social
norms ascribed by their culture to the sex they were assigned at birth
• We learned how key social theories can help explain gender inequalities
• We investigated how women are the victims of violence and the factors leading
toward victimization.
• We discussed how in Canada a large proportion of Indigenous women have been