Describe at least two examples of how gender inequalities emerge in the workplace. How would a sociologist explain these inequities? 

 The answer to each DB must be at least 150 words – that is the minimum required to fully answer the questions. Each answer must demonstrate critical thinking and writing at a college level. Proper grammar and spelling are important and expected. The answer must completely address all issues raised in the discussion question. Additionally, any information used from another source must be cited in ASA format 

gender Human services

1. Lecture Notes: Gender and Sexuality

9.1 What Is Sex? What Is Gender?

1. Sex refers to an individual’s membership in one of two biological categories: male or female. Even in biology, these categories are not always distinct. Seventeen babies in 1,000 are born intersexed, having a variant chromosomal 

makeup

 and mixed or indeterminate male and female sex characteristics.

2. Gender refers to the physical, behavioral, and personality traits that a group considers normal, natural, right, and good for its female and male members.

3. Nature and nurture are interrelated rather than oppositional. Behavior influences biology, just as biology influences behavior. Human sexual dimorphism, the belief that anatomy defines men and women, is highly contested in modern society.

4. Essentialists see gender as immutable and biological; therefore, their view is that gender identity is an unambiguous, two-category system.

5. Most mainstream sociologists take a constructionist approach, which defines gender as socially constructed; therefore, meanings of masculinity and femininity may differ drastically in different societies and historical periods. This approach also posits more categories than just female and male.

9.2 Gender Inequality

1. Patriarchy is a form of male domination that has existed in most, if not all, past and present societies. From a patriarchal point of view, gender inequality can be traced back to biological differences in earlier societies; however, this does not explain the persistence of gender inequality in contemporary societies.

2. Macro-theoretical perspectives of gender inequality include functionalism and conflict theory.

1. Functionalists believe that certain social roles are better suited to one gender than to the other, and that societies are more stable when norms are filled by what is traditionally considered the appropriate gender. Instrumental roles are task oriented, breadwinning, and authoritative. Expressive roles are emotionally supportive and nurturing. Functionalists believe that expressive roles are better suited to women and that instrumental roles are better suited to men.

2. Conflict theorists see gender inequality as a result of exploitation. Capitalists benefit from maintaining patriarchal families, because women serve as a critical source of unpaid labor. Engels maintained that if private property were abolished, gender inequality would no longer exist, because there would be no need for an unpaid labor force to maintain the capitalist system.

3. Interactionist perspectives hold that gender is socially constructed and maintained in our everyday lives. Because we need to categorize everything in order to make sense of the world, we cannot interact with others without first determining their gender. Gender identity is a performance that provides social cues. Transgendered individuals’ sense of self and gender identity differ from their physical sex.

9.3 Gender-role socialization is the subtle, pervasive process of becoming masculine or feminine.

1. Family, the primary source of socialization, begins gender role socialization even before birth. Social learning is the process of learning behavior and meaning through interaction. Gender pervades every aspect of family life.

2. Schools continue gender-role socialization through segregation into same-sex groups and gender-stereotyped tasks. Teachers typically interact with male students in favorable ways, and textbooks still contain sexist language and gender stereotypes.

3. Peers reinforce gender stereotypes through peer pressure. Boys tend to gain prestige through 

athletic

 ability, humor, or taking risks and defying norms. Girls tend to gain prestige through social position and physical attractiveness.

4. The media are major reinforcers of gender stereotypes through television, movies, books, video games, music, music videos, magazines, and so on. Girls are pressured to conform to images and standards of beauty that they see in the media. Boys absorb portrayals of masculinity as violent, uncaring, and buffoon-like.

9.4 Sex, Gender, and Life Chances: Just as class and race do, gender affects a person’s experiences in life. As with these other social categories, the effects are not causal or easily separated.

1. Family: Single women head more than 16.7 million households, whereas single men head only 2.3 million. And although more women are participating in the paid labor force, they are still responsible for a large proportion of the unpaid labor within the home.

2.

Health

: Women have longer life expectancies than men; however, the gap may be closing as more women engage in stress-related behaviors, such as working outside of the home, smoking, and drinking alcohol.

3. Education: Women are more likely than men to finish high school and attend college. However, men are likelier than women to earn 

college degrees

, and they earn more money per degree granted.

4. Work and Income: Many jobs are gender segregated, with female-dominated jobs paying far less on average than male-dominated jobs. Also, at the high end of the pay scale, the discrepancy between males’ and females’ earnings increases. The feminization of poverty results from a combination of social forces, including the gender gap in wages, the higher proportion of single women taking on financial responsibility for children, and increasing costs of child care.

5. The Military: This institution is still largely hostile to women. Gender harassment is used to enforce traditional gender norms and punish violations of these norms.

6. Criminal Justice: The social construction of masculinity as aggressive, dominant, and physical translates directly into statistics regarding gender and crime. Men are likelier to commit crimes as well as be victims of violent crimes such as homicide and assault. Women are far likelier than men to be victimized by their intimate partners. Women outnumber men in arrests only for prostitution and as runaways.

9.5 Gender and Language

1. Positions of power and authority often directly emphasize the male gender in their very names.

2. The English language also seems to assume that the default category for all human experience is male. The root of words like mankind, man-made, manslaughter, and manpower assume that man means human.

3. Language conveys a double standard in sexuality for men and women.

4. Speech patterns reflect our sexist culture. Men dominate women in conversation and are more likely to interrupt.

5. Gender-neutral language is developing to reflect a change in culture.

9.6 The Women’s Movement: Feminism is a belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes and also refers to the social movements organized around that belief.

1. First Wave: This was the campaign for women’s right to vote in the early twentieth century in the United States. The suffrage movement accomplished its goal in 1920. Key players were Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony.

2. Second Wave: This was the campaign for equal access to education and employment in the 1960s and 1970s. Other issues included equal-opportunity laws, reproductive rights, and legislation against sexual harassment and marital rape. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was instrumental in addressing the sense of limitation and dissatisfaction that many women felt with their lives.

3. Third Wave: The campaign for the inclusion of all women (including nonwhite, working class, and LGBTQ women) into the feminist movement in the 1980s and 1990s. This campaign was started and embraced by U.S. college students.

9.7 The Men’s Movement:

1. The men’s rights movement argues that because of feminism, men are actually discriminated against and even oppressed in both the legal arena and in everyday life. Members of this movement suggest that feminism has created a new kind of sexism by privileging women, or by attempting to erase differences altogether.

2. The pro-feminist men’s movement argues that men’s lives, like women’s, are constrained by sexism and patriarchy, and that men should support feminism, because it will help end oppression for all people.

9.8 Sexual Orientation

1. Sexuality includes heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, and asexuality. Much research has been done to determine whether sexual orientation is genetic or cultural and environmental.

2. Sexual continuum: Kinsey argued that people are not exclusively heterosexual or homosexual, but rather fall along a wide spectrum between the two extremes. Homosexuality is sexual attraction to members of the same sex. Bisexuals are sexually attracted to both men and women. Transsexuals identify with the opposite sex, but they may be attracted to men, women, or both sexes. Asexuals have no interest in or desire for sex.

3. Sexuality and social issues include same-sex marriage rights, the repeal of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, and the passing of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

4. Homophobia is prejudice against gays, lesbians, and transgendered individuals. Even though the term suggests that this prejudice is harbored by a few maladjusted individuals who are phobic in the psychological sense, homophobia is the product of deeply institutionalized cultural values and norms that are biased toward heterosexuality.

5. Homosexual stereotypes are perpetuated by the mass media. Despite a recent move to include more homosexual characters on television, there is still little mainstream acceptance of homosexual relationships. Also, media images of gay and lesbian characters tend to fit common stereotypes.