GENDER

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GENDER
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SEX AND GENDER

• Sex The biology of being male and female.
  Persons with ambiguous sexual organs often
  assigned to female category with appropriate
  sculpting.
• Gender The cultural and attitudinal qualities
  associated with being male or female.

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GENDER AND CULTURE

• Gender role The behavior society expects of a
  male or a female.
• Gender markers Symbols and signs that identify a
  persons gender.
• Cultural expectations. Across human societies
  there is a wide variety in gender roles. In
  general, 1) child care is primarily a female
  responsibility and 2) women have less power than
  men.

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GENDER AND SEXUAL ORIENTATION

• The three way link-- In general, society expects
  congruency among sex, gender, and sexual
  orientation. Hence, people with male organs get
  sorted into the male gender, and are expected to
  be heterosexual--attracted to females. Parallel
  expectations for women.
• Homosexuals and bisexuals face issues arising
  from their variance from usual expectations.

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GENDER AND POWER

• Patriarchy A social arrangement in which men
  dominate women.
• Sexual harassment Unwanted attention or pressure
  of a sexual nature from another person of greater
  social or physical power.
• SexismAn ideology that maintains that women are
  inherently inferior to men and therefore do not
  deserve as much power, prestige, or wealth.

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QUID PRO QUO HARASSMENT

• The courts have ruled that it is harassment
  whenever submission is required for employment,
  pay , or advancement.
• The courts have also ruled that it is harassment
  whenever unwanted behavior makes the work
  environment intimidating, hostile or offensive.

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CONTINUING PATRIARCHY

• Language--bitches, hos etc.
• Names--women adopting husbands name rather than
  the other way around--children and the name game.
• Content and style of interaction-- men
  interrupting women, use of armrests, restaurant
  behavior etc.
• Acting roles for men and women

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GENDER SOCIALIZATION

• Pre-birth name selection, tests
• Birth color coding, decorating, gender gifts.
• Childhood gendered toys
• Play groups sissy and tom boy
• Teenage and young adult macho
• Formal education
• advertising mass media

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The Boy Without a Penis

• He was one of a set of infant twin boys when, in
  1963, his penis was damaged beyond repair by a
  circumcision that went awry. After seeking expert
  advice at Johns Hopkins Medical School, the
  parents decided that the child's best shot at a
  normal life was as an anatomically correct woman.
  The baby was castrated, and surgeons fashioned a
  kind of vagina out of the remaining tissue.

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More on the Boy.

• When "she" grew older, hormone treatments would
  complete the transformation from boy to girl.
• The case became a landmark in the annals of sex
  research, living proof of the prevailing theory
  of the 1960's and early 1970's that sexual
  identity exists in a kind of continuum and that
  nurture is more important than nature in
  determining gender roles.

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And some more.

• Babies are born gender neutral. the experts said.
  Catch them early enough, and you can make them
  anything you want. Widely cited in medical and
  social science textbooks, the baby's
  transformation helped pediatricians confidently
  advise other parents facing similar circumstances
  to rear their wounded boys as girls.

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Continuing on..

• What these doctors and parents didn't know was
  that the celebrated sex-change success story was,
  in fact, a total failure. In a follow-up study
  published in the Archives of Pediatric and
  Adolescent Medicine, Milton Diamond, a professor
  of anatomy and reproductive biology at the
  University of Hawaii, and Dr, Keith Sigmundson, a
  psychiatrist with the Canadian Ministry of
  Health, report that

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And on...

• the child, whom they called "Joan," never really
  adjusted to her assigned gender. In fact, Joan
  was surgically changed back to "John" in the late
  1970's, and is now the happily married father of
  three adopted children
• Almost from the beginning, Diamond and Sigmundson
  write, Joan rebelled at her treatment.

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And on...

• Even as a toddler, she felt different. When her
  mother clothed her in frilly dresses, she would
  try to rip them off. She preferred to play with
  boys and stereotypical boys' toys-in one
  memorable instance walking into a store to buy an
  umbrella and walking out with a toy machine gun.
  By second grade, she had come to suspect she
  would fit in better as a boy.

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Enough already...

• But her doctors insisted that these feelings were
  perfectly normal, that she was just a tomboy. "I
  thought I was a freak or something" John told
  Diamond and Sigmundson in interviews conducted in
  1994 and 1995.

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The Real Kicker (Christine Gorman, Time)

• Unfortunately, no follow-up study reporting that
  John had rejected his initial sex change was ever
  published. As a result, say Diamond and
  Sigmundson, dozens of other boys may have been
  needlessly castrated. In defense of the original
  team, Johns Hopkins says it wasn't able to
  conduct a follow-up because the family stopped
  coming to see its doctors.

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So, where are we today?

• Nurture (socialization) builds on nature
  (biology) and defines it in a social context.
• Nurture does not cancel nature.
• Nature does not trump nurture.
• People are complex bio-psycho-social beings and
  behavior reflects that mix as well as the nature
  of the environment in which the behavior occurs.

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GENDER INEQUALITY IN THE WORKPLACE

• Sexism--discrimination
• Qualifications--preparations and experience
• Glass Ceiling--capping advancement
• Networking--the old boys network.

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GLASS CEILING

• Glass Ceiling--subtle and often unconscious
  discrimination within organizations that prevents
  women from reaching higher and better paying
  positions for which they are qualified.
• Women CEOs Of the Fortune 500 companies, only 6
  are headed by women. 393 have no women among
  their top 5 executives.

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MORE GLASS CEILING...

• Among the 24 best-paid executives working for
  those 6 CEOs, only three are women.
• Why so few, CEOs say 1) cant find women with
  the experience and qualifications needed, 2)
  women often choose staff paths(e.g. human
  resources) rather than line, 3) lingering
  gender bias

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THATCHER SYNDROME

• Margaret Thatcher Syndrome. According to Judy
  Rosener of U.Cal-Irvine, women executives tend to
  surround themselves with men as top advisers so
  as to avoid being heavily scrutinized.

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MENS WORK/WOMENS WORK

• Highest Women
• Dental Hygienists 99
• Secretaries 98
• Dental Assistants 98
• Pre and Kindergarten Teachers 98
• Child-care Workers 97
• Receptionists 96
• Licensed Practical Nurses 96
• Typists 94
• Registered Nurses 93

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More Mens/Womens Work

• Highest Men
• Auto Mechanic 99
• Construction 98
• Firefighters 98
• Airplane pilots and navigators 97
• Mechanics and Repair 96
• Truck Drivers 95
• Forestry and Logging 93
• Engineers 89
• Clergy 88

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SECOND SHIFT

• Second Shift The housework such as cooking,
  cleaning, and child care that women who work
  outside the home take on when they arrive home
  from work.
• Working women are responsible for 70 percent of
  the housework. Husbands are responsible for 15
  and children 15.

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GENDER EQUITY

• Gender Equality Equality between men and women
  under the law. (military draft?)
• Comparable Worth Equal pay for comparable jobs.

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FEMINISM

• Feminism is a counter-ideology that has arisen to
  challenge sexism and that seeks independence and
  equality for women.
• Inclusive feminism is the view that sexism is
  related to all forms of oppression and that
  feminist ideology therefore must resist all forms.