Scholarship on gender and discourse has a long, interdisciplinary history. Anthropologists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries documented differences between women’s and men’s speech in non-European cultures. However, gender differences within cultures have never been sufficient to constitute separate women’s and men’s languages. Around the early twentieth century, academics’ attention also turned to the English
Gender and journalism became a popular area of study in the mid-1990s when gender in media studies gained recognition as a powerful variable defining feminine and masculine roles and behavior and structuring everyday life and work. Earlier feminist media studies had paid attention to women in journalism and their peculiar position in a male-dominated professional
Few topics interest lay people and scholars more than how men and women might differ from each other. Sex differences refer to behavioral variations between men and women based on biological differences; gender differences refer to behavioral variations between people due to cultural, sociological, and/or psychological differences. This article focuses on the manner in which
Gender influences a wide range of career-related attitudes, behaviors, and outcomes. This includes career choice, career experiences, occupational health, work attitudes, other people’s perceptions, and career outcomes. Therefore, to understand individuals’ careers, it is important to consider gender. Gender and Career Choice Men and women differ considerably in their career choices, and many factors contribute
The study of representations of gender in the media understands gender to be socially constructed – an ongoing process of learned sets of behaviors, expectations, perceptions, and subjectivities that define what it means to be a woman and what it means to be a man. The main assumption of these studies is that a cultural
Theorizing about gender and organizations has proved a complex challenge, resulting in a body of literature that is “patchy and discontinuous” (Ashcraft & Mumby 2004, xiii). Yet, around the globe, feminist scholars tend to agree on one universal impediment to gender equity: reality emerges from the male standpoint, which shapes organizations and meanings. For the
Gender is a social and cultural categorization defined by the meanings given to biological differences between the sexes. Gender roles are the social skills, abilities, and ways of acting thought appropriate to members of a society depending upon their sex. Since the 1970s, there has been a growing anthropological interest in the construction of gender
The study of teachers and teaching has always been an important focus of sociology of education, but the analysis of links between teaching and gender has developed more recently. As Grant and Murray (1999) contend, K-12 teaching and postsecondary teaching are two different occupations and thus relationships between gender and teaching differ at each level.
Gender, work, and family is the study of the intersection of work and family, with a focus on how those intersections vary by gender. This research is motivated in large part by the tremendous growth in labor force participation among women in their childbearing years during the second half of the twentieth century. This influx
Racialized gender is a sociological concept that refers to the critical analysis of the simultaneous effects of race and gender processes on individuals, families, and communities. This concept recognizes that women do not negotiate race and gender similarly. For instance, white women’s oppression has been linked with their privilege as white people, but they have
Missing from traditional and most contemporary discussions of deviance and crime is the notion of gender. A rather accessible definition of gender can be found in most introductory sociology textbooks. For the purposes of this entry, gender is defined as the social positions, attitudes, traits, and behaviors that a society assigns to females and males
Social scientists and educational researchers paid relatively little attention to issues of gender and education until the 1970s, when questions emerged concerning equity in girls’ and women’s access to education across the world. Researchers documented a link between increasing rates of female education in developing countries and a subsequent decline in fertility rates (e.g., Boserup
The subject of gender and friendship links two fields of sociological scholarship. Gender was rarely a salient theme in pioneering studies of friendship, communities, and social networks that emerged in anthropology and sociology in the 1960s. By the 1980s, though, burgeoning gender scholarship in the social sciences ignited interest in gender and friendship. For the
Although life expectancy at birth of women in western societies is significantly longer than that of men (e.g., 80 versus 74 years in the United States), women experience more sickness and non-fatal health problems than men (e.g., higher morbidity). Specific biological and behavioral explanations for these gender differences are largely unknown. It remains unclear whether
Social movements are shaped by gender systems and they also are a source of social change in gender. Some social movements directly attempt to change gender relations; these movements, particularly women’s movements, have been the focus of considerable scholarship. Increasingly, scholars also recognize the gendered nature of other social movements and the impact of systemic
Feminist thinkers have long focused on the body as an expression of power and a site of social control. As early as 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft proclaimed that ‘‘genteel women are slaves to their bodies’’ and that ‘‘beauty is woman’s scepter’’ (Wollstonecraft 1988). Sixty years later, Sojourner Truth drew attention to how bodies are not only
Gender bias is behavior that shows favoritism toward one gender over another. Most often, gender bias is the act of favoring men and/or boys over women and/or girls. However, this is not always the case. In order to define gender bias completely, we first must make a distinction between the terms gender and sex. When
World systems theorists were among the first to use the concept of an international division of labor by illustrating how the production of goods and services for ‘‘core’’ or more developed countries relied on the material resources of ‘‘peripheral’’ or developing nations (Wallerstein 1974). Their work describes the changing political and economic relationships among nations
Gender ideology and gender role ideology refer to attitudes regarding the appropriate roles, rights, and responsibilities of women and men in society. The concept can reflect these attitudes generally or in a specific domain, such as an economic, familial, legal, political, and/or social domain. Most gender ideology constructs are unidimensional and range from traditional, conservative
Gender mainstreaming is a strategy for achieving gender equality. The approach seeks to reorganize and restructure policies, institutions, and social programs by taking women’s and men’s perspectives, experiences, and needs into consideration. Gender mainstreaming does not replace, but supplements, specific targeted interventions to address gender inequality such as affirmative action. Gender mainstreaming was first introduced
The sociology of gender is one of the largest subfields within sociology and features theory and research that critically interrogates the social construction of gender, how gender interacts with other social forces in society, and how gender relates to social structure overall. The sociology of gender examines how society influences our understandings and perception of differences
Gender, race, ethnicity, and social class are the most commonly used categories in sociology. They represent the major social statuses that determine the life chances of individuals in heterogeneous societies, and together they form a hierarchy of access to property, power, and prestige. Gender is the division of people into two categories, “men” and “women.”
Candace West and Don Zimmerman introduced the concept ‘‘doing gender’’ in an article of the same title in 1987. They were the first to articulate an ethnomethodological perspective on the creation and affirmation of gender inequality between males and females in western society. The purview of ethnomethodology includes the study of the socially managed accomplishments
Interest and research in gender and aging have progressed through a variety of different phases, each spurred by developments in both feminist scholarship and aging studies. While each stage has emerged from the previous, all can be found in contemporary theory and research. The first stage, which can be further subdivided into two approaches, involved
The history of consumerism has been shaped by gender inequality. During the colonial period, when families produced most of what they consumed, a gender division of labor prevailed in which men supplied the raw materials (e.g., wheat, flax, animals) and women transformed them into commodities for consumption (e.g., bread, cloth, meals). During industrialization, the period
Over the last half century there have been different theoretical frameworks used to understand how women are located in global economic processes, and each has had a concomitant strategy to enhance women’s position. In the middle of the twentieth century modernization approaches were common, but dependency theorists critiqued these strategies. By the 1970s these male
The reproduction of our society’s sex gender system has been a continuing puzzle for sociologists of gender. The history of western writings on gender has long included ruminations on the role of culture in constituting gender difference and privilege (Wollstonecraft 1978; Mill 2003; and especially de Beauvoir 1993). Yet during the last 40 years of
Development communication addresses issues of gender in a variety of ways. Communication projects designed to address social problems, such as health, agriculture, population, nutrition, education, democracy, and other topics, may either target women or consider gender as a way of understanding the social context in which the issue might be best addressed. In addition, development
Gender refers to the socially constructed differences between women and men, while the term ‘‘sex’’ is a reference to the biological and physical differences between males and females. Gender draws attention to the socially unequal distinction between femininity and masculinity. Femininity is used to describe characteristic behaviors and emotions of females and masculinity refers to
Rhetoric is the art and study of human symbol use. As a discipline, rhetoric began in ancient Greece as a practical art of persuasion, applied principally to political, legal, and judicial contexts. Gender refers to the cultural constructs of masculinity and femininity imposed upon biological sex by any particular culture – what it means to
Deconstructing Gender and Sex Issues of gender presence and interrelations for the past have increasingly been focused upon in the last two decades in the English-speaking archaeological community. Conkey and Spector are widely credited with the first paper to systematically examine the application of feminist approaches and insights to archaeological practice and theory. Studies were
Feminist and gender studies represent key fields of research within communication studies today. It is difficult to discuss their emergence and developments as two separate entities, as the two often overlap. However, it can be noted that mainstream forms of gender studies research tend to differ from feminist studies politically, theoretically, and methodologically. As Dow
Gender has a clear and powerful influence in society, and a particularly powerful and persistent influence in sport and exercise. Indeed, the sport world seems to exaggerate and highlight gender. Sport and physical activities remain largely sex segregated and male dominated. Gender is so embedded that trying to be nonsexist and treating everyone the same
This article delves into the intricate landscape of gender differences in contraceptive responsibility within the realm of health psychology. Against the backdrop of evolving societal attitudes towards reproductive health, the introduction highlights the significance of contraception and sets the stage for an exploration. The body of the article unfolds in three parts, beginning with an
There are differences between men and women, but most scientific studies show that gender differences in psychological characteristics are small. Men and women do not have radically different brains, personality traits, cognitive skills, or behaviors. There are some differences on average, but men and women are not the black versus white opposites that many people
Gender Roles Definition Sex roles, or gender roles, consist of the social expectations about the typical and appropriate behavior of men and women. Generally, the female gender role includes the expectation that women and girls exhibit communal traits and behaviors, which focus on interpersonal skill, expressivity, and emotional sensitivity. In contrast, the male gender role
This article on gender in school psychology delves into the multifaceted intersection of gender dynamics with education, emphasizing the significance of understanding how gender influences students’ experiences and outcomes in educational settings. It explores the historical context, disparities, and academic implications associated with gender, addressing the pivotal role of school psychologists in promoting gender equity
How men and women, and girls and boys, differ from each other has been the focus of much study in developmental psychology. Numerous newspaper and magazines articles on the topic of gender differences attest to their importance outside developmental psychology as well. Gender refers to the societal, social, and behavioral ways that are associated with
All children learn that they are either male or female, but what meaning do they give to the fact that they are one sex and not the other? In all cultures, boys and girls are expected to behave differently, and thus it is likely that children worldwide occasionally reflect on questions such as these: Am
Gender is one of the most central attributes people have and an object of endless interest across all societies. Thus it should not be surprising that children are also aware of gender-related characteristics and quickly come to display those qualities themselves well before their own sexual maturity. What is surprising is just how early gender
This article explores the intricate relationship between gender identity and testosterone therapy within the realm of health psychology. The introduction elucidates the foundational concepts of gender identity and testosterone, emphasizing their significance in the field. The body of the article unfolds in three parts, firstly exploring the biological underpinnings of gender identity, encompassing prenatal and
This article explores the intricate dynamics of gender differences in stress responses, offering a comprehensive exploration grounded in the principles of health psychology. The introduction elucidates the critical role of stress in health and underscores the necessity of dissecting gender-specific responses to stressors. The body of the article navigates through biological, psychosocial, and environmental factors
This article explores the complex dynamics of gender differences in health-related social comparison within the framework of health psychology. Grounded in social comparison theory, the theoretical foundation explores the nuances of upward and downward social comparisons and their implications for health behaviors. The body of the article examines three key domains—body image and appearance, coping