Doing Gender

1. Doing Gender • Doing sex/gender takes place in everyday social interactions and contexts. • Social interactions are dependent on use of language—referred to as “discourse” studied by “socio-linguists” like Deborah Tannen, most popular gender linguist. • “Asymmetries” & cross-purposes: women “rapport talk”and men “report talk” differences in concern with status (contest, competition as bonding) and relationships (community) • Study of speech: interruptions, overlaps, intonation, content. • Fishman: women had to ask more questions, fill more silences, use attention-getting beginnings to be heard.

2. Creating Sex Differences • West/Zimmerman say “doing gender” means creating gender differences that are not natural or essential, but reinforce “essentialness” of sex difference. Situations create depictions in everyday interactions. • Labels in language create “essential” differences: Goffman—different bathrooms for “ladies” and “gentleman” while nothing biologically different requiring toilet segregation. (used as reason for conservatives against Equal Rights Amendment in 1970s/80s)

3. Group Composition • We enact sex/gender not just as individuals in dyads but in group contexts • Status characteristics theory tells us that interactional styles are more a matter of a group’s sex composition and task orientation than of individual personality • Group’s sex composition helps to determine how gender will shape group interaction

4. “Skewed” groups and behavior • Kanter studied “tokens” and “dominants” in “skewed” groups (one social type is numerically dominant and other is 15% or less) • 3 Relational patterns: visibility, contrast, assimilation

5. Visibility • Tokens are performing under different conditions than dominants: • Tokens are more easily noticed • Are subject of gossip and scrutiny • Behavior said to be because of social category membership than individual personality • A response to “performance pressures” is to overachieve but try to avoid resentment of dominants • Either emphasize uniqueness or keep a low profile and try to be invisible

6. Contrast • Token presence threatening to dominants because creates uncertainty for dominants • Dominants take-for-granted behaviors and interactions with each other but cannot with tokens • Dominants perform “boundary heightening” behaviors—exaggerating and affirming difference from tokens (ex. For women, dominants’ focus on colleague mother/therapist role than their worker/performer role) • Extreme reaction—isolate, exclude from social interaction (females not invited to male activities)

7. Assimilation • Dominants see individuals as representatives of their social category group. • Attribute social category stereotype to token • Social “role encapsulation” force tokens into stereotypical roles (female secretaries get coffee for male bosses) • Social “role trap” constrains tokens to stereotypical roles

8. Expectation States • Dominants not always male or tokens female • U.S. society expectation is that males are more competent (attributed higher status with more positive expectations) females less so (attributed with lesser expectations more negative evaluations) • What happens when men are tokens and women are dominants? Ex. Floge/Merrill on male nurses; research on male elementary school teachers. Expectation states still operate-- Chris Williams says ”glass elevator” for token males • Tokens create alternative occupational identities—reassert masculinity in other ways (male temp workers rename secretary as bookkeeper, refuse deference performance), reassert femininity (military women wear make-up)

9. Composition Numbers • What difference does the kind of group make on group gender/sex behaviors? • Orchestra study: women less satisfied when they were in orchestras with 90% or more men than when in orchestras with 40-60% women but esp. dissatisfied where 10-40% women. Men less satisfied when women were greater than 10% but less than 40%. • Conclusion: once women become greater than 10% they gain power and cannot be overlooked—tightened identity group boundaries, increased cross-group stereotyping and conflict, less social support across gender boundaries, heightened personal tension.

10. Organizations/Institutions Defined • Groups exist as an organization: a social unit established to pursue a particular goal. Organizations have boundaries, rules, procedures,means of communication, social practices. • Organizations exist as institutions: more abstract, all-encompassing organizations that are established as the society’s standards or rules of the game, central logic, structures • Example: FIU is a university organization by itself but represents the institution of public higher education in the state and nation.

11. Institutional Frameworks • Social organizations and institutions provide the frameworks for masculinities and femininities to be performed. • Institutional content reveals culture’s concepts and ideas about what it means to be male/female in particular society at particular time • Goffman: organized sports framework for performance of masculinity as endurance, strength, competition

12. Gendered Institutions • “Gender is present in the processes, practices, images and ideologies, and distributions of power in the various sectors of social life.” (Acker in Wharton p. 65) • U.S. institutions created, dominated, symbolically interpreted by certain kinds of elite men • Kind/type of organization, structure/function of organization, everyday social practices/interactions get sex/gender • Practices are powerful and taken-for-granted • Gender distinctions are daily produced/reproduced

13. Org/Institution Examples: Sports • Who is more likely to play sports? Males or females? Everybody plays a sport but organized sport favors men over women • How are sports structured in U.S. social life?

14. Media coverage of sports • How does the media cover women’s sports? Men’s sports? • Television, pay-per-view. “Monday Night Sports” for men? Where are women’s sports on t.v.? Who watches what? • Newspapers devote 80% of sports coverage to men’s sports • Boundary challenging 1995 Nike ad: “If You Let Me Play.” 1) Content of ad—what did it say? 2) Reception to the ad—how did people interpret it? Wealthier/more educated women more cynical/skeptical about it? Why?

15. Sports Funding • Where is the money in sports? Who gets it and how do they get it? College football teams versus college cheerleading or dance teams • Title IX? What is it and what difference did it make to women’s sports in schools? Men’s Sports?

16. Sport Values • What cultural value of being male or female get attached to which sport? • How is a particular sport masculinized/feminized? Think of Olympic sports. • How is an American conception of masculinity/femininity enacted and reproduced in sports?

17. Another Example: Education • Sex composition of teaching: pre-school/elementary school female; higher education male (white male college professors about ½, white women 27.9%, women and men of color 14%.) More likely to be taught by women in community college, more likely to be taught by men in university. • In higher education fields where women predominate, more likely to be taught by women. Examples? Women half of faculty in education, less than 5% in engineering. More African-American women in education than elsewhere. ¾ of all education degrees go to women. • Classroom composition by discipline

18. Changing Higher Education • Women getting more B.A. degrees, men getting less—over half of B.A.’s today female (56%), M.A. majority, PhD 40%. • Major changes over time: 1970—women were ¼ of biology degrees, less than 10% of business degrees, 1% engineering; 1997—women over half biology degrees and just under half business degrees, men 80% engineering degrees.

19. Institutional Patterns • Gendered institutions’ perspective focus on organizations/institutions in creating gender • Sources of cultural beliefs about sex/gender • Sources of gender scripts that become guides to action • Organizations/institutions have gender logics and schemas • Patterns are self-perpetuating, take on a life of their own, and are taken-for-granted • Practices and patterns are both conscious and implicit • Group dynamics form consensus around gender practices that enable production/reproduction • Disparate treatment and impact of patterns

20. References • Wharton Chapter 3 • Deborah Tannen, You Just Don’t Understand (1990); Talking 9 to 5 (1994) • Sarah Fenstermaker and Candace West, Doing Gender, Doing Difference (2002) includes West/Zimmerman ref. • Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation (1977) • Erving Goffman, “The Arrangement Between the Sexes” (1977); Gender Advertisements (1979)