Download Gender Stratification

Chapter 10
Gender Stratification
Gender and Inequality
• Gender
– Personal traits & social positions members of
a society attach to being female and male
• Gender stratification
– Unequal distribution of wealth, power, and
privilege between men and women
• Male-female biological differences
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Men’s and
Women’s
Athletic
Performance
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Gender in a Global Perspective
• Israeli kibbutzim
– Gender equality is a stated goal
• George Murdock’s research
– Some global agreement about feminine and
masculine tasks
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Gender in a Global Perspective
• Margaret Mead’s research
– Culture is key to gender differences
• Gender and culture
– What it means to be male or female is mostly
a creation of society
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Patriarchy and Sexism
• Matriarchy–A form of social organization in
which females dominate males
• Sexism–Belief that one sex or the other is
innately inferior or superior
• Institutional sexism
–Found throughout the economy
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Patriarchy and Sexism
• The costs of sexism
–Sexism has a high price for both women and
men
• Inevitability of patriarchy
–Most sociologists believe gender is socially
constructed and can be changed
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Women’s Power in Global Perspective
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Gender and Socialization
• Gender roles (sex roles)–Attitudes and
activities that a society links to each sex
• Gender affects how we think of ourselves
and teaches us how to behave.
• Research suggests that most young
people develop personalities that are
– A mix of feminine and masculine traits
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Gender and the Family
• Is it a boy or girl?
– Color-coding gender
• Traditional notions of gender identity
• Handling of children
– Female: passivity and emotion
– Male: independence and action
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Gender and Peer Groups
• Janet Lever (1978)
– Boys favor team sports with complex rules
and clear objectives.
– Girls’ sports teach interpersonal skills and the
value of sharing and cooperation.
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Gender and Peer Groups
• Gilligan (1982)
– Boys reason according to abstract principles.
– Girls consider morality a matter of
responsibility to others.
• Schooling
– Gender shapes interests and beliefs, guides
areas of study, and career choices
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Gender and Schooling
• Women became well represented in many
fields of study that once excluded them
– Mathematics, chemistry, and biology
• Men still predominate in many fields
– Engineering, computer science, and the
physical sciences
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Gender and the Mass Media
•
•
•
•
White males have center stage
Minorities locked out until the early 1970s
Women receive roles based on sex appeal
The “beauty myth”
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Social Stratification
• 60% of all women work and 72% of
working women work full-time
• Women hold primary responsibility for
housework & parenting – “second shift”
• Some work defined as “men’s work”
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Social Stratification
• On average, women earn 78 cents for
every dollar earned by men
• “Pink-collar” are at the lower end of the
pay scale
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Housework: Who Does How Much?
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Education, Politics, and Military
• Gender and education
• In 2007 women earned 59% of all associate &
bachelor degrees, 61% of master’s degrees
• And 50% of doctorates
• Politics
–Nineteenth Amendment (1920)
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Education, Politics, and Military
–Women active in local, state politics
• Military
–14% of US military personnel are women,
including deployed troops
–Culture influences our views of women in the
military
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Women in State Government across the United States
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Are Women a Minority?
• At every class level, women have less
– Income, wealth, education, & power than men
• Intersection theory
– Interplay of race, class, & gender, resulting in
multiple dimensions of disadvantage
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Are Women a Minority?
– Disadvantages linked to gender & race often
combine to produce low social standing
• Multilayered system of disadvantage for
some and privilege for others
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Violence Against Women
• In the 19th century, men claimed the right
to physically discipline their wives
• Sexual assaults, rapes, attempted rapes,
and physical assaults
• Campus and university gender violence
• Gender-linked violence often in the home
• Female genital mutilation
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Violence Against Men
• Men are more likely to be both the
perpetrators and victims of violence.
• Our culture tends to define masculinity in
terms of aggression and violence.
• Men’s lives involve more stress and
isolation than women’s lives.
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Sexual Harassment
• Rules for workplace interaction
• Causes of sexual harassment
– Culture encourages men to be sexually
assertive & perceive women in sexual terms
– Men occupy most positions of power.
– “Effect standard”: hostile environment
involves different perceptions of the same
behavior
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Female Genital Mutilation in Global
Perspective
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Pornography
• People take different views of what is and
isn’t pornographic
• Pornography as a moral issue
• The gender-stratification point of view
considers pornography a power issue
• Promotes violence against women portraying them as weak/undeserving of respect
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Theoretical Analysis of Gender
• Symbolic-interaction analysis
– Gender involves differences in behavior
– Women are expected to be more deferential
• Structural-functional analysis
– Parsons: Gender forms a complementary set
of roles; links men & women to family units
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Theoretical Analysis of Gender
• Social-conflict analysis
– Gender involves differences in power
– Engels: Capitalism strengthens male
domination
• Intersection Theory
– Multiple systems of stratification based on
race, class, and gender
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© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Feminism
•
•
•
•
•
Working to increase equality
Expansion of human choice
Eliminate gender stratification
Ending sexual violence
Promotes sexual freedom
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Types of Feminism
• Opposition to feminism
– Threat to male status and privilege
– Resistance to feminism is strongest among
women with lower levels of education
• Liberal feminism
– Free to develop own talents and interests
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Types of Feminism
• Socialist feminism
– Family form must change with some collective
means of carrying out housework & childcare
• Radical feminism
– Seek an egalitarian, gender-free society
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Use of
Contraception by
Married Women
of Childbearing
Age
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