Sex & Gender

1. Sex & Gender

2. What is Sex? • Sex: biological identity of being female or male • Primary & secondary sex characteristics • Issue of biological determinism • Social behavior explained by sex characteristics

3. So What is Gender? • Socially, culturally defined attitudes, behaviors, activities appropriate for each sex • gender socialization • gender roles: expected behavior for being female or male • normative • femininity, masculinity • stereotypes • gender identity: how individual comes to see self as woman or man

4. An Example in 2004……

5. Sexuality • Sexuality: constructing and negotiating erotic relationships • Normative behavior based on gender role expectations • Sexual orientation: preference for emotional-sexual relationship • Heterosexual • Homosexual • Bisexual • Heteronormative society

6. Are Men Genderless? • Addressing consciousness of masculinity • Hegemonic masculinity: ideology that asserts dominant pattern of masculinity as: • White, male, middle class, heterosexual, intelligent, athletic, able-bodied, successful • Subversive masculinity • Multiple masculinities

7. The Social Construction of Gender (Lorber, 1996) • “Gender is a human invention…gender organizes social relations in everyday life as well as the major social institutions, such as social class and the hierarchies of bureaucratic organizations.” • Gender IS a social institution • Gender is a continuous process • “doing gender”

8. Gender Stratification • Unequal access to wealth, power, prestige based on gender • Differential distribution of economic, political, social resources • All societies stratified by gender • Historically, men have benefited • Men: dominant (majority) • Women: minority