Doing Gender• Doing sex/gender takes place in everyday social interactions

and contexts.• Social interactions are dependent on use of language—

referred to as “discourse” studied by “socio-linguists” like Deborah Tannen, most popular gender linguist.

• “Asymmetries” & cross-purposes: women “rapport talk”and men “report talk” differences in concern with status (contest, competition as bonding) and relationships (community)

• Study of speech: interruptions, overlaps, intonation, content. • Fishman: women had to ask more questions, fill more

silences, use attention-getting beginnings to be heard.

Creating Sex Differences• West/Zimmerman say “doing gender” means

creating gender differences that are not natural or essential, but reinforce “essentialness” of sex difference. Situations create depictions in everyday interactions.

• Labels in language create “essential” differences: Goffman—different bathrooms for “ladies” and “gentleman” while nothing biologically different requiring toilet segregation. (used as reason for conservatives against Equal Rights Amendment in 1970s/80s)

Group Composition

• We enact sex/gender not just as individuals in dyads but in group contexts

• Status characteristics theory tells us that interactional styles are more a matter of a group’s sex composition and task orientation than of individual personality

• Group’s sex composition helps to determine how gender will shape group interaction

“Skewed” groups and behavior

• Kanter studied “tokens” and “dominants” in “skewed” groups (one social type is numerically dominant and other is 15% or less)

• 3 Relational patterns: visibility, contrast, assimilation

Visibility • Tokens are performing under different conditions

than dominants:• Tokens are more easily noticed• Are subject of gossip and scrutiny• Behavior said to be because of social category

membership than individual personality• A response to “performance pressures” is to

overachieve but try to avoid resentment of dominants• Either emphasize uniqueness or keep a low profile

and try to be invisible

Contrast• Token presence threatening to dominants because

creates uncertainty for dominants• Dominants take-for-granted behaviors and interactions

with each other but cannot with tokens• Dominants perform “boundary heightening” behaviors

—exaggerating and affirming difference from tokens (ex. For women, dominants’ focus on colleague mother/therapist role than their worker/performer role)

• Extreme reaction—isolate, exclude from social interaction (females not invited to male activities)

Assimilation• Dominants see individuals as representatives of

their social category group.• Attribute social category stereotype to token• Social “role encapsulation” force tokens into

stereotypical roles (female secretaries get coffee for male bosses)

• Social “role trap” constrains tokens to stereotypical roles

Expectation States• Dominants not always male or tokens female• U.S. society expectation is that males are more competent

(attributed higher status with more positive expectations) females less so (attributed with lesser expectations more negative evaluations)

• What happens when men are tokens and women are dominants? Ex. Floge/Merrill on male nurses; research on male elementary school teachers. Expectation states still operate-- Chris Williams says ”glass elevator” for token males

• Tokens create alternative occupational identities—reassert masculinity in other ways (male temp workers rename secretary as bookkeeper, refuse deference performance), reassert femininity (military women wear make-up)

Composition Numbers• What difference does the kind of group make on

group gender/sex behaviors?• Orchestra study: women less satisfied when they

were in orchestras with 90% or more men than when in orchestras with 40-60% women but esp. dissatisfied where 10-40% women. Men less satisfied when women were greater than 10% but less than 40%.

• Conclusion: once women become greater than 10% they gain power and cannot be overlooked—tightened identity group boundaries, increased cross-group stereotyping and conflict, less social support across gender boundaries, heightened personal tension.

Organizations/Institutions Defined

• Groups exist as an organization: a social unit established to pursue a particular goal. Organizations have boundaries, rules, procedures,means of communication, social practices.

• Organizations exist as institutions: more abstract, all-encompassing organizations that are established as the society’s standards or rules of the game, central logic, structures

• Example: FIU is a university organization by itself but represents the institution of public higher education in the state and nation.

Institutional Frameworks

• Social organizations and institutions provide the frameworks for masculinities and femininities to be performed.

• Institutional content reveals culture’s concepts and ideas about what it means to be male/female in particular society at particular time

• Goffman: organized sports framework for performance of masculinity as endurance, strength, competition

Gendered Institutions

• “Gender is present in the processes, practices, images and ideologies, and distributions of power in the various sectors of social life.” (Acker in Wharton p. 65)

• U.S. institutions created, dominated, symbolically interpreted by certain kinds of elite men

• Kind/type of organization, structure/function of organization, everyday social practices/interactions get sex/gender

• Practices are powerful and taken-for-granted• Gender distinctions are daily produced/reproduced

Org/Institution Examples: Sports

• Who is more likely to play sports? Males or females? Everybody plays a sport but organized sport favors men over women

• How are sports structured in U.S. social life?

Media coverage of sports• How does the media cover women’s sports? Men’s

sports?• Television, pay-per-view. “Monday Night Sports” for

men? Where are women’s sports on t.v.? Who watches what?

• Newspapers devote 80% of sports coverage to men’s sports

• Boundary challenging 1995 Nike ad: “If You Let Me Play.” 1) Content of ad—what did it say? 2) Reception to the ad—how did people interpret it? Wealthier/more educated women more cynical/skeptical about it? Why?

Sports Funding

• Where is the money in sports? Who gets it and how do they get it? College football teams versus college cheerleading or dance teams

• Title IX? What is it and what difference did it make to women’s sports in schools? Men’s Sports?

Sport Values

• What cultural value of being male or female get attached to which sport?

• How is a particular sport masculinized/feminized? Think of Olympic sports.

• How is an American conception of masculinity/femininity enacted and reproduced in sports?

Another Example: Education• Sex composition of teaching: pre-school/elementary

school female; higher education male (white male college professors about ½, white women 27.9%, women and men of color 14%.) More likely to be taught by women in community college, more likely to be taught by men in university.

• In higher education fields where women predominate, more likely to be taught by women. Examples? Women half of faculty in education, less than 5% in engineering. More African-American women in education than elsewhere. ¾ of all education degrees go to women.

• Classroom composition by discipline

Changing Higher Education

• Women getting more B.A. degrees, men getting less—over half of B.A.’s today female (56%), M.A. majority, PhD 40%.

• Major changes over time: 1970—women were ¼ of biology degrees, less than 10% of business degrees, 1% engineering; 1997—women over half biology degrees and just under half business degrees, men 80% engineering degrees.

Institutional Patterns• Gendered institutions’ perspective focus on

organizations/institutions in creating gender• Sources of cultural beliefs about sex/gender• Sources of gender scripts that become guides to action• Organizations/institutions have gender logics and schemas• Patterns are self-perpetuating, take on a life of their own, and

are taken-for-granted• Practices and patterns are both conscious and implicit• Group dynamics form consensus around gender practices that

enable production/reproduction• Disparate treatment and impact of patterns

References

• Wharton Chapter 3

• Deborah Tannen, You Just Don’t Understand (1990); Talking 9 to 5 (1994)

• Sarah Fenstermaker and Candace West, Doing Gender, Doing Difference (2002) includes West/Zimmerman ref.

• Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation (1977)

• Erving Goffman, “The Arrangement Between the Sexes” (1977); Gender Advertisements (1979)