Social Construction of Gender

1. Social Construction of Gender

2. Gender as…. • Social Institution • Social Process • Structure

3. Social Institution • Built in societal norms and expectations • Institution of marriage, family, employment, education, etc. • Limitations and Accepted notions

4. Social Process • Creates distinguishable social statuses for the assignment of rights and responsibilities. • “Human beings produce gender, behaving in the ways they learned were appropriate fro their gender status…” (116). • Results in societal-built in norms and expectations.

5. Structure • Divides work in the home and in economic production • Legitimates those in authoritarian positions. • Organizes sexuality and emotional life. • Stratification System • Man = A • Wo-man = Not A

6. Privilege, Power and Gender • “Conversely, because they are the superior group, white men do not have to do the ‘dirty work,’ such as housework; the most inferior group does it, usually poor women of color.” (117)

7. Gender and the Social Order • “The social order, as we know it in Western societies is organized around racial, ethnic, class, and gender inequality….therefore the continuing purpose of gender as a modern social institution is to construct women as a group to be the subordinates of men as a group.” (118)

8. Four propositions to the Technologies of Gender • 1) Gender is a representation • 2) Gender is constructed • 3) Changes over time. • 4) Affected by the deconstruction. • Technologies of Gender: Essay on Theory, Film, and Fiction ” by Teresa de Lauretis

9. T-P-S Questions • 1) How do Beyonce and Lauryn Hill do gender? • 2) How is their work, style, existence a gendered performativity? • 3) What relationship does gender have to society? • 4) What is meant by the ‘male gaze’? • 5) What is meant by the “politics of containment”?