Chapter 12

1. Chapter 12 Gender and Inequality

2. Chapter Outline • An Operatic Insight • Sex Ratios and Sex Roles: A Theory • Testing the Sex-Ratios and Sex-Roles Theory

3. Gender Inequality in Premodern Societies

4. Gender Inequality in Premodern Societies

5. “A job is alright, but what most women really want is a home and children.”

6. Gender Power Ratios in Selected Countries

7. Sex Ratios - Males per 100 Females • Until the end of World War II, men outnumbered women in the United States. • In 1790 there were 104 males per 100 females in the nation’s population. • In 1946 there were 99.8 males per 100 females in the total population. • The 1990 census counted 95.5 males per 100 females.

8. Geography of Gender • Ratio of males to females is highest in the West and lowest in the East and South. • Alaska, Nevada, Hawaii, California, and Wyoming are the most “male” states. • Mississippi, New York, Alabama, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts are the most “female.”

9. Unbalanced Sex Ratios: Geographical Mobility • Unbalanced sex ratios often are caused by migration or immigration. • During the California Gold Rush in 1850: • In California men outnumbered women by 12 to 1. • In Massachusetts there were only 96.5 men per 100 women.

10. Unbalanced Sex Ratios: Female Infanticide • A major cause of imbalanced sex ratios. • Most human societies have killed a substantial proportion of female infants. • In China, census takers found ratios as high as 430 boys for every 100 girls in some areas as late as 1870. • In India in 1846, a British enumeration in the Punjab didn’t find a single girl in 2,000 upper-status Bedi Sikh families with children.

11. Unbalanced Sex Ratios: Health and Diet • Males have higher infant mortality rates and are subject to a higher rate of fetal deaths. • Female fetuses are more robust and have a higher rate of survival in the womb. • In populations suffering from inadequate nutrition and poor medical care, an excess of females will emerge in childhood - in the absence of female infanticide.

12. Unbalanced Sex Ratios: Differential Life Expectancy • Today, in most societies women outlive men. • In the United States today, there are 2 males for every 3 females over age 65, and over age 85, women outnumber men by well over 2 to 1. • 51% of the women are widows compared with 14% of the men.

13. Ancient Athens: Too Few Women • Primary cause was female infanticide, it was rare even for large families to raise one daughter. • Women were considered property, did not participate in politics and were not educated. • Women were either respectable or prostitutes and mistresses.

14. Ancient Sparta: Too Few Men • At age 18, all able-bodied males went off for 12 years of military service. • With most of the men in army camps, Spartan women managed the estates. • Sparta practiced infanticide without sexual preference: only healthy, well formed babies were allowed to live.

15. The “Woman Movement” • An effort to end the subordination of women. • The motto: “Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less!” • Culminated in ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment on August 26, 1920 giving women the right to vote.

16. The Feminist Movement • Definition of Feminism (Cott): Opposition to all forms of stratification based on gender. • Continued to grow fueled by two other trends changing the circumstances of American women: • Women in the labor force • The Sexual Revolution

17. American Females Employed Full Time Outside the Home

18. Married American Mothers With Children Under Age 6 Employed Full Time Outside the Home

19. Why Are African American Men In Short Supply? • The sex ratio is nearly even at birth for African Americans. • African Americans have a higher infant mortality rate and male infants are more likely to die. • Young African American men have high mortality rates from accidents, drugs, and violence.