Gender Stratification

1
Gender Stratification
2
Gender and Inequality

• Gender refers to personal traits and social
  positions that 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

3
Gender in a Global Perspective

• Israeli kibbutzim
• Margaret Meads research
• George Murdocks research
• Gender and culture
• What it means to be male or female is mostly a
  creation of society

4
Patriarchy and Sexism

• A form of social organization in which males
  dominate females
• Matriarchy
• Social dominance by women
• 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
• The costs of sexism
• Inevitability of patriarchy

5
Global Map 13-1 Womens Power in Global
Perspective
6
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

7
Gender and Peer Groups

• Playing games Janet Lever (1978)
• Boys favor team sports with
• Complex rules and clear objectives
• Girls team sports are different
• Games teach interpersonal skills and the value of
  sharing and cooperation
• Carol Gilligans gender based theory of moral
  reasoning (1982)
• Schooling educational choices

8
Role of Media

• White males have center stage
• Minorities of all kinds locked out
• Women receive roles based on sex appeal
• Advertising some changes
• The beauty myth

9
Social Stratification

• Almost 60 of all women work
• Administrative support and service sector jobs
  make up the type of work done by 50 of all
  working women
• Women hold primary responsibility for household
  duties
• On average, women earn 73 cents for every dollar
  earned by men (2000)
• Largely due to kind of work done and family
  responsibilities
• Corporate women and the glass ceiling
• Recently, 12 of richest Americans identified by
  Forbes were women

10
Figure 13-2 Men and Women in the U.S. Labor Force
11
Education, Politics Military

• Gender and education
• 56 of all associate and bachelor degrees are
  earned by women Since 1993, women also earned a
  majority of postgraduate degrees
• Nineteenth amendment (1920)
• Women active in local state politics
• 15 of all armed forces personnel were women
  (2001)
• Culture influences our views of women in the
  military

12
Minority Status of Women

• At all levels in the class system, women have
• Less income
• Less wealth
• Less education, and
• Less power than men
• Minority women
• Multilayered system of disadvantage for some and
  privilege for others

13
Violence Against Women

• Rule of thumb 150 years ago
• Sexual assaults, rapes, attempted rapes, and
  physical assaults
• Campus and university gender violence
• Wolf whistles and pinch to physical assaults
  rape culture
• Female genital mutilation

14
Sexual Harassment and Pornography

• Comments, gestures, or physical contact of a
  sexual nature that are deliberate, repeated and
  unwelcome
• 1990s rules for workplace interaction
• Causes of sexual harassment
• Culture encourages men to be sexually assertive
  and perceive women in sexual terms
• Most people in positions of power are men
• Under the effect standard a hostile environment
  involves different perceptions of the same
  behavior
• Pornography

15
Theoretical analysis of gender

• Structural-functional analysis
• Gender functions to organize social life
• Talcott Parsons complementarily roles for family
  units in order to carry out various tasks
• Social-conflict analysis
• Friedrich Engle's capitalism intensifies male
  domination

16
Feminism

• Importance of change
• Expansion of human choice
• Eliminate gender stratification
• Ending sexual violence
• Promote sexual freedom

17
Types of Feminism

• Liberal feminism
• Free to develop own talents and interests -
  individualistic
• Socialist feminism
• Pursue collective (male and female) personal
  liberation
• Radical feminism
• Eliminate idea of gender
• Egalitarian, gender-free revolution
• Opposition to feminism
• Threat to male status and self-respect
• Growing body of evidence that men and women think
  and act in different ways
• How should women improve social standing?
  Individual abilities or collective rights

18
Figure 13-4 Use of Contraception by Married
Women of Childbearing Age