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TOPIC 02
GENDER
Learning Outcomes At the end of this topic, you are expected to
- Demonstrate understanding on the Biological, Psychological and Sociological Theories of Gender
- Identify the concepts and issues on social construction, socialization, and gender inequality I. THEORIZING GENDER: How do we explain gender in society? There are various perspectives on the origins of gender. But for this part, we will focus on the biological, psychological and sociological theories of gender. A. Ordained by Nature: Biology constructs the Sexes Biological explanations have the ring of "true" science to them because their theories are based on "objective scientific facts” the arguments of natural scientists are extraordinarily persuasive. Also, this perspective seems to accord with our own observations: women and men seem so different to us most of the time-so different, in fact, that we often appear to be from different planets. Below is a summary of biological explanations of gender THEN and how these are viewed NOW. THEN NOW
- Theologians warned against woman suffrage: God had created man and woman for different purposes, and those reproductive differences were decisive
- Some argued that woman's normal biological processes made her unfit for the public world of work and school.
- Women would grow bigger and heavier brains and that their uteruses would shrink if they went to college.
- Species are always changing, always adapting. As Charles Darwin proposed in his Theory of Evolution, natural selection enables the survival and reproduction of the good genes, be it man or woman.
- Many writers placed women's social and political aspirations over the purposes for which their bodies had been designed.
- Attribute difference in fertility or in mental illness among college-educated women to enlarged opportunities or frustrated ambitions, respectively, but not to shrinking wombs. This discipline has evolved overtime with the "application" of these observations to behavior within the society. Edward Wilson, a professor of entomology at Harvard, helped to found Sociobiology expanding his original field of expertise to include human behavior as well as bugs. Sociobiologists often use a language of intention and choice, referring to "strategies" that makes it sound as if our genes were endowed with instrumental rationality and that each of our cells acted in a feminine or masculine way. Thus they seem to suggest that the differences we observe between women and men today have come from centuries of advantageous evolutionary choices. For instance, "he" produces billions of tiny sperm; "she" produces one gigantic ovum. For the male, reproductive success depends upon his ability to fertilize a large number of eggs. Toward this end, he tries to fertilize as many eggs as he can. Thus males have a "natural" propensity toward promiscuity, or the polygamous nature. By contrast, females require only one successful mating before their egg can be fertilized, and therefore they tend to be extremely choosy about which male will be the lucky fellow. The dilemma for these monogamous females, then, is how to extract parental commitment from these recalcitrant rogue males, who would much prefer to be out fertilizing other females than stay home with the wife and kids. Women's strategy is to "hold out" for emotional, and therefore parental, commitment before engaging in sexual relations. In every society, females placed a high premium on signs of economic prosperity, whereas men placed their highest premium on youth and beauty, whose signal traits were large breasts and ample hips-i.e., signs of fertility. In this discipline it is believed that males' biological predisposition is to reproduce, and their reproductive success comes from spreading their seed as far and wide as possible while women are actually the ones with the power because they
get to choose which males will be successful. Do you agree? "In hunter-gatherer societies, men hunt and women stay at home. This strong bias persists in most agricultural and industrial societies, and, on that ground alone, appears to have a genetic origin” writes Edward Wilson. B. The Evolutionary Imperative: From Social Darwinism To Sociobiology And Evolutionary Psychology Sociobiologists tend to ignore other behavior among primates. For example, sexual contact with same-sex others is "part of the normal sexual repertoire of all animals, expressed variously over the lifetime of an individual.” In fact, same-sex sexual contact is present in the animal kingdom-ranging from bighorn sheep and giraffes, both of which have what can be described only as gay orgies, to dolphins, whales, manatees, and Japanese macaques and bonobos, which bond through "lesbian" sexual choices. The newest incarnation of sociobiology is called "evolutionary psychology” which declares an ability to explain psychological differences between women and men through their evolutionary trajectories. Men are understood to be more aggressive, controlling, and managing-skills that were honed over centuries of evolution as hunters and, fighters. After an equal amount of time raising children and performing domestic tasks, women are said to be more reactive, more emotional, "programmed to be passive”. The single trait most highly valued by both women and men was love and kindness according to a research by Psychologist, David Buss. Could it be that love, harmony, and kindness are even more important to our reproductive success than his sexual conquest and her monogamous reticence-that, in essence, evolutionary success depends more on our similarities than our differences? These are virtues that cannot be solely explained by genetics alone. SIGMUND FREUD'S STAGES OF PSYCHOSEXUAL DEVELOPMENT Ever heard the phrases "libido", “penis envy,” “Oedipal complex,” or “oral fixation”? They were all coined by famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud as part of his psychosexual theory of development. “The theory originated from Freud in early 1900s as a way to understand and explain mental illness and emotional disturbance,” explains psychotherapist Dana Dorfman, PhD. Each stage is associated with a specific conflict. The theory is more multilayered than a wedding cake, but it boils down to this: sexual pleasure plays a major role in human development. However, Freud explained that this pleasure is not solely gained from sexual intercourse or self-gratification.
As a result, these unmet needs were believed to determine personality traits and behavioral tendencies in adulthood. Somehow, these fixations manifests differently among men and women. For instance, orally fixated women tend to be more gossipy or overly talkative, engage in overeating and nail biting, while men tend to succumb to smoking, and saying curse words. #2 ANAL STAGE (1yr- 3yrs; EZ: anus & bladder) Putting things into the anal canal may be in vogue, but in this stage the pleasure is derived not from inserting into, but pushing out of , the anus. Yep, that’s code for pooping. Freud believed that during this stage, potty training and learning to control your bowel movements and bladder are a major source of pleasure and tension. Toilet training is basically a parent telling a kid when and where they can poop, and it’s a person’s first real encounter with authority. The theory says that how a parent approaches the toilet training process influences how someone interacts with authority as they get older. Harsh potty training is thought to cause adults to be anal retentive: perfectionists, obsessed with cleanliness, and controlling. Liberal training, on the other hand, is said to cause a person to be anal expulsive: messy, disorganized, oversharing, and having poor boundaries. #3 PHALLIC STAGE (3yrs-6yrs; EZ: genitals) As you might guess from the name, this stage involves fixation on the penis. Freud proposed that for young boys, this meant obsession with their own penis. For young girls, this meant fixation on the fact that they don’t have a penis, an experience he called “penis envy.” The Oedipus complex is one of Freud’s most controversial ideas. It’s based on the Greek myth where a young man named Oedipus kills his father and then marries his mother. When he discovers what he’s done, he pokes his eyes out. “Freud believed that every boy is sexually attracted to his mother,” explains Dr. Mayfield. And that every boy believes that if his father found out, his father would take away the thing the little boy loves most in the world: his penis. Herein lies castration anxiety. According to Freud, boys eventually decide to become their fathers — through imitation — rather than fighting them. Freud called this “identification” and believed it was ultimately how the Oedipus complex got resolved. Another psychologist, Carl Jung, coined “the Electra Complex” in 1913 to describe a similar sensation in girls. In short, it says that young girls compete with their mothers for sexual attention from their fathers. But Freud rejected the label, arguing that the two genders undergo distinct experiences in this phase that shouldn’t be combined. So what did Freud believe happened to girls in this stage? He proposed that girls love their moms until they realize they don’t have a penis, and then become more attached to their fathers. Later, they begin to identify with their mothers out of fear of losing their love — a phenomenon he coined the “feminine Oedipus attitude.” He believed this stage was crucial for girls to understand their role as women in the world, as well as their sexuality. Generally, when you ask a man about his ideal girl, he would tend to answer "I want to find someone who's like my mom." Or when you ask a woman about her ideal partner, the answer would still go along the lines of finding the qualities of her father. #4 LATENCY PHASE (6yrs-12yrs; EZ: inactive) During the latency stage, the libido is in “do not disturb mode. ”Freud argued that this is when sexual energy was channeled into industrious, asexual activities like learning, hobbies, and social relationships. He felt that this stage is when people develop healthy social and communication skills. He believed failure to move through this stage could result in lifelong immaturity, or the inability to have and maintain happy, healthy, and fulfilling sexual and non-sexual relationships as an adult. #5 GENITAL STAGE (12yrs & up; EZ: genitals) The last stage in this theory begins at puberty and, like “Grey’s Anatomy,” never ends. It’s when the libido reemerges. According to Freud, this is when an individual begins to have strong sexual interest in the opposite sex. And, if the stage is successful, this is when folks have heterosexual intercourse and develop loving, lifelong relationships with someone of the opposite sex.
ACTIVITY 2.1 GE EL 102
NAME: ____________________________________ SECTION CODE: ___________________
Instruction A. Encircle the behaviors represented by the images below observed among women. Box those that are seen in men. (nailbiting) (secretive) (cursing) (overeating) (gossiping) (smoking) (chewing gum) (alcoholism) **B. Identify the stage of fixation portrayed below.
_________________________________________**
Symbolic Interactionism Symbolic interactionism aims to understand human behavior by analyzing the critical role of symbols in human interaction. This is certainly relevant to the discussion of masculinity and femininity. Imagine that you walk into a bank hoping to get a small loan for school, a home, or a small business venture. If you meet with a male loan officer, you may state your case logically by listing all the hard numbers that make you a qualified applicant as a means of appealing to the analytical characteristics associated with masculinity. If you meet with a female loan officer, you may make an emotional appeal by stating your good intentions as a means of appealing to the caring characteristics associated with femininity. Because the meanings attached to symbols are socially created and not natural, and fluid, not static, we act and react to symbols based on the current assigned meaning. The word gay, for example, once meant “cheerful,” but by the 1960s it carried the primary meaning of “homosexual.” In transition, it was even known to mean “careless” or “bright and showing” (Oxford American Dictionary 2010). Furthermore, the word gay (as it refers to a homosexual), carried a somewhat negative and unfavorable meaning fifty years ago, but it has since gained more neutral and even positive connotations. When people perform tasks or possess characteristics based on the gender role assigned to them, they are said to be doing gender. This notion is based on the work of West and Zimmerman (1987). Whether we are expressing our masculinity or femininity, West and Zimmerman argue, we are always “doing gender.” Thus, gender is something we do or perform, not something we are. In other words, both gender and sexuality are socially constructed. D. SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION: Studying Gender as a Social Fact “Night to His Day”: The Social Construction of Gender JUDITH LORBER Talking about gender for most people is the equivalent of fish talking about water. Gender is so much the routine ground of everyday activities that questioning its taken-for-granted assumptions and presuppositions is like thinking about whether the sun will come up. Gender is so pervasive that in our society we assume it is bred into our genes. 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. Yet gender, like culture, is a human production that depends on everyone constantly “doing gender” (West & Zimmerman, 1987). And everyone “does gender” without thinking about it. Today, on the subway, I saw a well-dressed man with a year-old child in a stroller. Yesterday, on a bus, I saw a man with a tiny baby in a carrier on his chest. Seeing men taking care of small children in public is increasingly common—at least in New York City. But both men are quite obviously stared at—and smiled at, approvingly. Everyone was doing gender—the men who were changing the role of fathers and the other passengers, who were applauding them silently. But there was more gendering going on that probably fewer people noticed. The baby was wearing a white crocheted cap and white clothes. You couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl. The child in the stroller was wearing a dark blue T-shirt and dark print pants. As they started to leave the train, the father put a Yankees baseball cap on the child’s head. Ah, a boy, I thought. Then I noticed the gleam of tiny earrings in the child’s ears, and as they got off, I saw the little flowered sneakers and lace- trimmed socks. Not a boy after all. Gender done. Gender is such a familiar part of daily life that it usually takes a deliberate disruption of our expectations of how women and men are supposed to act to pay attention to how it is produced. Gender signs and signals are so ubiquitous that we usually fail to note them—unless they are missing or ambiguous. Then we are uncomfortable until we have successfully placed the other person in a gender status; otherwise, we feel socially dislocated. In our society, in addition to man and woman, the status can be transvestite (a person who dresses in opposite-gender clothes) and transsexual (a person who has had sexchange surgery). Transvestites and transsexuals carefully construct their gender status by dressing, speaking, walking, gesturing in the ways prescribed for women or men—whichever they want to be taken for—and so does any “normal” person. For the individual, gender construction starts with assignment to a sex category on the basis of what the genitalia look like at birth. Then babies are dressed or adorned in a way that displays the category because parents don’t want to be constantly asked whether their baby is a girl or a boy. A sex category becomes a gender status through naming, dress,
and the use of other gender markers. Once a child’s gender is evident, others treat those in one gender differently from those in the other, and the children respond to the different treatment by feeling different and behaving differently As soon as they can talk, they start to refer to themselves as members of their gender. Sex doesn’t come into play again until puberty, but by that time, sexual feelings and desires and practices have been shaped by gendered norms and expectations. Adolescent boys and girls approach and avoid each other in an elaborately scripted and gendered mating dance. Parenting is gendered, with different expectations for mothers and for fathers, and people of different genders work at different kinds of jobs. The work adults do as mothers and fathers and as low-level workers and high- level bosses, shapes women’s and men’s life experiences, and these experiences produce different feelings, consciousness, relationships, skills—ways of being that we call feminine or masculine. All of these processes constitute the social construction of gender. Gendered roles change—today fathers are taking care of little children, girls and boys are wearing unisex clothing and getting the same education, women and men are working at the same jobs. Although many traditional social groups are quite strict about maintaining gender differences, in other social groups they seem to be blurring. Then why the one-year-old’s earrings? Why is it still so important to mark a child as a girl or a boy, to make sure she is not taken for a boy or he for a girl? What would happen if they were? They would, quite literally, have changed places in their social world. To explain why gendering is done from birth, constantly and by everyone, we have to look not only at the way individuals experience gender but at gender as a social institution. As a social institution, gender is one of the major ways that human beings organize their lives. Human society depends on a predictable division of labor, a designated allocation of scarce goods, assigned responsibility for children and others who cannot care for themselves, common values and their systematic transmission to new members, legitimate leadership, music, art, stories, games, and other symbolic productions. One way of choosing people for the different tasks of society is on the basis of their talents, motivations, and competence—their demonstrated achievements. The other way is on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity—ascribed membership in a category of people. Although societies vary in the extent to which they use one or the other of these ways of allocating people to work and to carry out other responsibilities, every society uses gender and age grades. Every society classifies people as “girl and boy children,” “girls and boys ready to be married,” and “fully adult women and men,” constructs similarities among them and differences between them, and assigns them to different roles and responsibilities. Personality characteristics, feelings, motivations, and ambitions flow from these different life experiences so that the members of these different groups become different kinds of people. The process of gendering and its outcome are legitimated by religion, law, science, and the society’s entire set of values.
- • • Western society’s values legitimate gendering by claiming that it all comes from physiology— female and male procreative differences. But gender and sex are not equivalent, and gender as a social construction does not flow automatically from genitalia and reproductive organs, the main physiological differences of females and males. In the construction of ascribed social statuses, physiological differences such as sex, stage of development, color of skin, and size are crude markers. They are not the source of the social statuses of gender, age, grade, and race. Social statuses are carefully constructed through prescribed processes of teaching, learning, emulation, and enforcement. Whatever genes, hormones, and biological evolution contribute to human social institutions is materially as well as qualitatively transformed by social practices. Every social institution has a material base, but culture and social practices transform that base into something with qualitatively different patterns and constraints. The economy is much more than producing food and goods and distributing them to eaters and users; family and kinship are not the equivalent of having sex and procreating; morals and religions cannot be equated with the fears and ecstasies of the brain; language goes far beyond the sounds produced by tongue and larynx. No one eats “money” or “credit”; the concepts of “god” and “angels” are the subjects of theological disquisitions; not only words but objects, such as their flag, “speak” to the citizens of a country. Similarly, gender cannot be equated with biological and physiological differences between human females and males. The building blocks of gender are socially constructed statuses. Western societies have only two genders, “man” and “woman.” Some societies have three genders— men, women, and berdaches or hijras or xaniths. Berdaches, hijras, and xaniths are biological males who behave, dress, work, and are treated in most respects as social women; they are therefore not men, nor are they female women; they are, in our language, “male women.”2 There are African and American Indian societies that have a gender status called manly hearted women—biological females who work, marry, and parent as men; their social status is “female men” (Amadiume, 1987; Blackwood, 1984). They do not have to behave or dress as men to have the social responsibilities and prerogatives of husbands and fathers; what makes them men is enough wealth to buy a wife.
women and men; in Shakespeare’s theater company, there were no actresses—Juliet and Lady Macbeth were played by boys. Shakespeare’s comedies are full of witty comments on gender shifts. Women characters frequently masquerade as young men, and other women characters fall in love with them; the boys playing these masquerading women, meanwhile, are acting out pining for the love of men characters.
- • • But despite the ease with which gender boundaries can be traversed in work, in social relationships, and in cultural productions, gender statuses remain. Transvestites and transsexuals do not challenge the social construction of gender. Their goal is to be feminine women and masculine men (Kando, 1973). Those who do not want to change their anatomy but do want to change their gender behavior fare less well in establishing their social identity.… Paradoxically, then, bending gender rules and passing between genders does not erode but rather preserves gender boundaries. In societies with only two genders, the gender dichotomy is not disturbed by transvestites, because others feel that a transvestite is only transitorily ambiguous—is “really a man or woman underneath.” After sex-change surgery, transsexuals end up in a conventional gender status—a “man” or a “woman” with the appropriate genitals (Eichler 1989). When women dress as men for business reasons, they are indicating that in that situation, they want to be treated the way men are treated; when they dress as women, they want to be treated as women: By their male dress, female entrepreneurs signal their desire to suspend the expectations of accepted feminine conduct without losing respect and reputation. By wearing what is “unattractive” they signify that they are not intending to display their physical charms while engaging in public activity Their loud, aggressive banter contrasts with the modest demeanor that attracts men.… Overt signalling of a suspension of the rules preserves normal conduct from eroding expectations. (Rugh, 1986, p. 131) FOR INDIVIDUALS, GENDER MEANS SAMENESS Although the possible combinations of genitalia, body shapes, clothing, mannerisms, sexuality, and roles could produce infinite varieties in human beings, the social institution of gender depends on the production and maintenance of a limited number of gender statuses and of making the members of these statuses similar to each other. Individuals are born sexed but not gendered, and they have to be taught to be masculine or feminine.9 As Simone de Beauvoir said: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.…; it is civilization as a whole that produces this creature … which is described as feminine.” (1952, p. 267). Children learn to walk, talk, and gesture the way their social group says girls and boys should. Ray Birdwhistell, in his analysis of body motion as human communication, calls these learned gender displays tertiary sex characteristics and argues that they are needed to distinguish genders because humans are a weakly dimorphic species—their only sex markers are genitalia (1970, p. 39–46). Clothing, paradoxically, often hides the sex but displays the gender. In early childhood, humans develop gendered personality structures and sexual orientations through their interactions with parents of the same and opposite gender. As adolescents, they conduct their sexual behavior according to gendered scripts. Schools, parents, peers, and the mass media guide young people into gendered work and family roles. As adults, they take on a gendered social status in their society’s stratification system. Gender is thus both ascribed and achieved (West & Zimmerman, 1987). The achievement of gender was most dramatically revealed in a case of an accidental transsexual—a baby boy whose penis was destroyed in the course of a botched circumcision when he was seven months old (Money & Ehrhardt, 1972, p. 118–23). The child’s sex category was changed to “female,” and a vagina was surgically constructed when the child was seventeen months old. The parents were advised that they could successfully raise the child, one of identical twins, as a girl. Physicians assured them that the child was too young to have formed a gender identity. Children’s sense of which gender they belong to usually develops around the age of three, at the time that they start to group objects and recognize that the people around them also fit into categories—big, little; pink-skinned, brown-skinned; boys, girls. Three has also been the age when children’s appearance is ritually gendered, usually by cutting a boy’s hair or dressing him in distinctively masculine clothing. In Victorian times, English boys wore dresses up to the age of three, when they were put into short pants. (Garber, 1992, p. 1–2) The parents of the accidental transsexual bent over backward to feminize the child—and succeeded. Frilly dresses, hair ribbons, and jewelry created a pride in looks, neatness, and “daintiness.” More significant, the child’s dominance was also feminized:
The girl had many tomboyish traits, such as abundant physical energy a high level of activity, stubbornness, and being often the dominant one in a girls’ group. Her mother tried to modify her tomboyishness: “… I teach her to be more polite and quiet. I always wanted those virtues. I never did manage, but I’m going to try to manage them to—my daughter—to be more quiet and ladylike.” From the beginning the girl had been the dominant twin. By the age of three, her dominance over her brother was, as her mother described it, that of a mother hen. The boy in turn took up for his sister, if anyone threatened her. (Money & Ehrhardt, 1972, 122) This child was not a tomboy because of male genes or hormones; according to her mother, she herself had also been a tomboy. What the mother had learned poorly while growing up as a “natural” female she insisted that her physically reconstructed son-daughter learn well. For both mother and child, the social construction of gender overrode any possibly inborn traits. People go along with the imposition of gender norms because the weight of morality as well as immediate social pressure enforces them. Consider how many instructions for properly gendered behavior are packed into this mother’s admonition to her daughter: “This is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming” (Kincaid, 1978). Gender norms are inscribed in the way people move, gesture, and even eat. In one African society, men were supposed to eat with their “whole mouth, wholeheartedly, and not, like women, just with the lips, that is halfheartedly, with reservation and restraint” (Bordieu, [1980] 1990, p. 70). Men and women in this society learned to walk in ways that proclaimed their different positions in the society: The manly man … stands up straight into the face of the person he approaches, or wishes to welcome. Ever on the alert, because ever threatened, he misses nothing of what happens around him.… Conversely, a well brought-up woman … is expected to walk with a slight stoop, avoiding every misplaced movement of her body, her head or her arms, looking down, keeping her eyes on the spot where she will next put her foot, especially if she happens to have to walk past the men’s assembly. Many cultures go beyond clothing, gestures, and demeanor in gendering children. They inscribe gender directly into bodies. In traditional Chinese society, mothers bound their daughters’ feet into three-inch stumps to enhance their sexual attractiveness. Jewish fathers circumcise their infant sons to show their covenant with God. Women in African societies remove the clitoris of prepubescent girls, scrape their labia, and make the lips grow together to preserve their chastity and ensure their marriageability. In Western societies, women augment their breast size with silicone and reconstruct their faces with cosmetic surgery to conform to cultural ideals of feminine beauty.… Most parents create a gendered world for their newborn by naming, birth announcements, and dress. Children’s relationships with same-gendered and different-gendered caretakers structure their self-identifications and personalities. Through cognitive development, children extract and apply to their own actions the appropriate behavior for those who belong in their own gender, as well as race, religion, ethnic group, and social class, rejecting what is not appropriate. If their social categories are highly valued, they value themselves highly; if their social categories are low status, they lose selfesteem (Chodorow, 1974). Many feminist parents who want to raise androgynous children soon lose their children to the pull of gendered norms (T. Gordon, 1990, p. 87–90). My son attended a carefully non-sexist elementary school, which didn’t even have girls’ and boys’ bathrooms. When he was seven or eight years old, I attended a class play about “squares” and “circles” and their need for each other and noticed that all the girl squares and circles wore makeup, but none of the boy squares and circles did. I asked the teacher about it after the play, and she said, “Bobby said he was not going to wear makeup, and he is a powerful child, so none of the boys would either.” In a long discussion about conformity, my son confronted me with the question of who the conformists were, the boys who followed their leader or the girls who listened to the woman teacher. In actuality, they both were, because they both followed same-gender leaders and acted in gender-appropriate ways. (Actors may wear makeup, but real boys don’t.) For human beings there is no essential femaleness or maleness, femininity or masculinity, womanhood or manhood, but once gender is ascribed, the social order constructs and holds individuals to strongly gendered norms and expectations. Individuals may vary on many of the components of gender and may shift genders temporarily or permanently, but they must fit into the limited number of gender statuses their society recognizes. In the process, they re-create their society’s version of women and men: “If we do gender appropriately, we simultaneously sustain, reproduce, and render legitimate the institutional arrangements.… If we fail to do gender appropriately, we as
ACTIVITY 2. 3 GE EL 102
NAME: ____________________________________ SECTION CODE: ___________________
INSTRUCTION: Respond to the following questions about the article, "Night to His Day". Use extra paper if the space provided below is insufficient. a) Is it still so important to mark a child as a girl or a boy? (Why? Why not?) b) What is your stand about the "third gender"? c) What are culture bound "gendered" practices that you observe in our country?
II. SOCIALIZATION: How do we learn gender? The organization of society is profoundly gendered, meaning that the “natural” distinction between male and female, and the attribution of different qualities to each, underlies institutional structures from the family, to the occupational structure, to the division between public and private, to access to power and beyond. 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. How does the “naturalness” of the distinction between male and female get established? How does it serve to organize everyday life? The phrase “boys will be boys” 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. The “script” written by society is in some ways similar to 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 role. Scripts are generally learned through socialization, which teaches people to behave according to social norms. Socialization is the process whereby individuals learn the culture of their society. This process begins early in life. Children develop an understanding of gender categories at a young age. Studies have shown that children can discern male voices from female voices at six months old, and can differentiate between men and women in photographs at nine months old. Between 11 and 14 months, children develop the ability to associate sight and sound, matching male and female voices with photographs of men and women. By age three, children have formed their own gender identity. They have also begun to learn their culture’s gender norms, including which toys, activities, behaviors, and attitudes are associated with each gender. Because gender categorization is a significant part of a child's social development, children tend to be especially attentive to same-gender models. When a child observes same-gender models consistently exhibit specific behaviors that differ from the behaviors of other-gender models, the child is more likely to exhibit the behaviors learned from the same-gender models. These models include parents, peers, teachers, and figures in the media. Children’s knowledge of gender roles and stereotypes can impact their attitudes towards their own and other genders. Young children, in particular, may become especially rigid about what boys and girls "can" and "cannot" do. This either-or thinking about gender reaches its peak between the ages of 5 and 7 and then becomes more flexible. Read the story below. The Story of X by Lois Gould Once upon a time, a Baby named X was born. It was named X so that nobody could tell whether it was a boy or girl. Its parents could tell, of course, but they couldn't tell anybody else. They couldn't even tell Baby X - at least not until much, much later. You see, X was a part of a very important Secret Scientific Xperiment known officially as Project Baby X. This Xperiment was going to cost Xactly 23 billion dollars and 72 cents. Which might seem like a lot for one Baby, even if it was an important Secret Scientific Xperiment Baby. But when you remember the cost of strained carrots, stuffed bunnies, booster shots, 28 shiny quarters from the tooth fairy...you begin to see how it adds up. Long before Baby X was born, the smartest scientists had to work out the secret details of the Xperiment and to write the Official Instruction Manual in secret code for Baby X's parents, whoever they were. These parents had to be selected very carefully. Thousands of people volunteered to take thousands of tests with thousands of tricky questions. Almost everybody failed because it turned out almost everybody wanted a boy or a girl and not a Baby X at all. Also, almost everybody thought a Baby X would be more trouble than a boy or girl. (They were right too!)
The Joneses spent weeks consulting their Instruction Manual. There were 249 pages of advice under "First Day of School". Then they were all summoned to an Urgent Xtra Special Conference with the smart scientists of Project Baby X. The scientists had to make sure that X's mother had taught X how to throw and catch a ball properly, and that X's father had been sure to teach X what to serve at a doll's tea party. X had to know how to shoot marbles and jump rope and, most of all, what to say when the other children asked whether X was a boy or a girl. Finally, X was ready. X's teacher had promised that the class could line up alphabetically, instead of forming separate lines for boys and girls. And X had permission to use the principal's bathroom because it wasn't marked anything except BATHROOM. But nobody could help X with the biggest problem of all - Other Children. Nobody in X's class had ever known an X. Nobody had even heard grown-ups say, "Some of my best friends are Xes". What would other children think? Would they make Xist jokes? or Would they make friends? You couldn't tell what X was by its clothes. Overalls don't even button right to left, like girls' clothes, or left to right, like boys' clothes. And did X have a girl's short haircut or a boy's long haircut? As for the games X liked, either X played ball very well for a girl, or else played house very well for a boy. The children tried to find out by asking X tricky questions, like "who's your favorite sports star?" X had two favorite sports stars: a girl jockey named Robyn Smith and a boy archery champion named Robin Hood. Then they asked, "What's your favorite TV show?" And X said: "Lassie" which stars a girl dog played by a boy dog. When X said its favorite toy was a doll, everyone decided that X must be a girl. But then X said the doll was really a robot and that X had computerized it and it was programmed to bake fudge and then clean up the kitchen. After X told them that, they gave up guessing what X was. All they knew was they'd like to see X's doll. After school, X wanted to play with the other children. "How about shooting baskets in the gym?" X asked the girls. But all they did was make faces and giggle behind X's back. "Boy, is he weird," whispered Jim to Joe. "How about weaving some baskets in the arts and crafts room?" X asked the boys. But they all made faces and giggled behind X's back, too. "Boy, is she weird," whispered Susie to Peggy. That night, Ms. and Mr. Jones asked X how things had gone at school. X tried to smile, but there were two big tears in its eyes. "The lessons are okay," X began, "but...." "But?" said Ms. Jones. "The Other Children hate me," X whispered. "Hate you?" said Mr. Jones. X nodded, which made the two big tears roll down and splash on its overalls. Once more, the Joneses reached for their Instruction Manual. Under "Other Children", it said: "What did you Xpect? Other Children have to obey silly boy-girl rules, because their parents taught them to. Lucky X - you don't have rules at all. All you have to do is be yourself. P.S. We're not saying it'll be easy. X liked being itself. But X cried a lot that night. So X's father held X tight and cried a little too. X's mother cheered them up with an Xciting story about an enchanted prince called Sleeping Handsome, who woke up when Princess Charming kissed him. The next morning, they all felt much better, and little X went back to school with a brave smile and a clean pair of red and white checked overalls. There was a seven-letter word spelling bee in class that day. And a seven-lap boys' relay race in the gym. And a seven-layer-cake baking contest in the girls' kitchen corner. X won the spelling bee. X also won the relay race. And X almost won the baking contest Xcept it forgot to light the oven. (Remember nobody's perfect.) One of the Other Children noticed something else, too. He said: "X doesn't care about winning. X just thinks it's fun playing boys' stuff and girls' stuff. "Come to think of it," said another one of the Other Children. "X is having twice as much fun as we are!" After school that day, the girl who beat X in the baking contest gave X a big slice of her winning cake. And the boy X beat in the relay race asked X to race him home. From then on, some really funny things began to happen. Susie, who sat next to X, refused to wear pink dresses to school any more. She wanted red and white checked overalls - just like X's. Overalls, she told her parents, were better for climbing monkey bars. Then Jim, the class football nut, started wheeling his little sister's doll carriage around the football field. He'd put on his entire football uniform, except for the helmet. Then he'd put the helmet in the carriage, lovingly tucked under an old set of shoulder pads. Then he'd jog around the field, pushing the carriage and singing "Rockabye Baby" to his helmet. He said X did the same thing, so it must be okay. After all, X was the team's star quarterback. Susie's parents were horrified by her behavior, and Jim's parents were worried sick about his. But the worst came when the twins, Joe and Peggy, decided to share everything with each other. Peggy used Joe's hockey skates, and his microscope, and took half his newspaper route. Joe used Peggy's needlepoint kit, and her cookbooks, and took two of her three baby-sitting jobs. Peggy ran the lawn mower, and Joe ran the vacuum cleaner. Their parents weren't one bit pleased with Peggy's science experiments, or with Joe's terrific needlepoint pillows. They didn't care that Peggy mowed the lawn better, and that Joe vacuumed the carpet better. In fact, they were furious. It's all that little X's fault, they agreed. X doesn't know what it is or what it's supposed to be! So X wants to mix everybody else up, too! Peggy and Joe were forbidden to play with X any more. So was Susie and then Jim and then all the Other
Children. But it was too late. The Other Children stayed mixed up and happy and free and refused to go back to the way they'd been before X. Finally, the parents held an emergency meeting to discuss "The X Problem". They sent a report to the principal stating that X was a "bad influence" and demanding immediate action. The Joneses, they said, should be forced to tell whether X was a boy or a girl. And X should be force to behave like whichever it was. If the Joneses refused to tell, the parents said, then X must take an Xamination. An Impartial Team of Xperts would Xtract the secret. Then X would start obeying all the old rules. Or else. And if X turned out to be some kind of mixed-up misfit, then X must be Xpelled from school. Immediately! So that no little Xes would ever come to school again. The principal was very upset. Was X a bad influence? A mixed-up misfit? But X was an Xcellent student! X set a fine Xample! X was Xtraordinary! X was president of the student council, X had won first prize in the art show, honorable mention in the science fair, and six events on field day, including the potato race. Nevertheless, insisted the parents, X is a Problem Child. X is the biggest problem child we have ever had! So the principal reluctantly notified X's parents and the Joneses reported this to the Project X scientists, who referred them to page 85769 of the Instruction Manual. "Sooner or later," it said, "X will have to be Xamined by an Impartial Team of Xperts." "This may be the only way any of us will know for sure whether X is mixed up - or everyone else is." At Xactly 9 o'clock the next day, X reported to the school health office. The principal, along with a committee from the Parents' Association, X's teacher, X's classmates, and Ms. and Mr. Jones, waited in the hall outside. Inside, the Xperts had set up their famous testing machine: the Superpsychobiometer. Nobody knew Xactly how the machine worked, but everybody knew that this examination would reveal Xactly what everyone wanted to know about X, but were afraid to ask. It was terribly quiet in the hall. Almost spooky. They could hear very strange noises from the room. There were buzzes. And a beep or two. And several Bells. An occasional light flashed under the door. Was it an X-ray? Through it all, you could hear the Xperts' voices, asking questions, and X's voice answering answers. I wouldn't like to be in X's overalls right now, the children thought. At last, the door opened. Everyone crowded around to hear the results. X didn't look any different. In fact, X was smiling. But the Impartial Team of Xperts looked terrible. They looked as if they were crying! "What happened?" everyone began shouting. "Sssh," sshed the principal. "The Xperts are trying to speak." Wiping his eyes and clearing his throat, one Xpert began: "In our opinion," he whispered - you could tell he must be very upset - "In our opinion, young X here- " "Yes! Yes!" shouted a parent. "Young X," said the other Xpert, frowning, "is just about the least mixed-up child we've ever Xamined!" Xclaimed the two Xperts together. Behind the closed door, the Superpsychamedicosocietymeter made a noise like a contented hum. "Yay for X!" yelled one of the children. And then the others began yelling, too. Clapping and cheering and jumping up and down. "SSSH!" SSShed the principal, but nobody did. The Parents' Committee was angry and bewildered. How could X have passed the whole Xamination? Didn't X have an identify problem! Wasn't X messed up at all! Wasn't X any kind of a misfit? How could it not be, when it didn't even know what it was? "Don't you see?" asked the Xperts. "X isn't one bit mixed up! As for being a misfit - ridiculous! X knows perfectly well what it is! Don't you, X?" The Xperts winked. X winked back. "But what is X?" shrieked Peggy and Joe's parents. "We still want to know what it is!" "Ah, yes," said the Xperts, winking again. "Well, don't worry. You'll all know one of these days. And you won't need us to tell you." "What? What do they mean?" Jim's parents grumbled suspiciously. Susie and Peggy and Joe all answered at once. "They mean that by the time it matters which sex X is, it won't be a secret any more!" With that, the Xperts reached out to hug Ms. and Mr. Jones. "If we ever have an X of our own," they whispered, "we sure hope you'll lend us your Instruction Manual." Needless to say, the Joneses were very happy. The Project Baby X scientists were rather pleased, too. So were Susie, Jim, Peggy, Joe and all the Other Children. Even the parents promised not to make any trouble. Later that day, all X's friends put on their red and white checked overalls and went over to see X. They found X in the backyard, playing with a very tiny baby that none of them had ever seen before. The baby was wearing very tiny red and white checked overalls. "How do you like our new baby?" X asked the Other Children proudly. "It's got cute dimples," said Jim. "It's got husky biceps, too," said Susie. "What kind of baby is it?" asked Joe and Peggy. X frowned at them. "Can't you tell?" Then, X broke into a big, mischievous grin. "It's a Y!"
In resolution to the Story of X, we proceed to discuss the factors that contribute to our idea of gender. Agents of Gender Socialization As children, we develop gender-related beliefs and expectations through our observations of and interactions with the people around us. An "agent" of gender socialization is any person or group that plays a role in the childhood gender socialization process. The four primary agents of gender socialization are parents, teachers, peers, and the media. Parents are typically a child’s first source of information about gender. Starting at birth, parents communicate different expectations to their children depending on their sex. For example, a son may engage in more roughhousing with his father, while a mother takes her daughter shopping. The child may learn from their parents that certain activities or toys correspond with a particular gender (think of a family that gives their son a truck and their daughter a doll). Even parents who emphasize gender equality may inadvertently reinforce some stereotypes due to their own gender socialization. Teachers and school administrators model gender roles and sometimes demonstrate gender stereotypes by responding to male and female students in different ways. For example, separating students by gender for activities or disciplining students differently depending on their gender may reinforce children’s developing beliefs and assumptions. Peer interactions also contribute to gender socialization. Children tend to play with same- gender peers. Through these interactions, they learn what their peers expect of them as boys or girls. These lessons may be direct, such as when a peer tells the child that a certain behavior is or is not "appropriate" for their gender. They can also be indirect, as the child observes same- and other-gendered peers' behavior over time. These comments and comparisons may become less overt over time, but adults continue to turn to same-gendered peers for information about how they are supposed to look and act as a man or a woman. Media, including movies, TV, and books, teaches children about what it means to be a boy or a girl. Media conveys information about the role of gender in people’s lives and can reinforce gender stereotypes. For example, consider an animated film that depicts two female characters: a beautiful but passive heroine, and an ugly but active villain. This media model, and countless others, reinforces ideas about which behaviors are acceptable and valued (and which are not) for a particular gender. III. GENDER INEQUALITY Over the years, the world has gotten closer to achieving gender equality. There is better representation of women in politics, more economic opportunities, and better healthcare in many places of the world. However, the World Economic Forum estimates it will take another century before true gender equality becomes a reality. What drives the gap between genders? Here are 10 causes of gender inequality: #1. Uneven access to education Around the world, women still have less access to education than men. ¼ of young women between 15-24 will not finish primary school. That group makes up 58% of the people not completing that basic education. Of all the illiterate people in the world, ⅔ are women. When girls are not educated on the same level as boys, it has a huge effect on their future and the kinds of opportunities they’ll get. #2. Lack of employment equality Only 6 countries in the world give women the same legal work rights as men. In fact, most economies give women only ¾ the rights of men. Studies show that if employment became a more even playing field, it has a positive domino effect on other areas prone to gender inequality.
#3. Job segregation One of the causes for gender inequality within employment is the division of jobs. In most societies, there’s an inherent belief that men are simply better equipped to handle certain jobs. Most of the time, those are the jobs that pay the best. This discrimination results in lower income for women. Women also take on the primary responsibility for unpaid labor, so even as they participate in the paid workforce, they have extra work that never gets recognized financially. #4. Lack of legal protections According to research from the World Bank, over one billion women don’t have legal protection against domestic sexual violence or domestic economic violence. Both have a significant impact on women’s ability to thrive and live in freedom. In many countries, there’s also a lack of legal protections against harassment in the workplace, at school, and in public. These places become unsafe and without protection, women frequently have to make decisions that compromise and limit their goals. #5. Lack of bodily autonomy Many women around the world do not have authority over their own bodies or when they become parents. Accessing birth control is frequently very difficult. According to the World Health Organization, over 200 million women who don’t want to get pregnant are not using contraception. There are various reasons for this such as a lack of options, limited access, and cultural/religious opposition. On a global scale, about 40% of pregnancies are not planned and while 50% of them do end in abortion, 38% result in births. These mothers often become financially dependent on another person or the state, losing their freedom. #6. Poor medical care In addition to limited access to contraception, women overall receive lower-quality medical care than men. This is linked to other gender inequality reasons such as a lack of education and job opportunities, which results in more women being in poverty. They are less likely to be able to afford good healthcare. There’s also been less research into diseases that affect women more than men, such as autoimmune disorders and chronic pain conditions. Many women also experience discrimination and dismissal from their doctors, broadening the gender gap in healthcare quality. #7. Lack of religious freedom When religious freedom is attacked, women suffer the most. According to the World Economic Forum, when extremist ideologies (such as ISIS) come into a community and restrict religious freedom, gender inequality gets worse. In a study performed by Georgetown University and Brigham Young University, researchers were also able to connect religious intolerance with women’s ability to participate in the economy. When there’s more religious freedom, an economy becomes more stable thanks to women’s participation. #8. Lack of political representation Of all national parliaments at the beginning of 2019, only 24.3% of seats were filled by women. As of June of 2019, 11 Heads of State were women. Despite progress in this area over the years, women are still grossly underrepresented in government and the political process. This means that certain issues that female politicians tend to bring up – such as parental leave and childcare, pensions, gender equality laws and gender-based violence – are often neglected. #9. Racism It would be impossible to talk about gender inequality without talking about racism. It affects what jobs women of color are able to get and how much they’re paid, as well as how they are viewed by legal and healthcare systems. Gender inequality and racism have been closely-linked for a long time. According to Sally Kitch, a professor and author, European settlers in Virginia decided what work could be taxed based on the race of the woman performing the work. African women’s work was “labor,” so it was taxable, while work performed by English women was “domestic” and not taxable. The pay gaps between white women and women of color continues that legacy of discrimination and contributes to gender inequality. #10. Societal mindsets It’s less tangible than some of the other causes on this list, but the overall mindset of a society has a significant impact on gender inequality. How society determines the differences and value of men vs. women plays a starring role in every arena, whether it’s employment or the legal system or healthcare. Beliefs about gender run deep and even though progress can be made through laws and structural changes, there’s often a pushback following times of major change. It’s also common for everyone (men and women) to ignore other areas of gender inequality when there’s
