Gender Studies

This was a final paper submitted to a Gender Studies class. 

Gender as a concept and institution influences the individual through other institutions such as work, family, media, and sports. Borrowing from Connell and Pearse (2018), gender is defined as “the structure of social relations that centers on the reproductive arena, and the set of practices that bring reproductive distinctions between bodies into social processes.” Further, gender is done and practiced in daily life in accordance to what is considered normal within one’s sex. Therefore, we see that are men expected to act like men and women are expected to act like women (Connell and Pearse, 2018). However, gender is a process that must be maintained, socially embodied, and expressed. By acting, one’s gender is reinforced and because sexuality intersects and can reinforce one’s gender, we can observe the high school boys accounted in Pascoe (2012)’s book using sexualized and gendered slurs such as fag and gay. By using such insults, boys reaffirm and strengthen their gender—their masculinity. While reaffirming their own masculinity, they can also put down another’s masculinity by using the word fag. To be a fag, one only must be unmanly or have done something that is the opposite of masculine (Pascoe 2012). Theoretically, one can be male, gay, and masculine, but the chances of that may be low according to Pascoe (2012). Clothes and actions are often mentioned as factors that play into how masculine or not masculine someone is in Pascoe’s book. Fags are thought to care about their style of clothes than those who were not fags. Masculine men, however, are not supposed to care too much about their style or whether their clothes are clean. Pointing out and labelling actions and people as fags is a form of gender policing on the part of students in the high school Pascoe observed.

However, students are not alone in gender policing students and guiding normative behavior. Teachers also play a role. Many of the teachers observed by Pascoe did not punish students for using slurs such as fag and gay. Heterosexist, homophobic, and heteronormative discourses were common throughout a high school and sometimes incorporated within lectures or demonstrations as observed by Pascoe. Rituals, plays, and performances that are allowed by the administration of the school can reflect and affirm the heteronormative perspective. In Pascoe’s example, the school’s skit linked masculinity with getting girls and being physically tough. The more masculine one is, the more girls they can get. This ties into hegemonic masculinity and homosociality. Hegemonic masculinity is both at the top of the gender hierarchy and the gendered practice of supporting gender inequality (Pascoe 2012). Homosociality contributes to hegemonic masculinity and includes emotional detachment, competitiveness, and sexual objectification of women (Bird, 1996). Emotional detachment can include suppressing emotions that may be regarded as feminine. Competitive behavior is demonstrated so to not present one’s self as feminine and a way to assert dominance over those who are less masculine and more feminine. This sort of behavior can be seen in the behavior of males that bullied Ricky, a gay male, in Pascoe’s book. Other behavior can include the boasting of one’s sexual experience and the amount or quality of a girl had by a male. These sorts of behaviors are a sort of maintenance of masculinity. Apart from school being an institution that serves as an institutional level from which to disseminate gendered meanings and normative behaviors, gender itself is an institution.

Defining characteristics of an institution can be found in the concept of gender. Some of those characteristics include distinct social practices, a legitimating ideology, and organized by power (Risman 2004). Gender, then, as an institution or social structure can be used to justify gender inequality or gendered practices which can be studied. On the individual level, gender as an institution reproduces gender and gender inequality by means of socialization and internalization; on a cultural level, reproduces gendered expectations, biases, and othering; institutionally, ideology, distribution of resources, and legal regulations are reproduced (Risman 2004). Similarly, on an individual, cultural, and institutional level, there is a bias against females that discourages them from entering the STEM fields. There has been increasing pressure and attempts to increase the female participation within STEM, but the gender segregation in the field is one that will take some time to overcome. Employers seeking analytical employees may often hold biases against females by thinking that women do not possess what is often attributed to masculinity: analytical and reasoning skills (Thébaud and Charles 2018). This is coined as the demand-side explanation for the gendered segregation of the STEM field. Preconceived notions of skills and attributes based on gender held by the employer, in other words. On an institutional level, the gendered employment patters have been set by policy and tradition. Females, thought to be more apt in social work, care-taking, childcare, and the likes have been reproduced enough to where it is certain fields of work become normative of a gender. This contributes to the deep divide between male and female dominated fields of work and why certain jobs tend to be dominated by a certain gender. Men tend to work in careers that are primarily technical or labor-intensive while women work in fields that are thought to be naturally complimentary to feminine traits. Further, gendered and cultural stereotypes can influence aspirations. Gendered stereotypes can influence the supply-side by suggesting that aptitudes and affinities are gendered (Thébaud and Charles 2018). Stereotypes set expectations of normative behavior or aptitudes as well. An example of this shows in Cottingham’s (2014) research.

Nursing, as a profession, is a predominately female field with recruiters seeking to appeal to some men. In the media used by recruiters, there was found to be an emphasis on certain hegemonic and nonhegemonic masculine traits used to appeal to different masculinities embodied in their targeted audience. The emphasis on certain masculine traits such as technical and rational skills as well as an emphasis on risk-taking, adventure, and athleticism are pointed out by Cottingham’s analysis. While this may entice or appeal to the target demographic of males, it is gendered in its approach and reproduces hegemonic masculinity within a field populated by women. This creates two of several problems. Supporting hegemonic masculinity also serves to support gender inequality and hegemonic masculinity’s superordinate position on top of the gender hierarchy. Second issue that presents itself is that men sometimes must negotiate their masculinity with their career choice. Often seen as a female designated career choice, the caring aspect of being a nurse conflicts with hegemonic masculinity which does not encourage being caring or showing emotion. This can demonstrate how gendered norms carry over into the workforce as it does family.

Low-income black single mothers, for example, attempt to protect their kids with a racialized and gendered strategy: brothermothering. Elliot, Brenton, and Powell (2017) in their research found that these mothers tend to use one of their elder sons as a father figure for the younger children. This is in part due to how there is a cultural emphasis on a two-parent family. The mothers feel unable to properly take care of their children without a father, so they use their elder son as a sort of make-shift dad. Unfortunately, this idea that men can take care of children in a different way from a mother is gendered and gives more power to masculinity than femininity. Economically marginalized black young women navigate the narrative formed about them by forming an identity at a distance. The narrative suggests that young black women are sexually “precocious” and at-risk for single teen pregnancy (Ray 2017). In order to navigate this narrative, young black women attempt to separate themselves from sexually active and pregnant peers by othering them. They instead focus on being self-reliant and independent while seeing their own bodies as a risk or problem that may cause them to be pregnant and stagnant their ability to be independent. The focus on self-reliance comes from the feminist empowerment model, which is largely a narrative that comes from women with privilege and the model unreliable for those without privilege. Middle- and working-class white women, for example, can rely on the empowerment model and may form care networks in order to care for their children (if they have any; Gerson 2010). “Othermothering” this may be called as these women are more likely to be capable of either hiring caretakers or finding some other means to care for their children as they work without the need of a father figure. Given the privilege had by those that formed the self-reliant empowerment strategy, the reproductive justice model receives less attention, and this causes barriers within the feminist movement. For other family types, another strategy is to employ the father as a stay-at-home dad.

The growing increase in stay-at-home fatherhood is partially caused by the lack of available work for some of the fathers. Others stay at home because they are not able to find work with a criminal background or lack the education to attain a job. Gendered expectations follow and men tend to experience their stay-at-home position negatively (Kane 2015). There is a stigma attached to being a stay-at-home father. Suspicions of not living up to the masculine expectations of a man tend to follow. Stay-at-home mothers tend to be the ones reproducing gender norms of men being the breadwinner of a family and that taking care of kids is the job of a mother.

2) Recent social movements have advocated for change in the gender system, however, there have been new challenges that have arisen to meet these social movements. Amid the MeToo movement, for example, a new way of shaming of men charged with sexual harassment or assault has appeared. Men charged with sexual crimes against women can be presented as a failed man (Pascoe and Hollander 2015). Being charged with a sexual crime is now not masculine.  A real man would not have to resort to sexual violence to get a woman is the narrative being written. Instead, being masculine should mean that you can get women without raping them and men can assert that they do not rape as a show of dominance towards the men that do rape, harass, or assault women. Further, practices associated with sexual violence may be used for masculine dominance over men and women. For instance, sharing or telling rape jokes or engaging in rape culture can be associated with a display of dominance over men and women. Anti-violence literature can also reproduce the hegemonic masculine assumptions. Pascoe and Hollander (2015) give an example where the strength is given to the man. The strength to prevent rape and the assumption that women are vulnerable and needing of protection. Such an attempt unfortunately works to reproduce gender inequality by means of supporting hegemonic masculinity.

With the rise of the MeToo movement, most of the focus has been put on acts of sexual assault, harassment, and rape. However, there are other forms of sexism that goes under the radar, so to speak. Workplace sexism can take the form of any behavior that is aimed towards women and can be described as sex discrimination or inequality (Schultz 2018). The most prevalent form of workplace sex discrimination comes in the form of nonsexual forms of sex-based harassment and discrimination. What has also gone under the radar is discrimination against nonhegemonic males within the workplace. Weinstein, for example, used homophobic slurs and gender-based insults to attack the masculinity of other men (Schultz 2018). Weinstein reportedly also assigned women to do gendered tasks, to care for his children, pick-up his medication, and other domestic labor (Schultz 2018). Other forms of nonsexual discrimination are detailed by Schultz that demonstrates the amount of work to be done to change laws to include these other forms of discrimination against women and men.

The MeToo movement that occurs in what many refer to as third wave feminism. The wave analogy is useful but misleading. The feminist movement is more so one long wave with changing approaches and visibility. The wave approach tends to focus on the most visible members of a given wave and does not account for the work done in the movement that is not highly publicized or rallied around larger groups. It also does not account for the various types of feminisms that can be found within the historical feminist movements and overlooks the diversity found within the movement in a given wave. The third wave of feminism is often characterized as the result of the erasure of grounds gained by the second wave. For the most part, the issues sought to be addressed are the same in both the second and third wave. However, there is an emphasis on collaboration, diversity, recognizing and creating a space for different forms of feminism to coexist. In a sense, third wave feminism is a continuation of the second wave but adhering to the critiques it received. Feminist movements come to be by using identity-based politics. Such politics are formed by organizing people who share a similar experience in the world. In this case, women who face oppression in a (modified) patriarchy are able to speak out against the oppression by organization with their similar experiences as a foundation for change. It is the formation of a collective. However, not every woman is a feminist, and some join the opposition.  Conservative (usually religious) proponents of the anti-feminist opposition focus on valuing women’s work and discourage the legalization of abortion.

Between the conservative anti-feminists and the pro-choice feminists are the pro-life feminists. Using the reproductive model, they seek to change the system in such a way that abortion should not be necessary. Women should be able to give birth without socioeconomic pressures discouraging them. Some pro-life feminist organizations provide various types of aid for women that may not have many privileges that would make child-caring easier. Well-intentioned, this nonetheless causes division within the feminist movement; however, the third-wave has been characterized as an increasingly inclusive movement that should allow different feminist movements to coexist. This is coalition-building and despite having differing opinions on the abortion debate, they are still united in identity-politics by claiming a stigmatized identity.  

Resources used

Bird, Sharon R. 1996. “Welcome to the Men’s Club: Homosociality and the Maintenance of Hegemonic Masculinity.” Gender and Society 10(2):120-132.

Connell, Raewyn and Rebecca Pearse. 2015. Gender in World Perspective. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Cottingham, Marci D. 2014. “Recruiting Men, Constructing Manhood: How Health Care Organizations Mobilize Masculinities as Nursing Recruitment Strategy.” Gender and Society 28(1):133-156.

Elliott, Sinikka, Joslyn Brenton, and Rachel Powell. “Brothermothering: Gender, Power, and the Parenting Strategies of Low-Income Black Single Mothers of Teenagers.” Social Problems 65:439-455.

Gerson, Kathleen. 2010. The Unfinished Revolution. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Kane, Nazneen. “Stay-at-home Fatherhoods.” Contexts 14(2):74-76.

Pascoe, C.J. 2012. Dude You’re a Fag. Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press.

Pascoe, C.J., and Jacelyn A. Hollander. 2016. “Good Guys Don’t Rape: Gender, Domination, and Mobilizing Rape.” Gender and Society 30(1):67-79.

Ray, Ranita. 2017. “Identity of Distance: How Economically Marginalized Black and Latina Women Navigate Risk Discourse and Employ Feminist Ideals.” Social Problems 65:456-472.

Risman, Barbara J. 2001. “Gender as a Social Structure: Theory Wrestling with Activism.” Gender and Society 18(4):429-450.

Schilt, Kristen and Laurel Westbrook. 2015. “Bathroom Battleground and Penis Panics.” Contexts 14(3):26-31.

Schultz, Vicki. 2018. “Reconceptualizing Sexual Harassment, Again.” The Yale Law Journal Forum.

Thébaud, Sarah and Maria Charles. 2018. “Segregation, Stereotypes, and STEM.” Social Sciences.

West, Candace and Don H. Zimmerman. 1987. “Doing Gender.” Gender & Society 1(2):125–51.