SOCI 210: Sociological perspectives

Agenda

Socialization
& gender

  1. Administrative
  2. Socialization
  3. Socialization of gender roles
  4. Discussion: gender boundaries

Social­ization

Two kids wearing 19th-century style suits. One of them is pointing toward the horizon.

Socialization is …

Learning
culture

  • Non-material culture
    (beliefs, practices, roles, behavior, …)
  • Material culture
    (significance and use of tools, structures, objects, …)
Photo from the bottom of three parallel escalators. The escalator on the left has everyone going down, the one on the right has everyone going up. The one in the center has nobody riding it, but painted on the steps is the message 'STAND ON THE RIGHT'

Internalizing
norms

  • Unspoken and explicit rules of behavior
  • Roles and responsibilities become “natural”
Photo of two hands engaged in a handshake.

Developing
self

  • Negotiating one’s place in society
    (roles, relationships, appropriate behavior, …)
  • Constructing identity in relation to society
Photo of a person dressed in a pilot's outfit, wearing a large mascot head shaped like a scowling bird with black spikey feathers.

Theories of socialization

An adult holding a small child in a large meadow, looking at an imposing granite mountain in front of them

Childhood development

  • The bulk of socialization occurs while one is “growing up”
  • Theories of socialization tend to focus on birth through teenage years

Psychological theories

  • Focus on developmental phases of relations, emotions, etc.
    (Freud, Erikson, Kohlberg, …)

Sociological theories

  • Focus on social expectations and roles
    (Cooley, Mead, …)
  • Looking-glass self (Cooley)
  • Roles as relations

Symbolic interactionism

  • Focus on roles, situated sense of self, and the generalized other
  • Tightly linked to theories of childhood development

Socialization of perception

Socialization shapes our fundamental experience of the world around us

Cognition

  • Spatial understanding
  • Color categories
  • Numerical reasoning
  • Musical harmony
Photo of a simple sidwalk chalk drawing of a rainbow

Judgement

  • Fairness
  • Disgust
  • Beauty
A bowl of cooked crawdads in a bright red sauce

Communication

  • Spoken/written language
  • Body language
  • Facial expressions
Photo of a pug dog, wrapped in a tattered blanket with only their sad little face exposed. They look like they are experiencing deep existential malaise.

Socialization of roles

Two WWE wrestlers looking angrily at each other before a match. The referee stands in the background scowling.

Roles shape expectations

  • Often it is not a question of general behavior.
    “What is the right/wrong way to behave?”
  • Instead, a question of role-specific behavior.
    “What is the right/wrong way for people like me to behave?”
  • Moreover, role-specific behavior is sensitive to situational context.
    “What is the right/wrong way for people like me to behave toward people like you?”
Simple diagram showing two boxes, one labeled 'Roles' and the other labeled 'Behavior' with arrows pointing back and forth between them.

Reflexivity

  • Behavior is prescribed by situated roles
  • Roles are defined by characteristic behavior

Sex
(& gender)

A hand holds a black and white pregnancy ultrasound image. Their apparently pregnant belly is visible and blurry in the background

Defining sex and gender

Sex vs gender

  • Related, contructed categories
  • Sex tends to rely on physiological characterstics
    Genome; hormones; genitalia; reproductive role; secondary characteristics
  • Gender is based on roles, expectations, behavior
    Clothing; mannerisms; language; values;
    interests; …
  • Sex and gender are both "primary" categories affecting virtually every aspect of social life
  • Sex and gender are closely linked, in particular (but certainly not exclusively) in Western societies
  • Children are commonly assigned a gender before or at the moment of birth based on sex determination
    Usually: visual inspection of genitals or chromosonal analysis
  • One-to-one link between sex and gender is a social construction
Ms. Pac-Man logo from the 1980s. Features a drawing of a heavily feminized Pac-Man with a bow on her head, blue eyeshadow, long eyelashes, red cheeks, red lipstick, high-heal shoes, and doing a sexy pose. There is a red ghost oggling her.

Untenability of binary sex

Criteria for sex determination are neither unambiguous nor consistent:

Genitalia

  • About one in 1,500–2,000 humans is born with "ambiguous" genitalia
  • About one in 500–1,000 receive “corrective” surgery at birth

Chromosomes

  • Many more than two possibilities (XX or XY)
  • Frequently does not match lived experience

Hormone levels

  • Arbitrary and contradictory
  • Inconsistent over lifecourse

Secondary sex characteristics

  • De facto standard of sex determination
  • Also ambiguous and variable

Reproductive role

  • Many people cannot reproduce regardless of sex (e.g. children)
  • Can change due to external forces

Intersex describes a person who does not fit cleanly into the normative male/female binary
(Between 0.4% and 1.7% of humans are intersex)

Black and white line drawing showing a naked idealized European man and woman standing in front of various geometric diagrams.

Social­ization
of
gender roles

Close-up hoto of a Barbie doll posed in front of a window wearing a tanktop with the words 'Be Your Self'

Gendered socialization

Closeup photo of two cupcakes. One is decored in blue with the word BOY, the other decorated in pink with the word GIRL.

Gender is among the most overtly socialized institutions

  • “Primary cultural frame” (Cecilia Ridgeway)
    Frames allow us to negotiate situations in everyday interactions and relations
  • Gender is present in virtually every domain
    Language, sexuality, employment, education, finance, …

Gendered socialization of children

  • Begins very early, often before birth
    Gender reveal parties, nursery/clothing colors, names, …
  • By age three, most children can identify gender in photographs and engage in gendered play
    Gender identity based on clothing/behavior rather than sexual characteristics
  • Boy/girl divide present in children’s preferences, behavior, and social structures

Gendered socialization

Gender role reinforcement in children

  • Toys and marketing
  • Clothing and marketing
  • School dress codes
  • Language used to talk to and about children
    “Boys will be boys” – “sugar and spice” – “pretty” – “brave” – …
  • Media representations
A baby's onesie with the text 'Lock up your daughters' written on it along with a drawing of a padlock.
screenshot from Disney's Frozen. Anna and Hans hold hands in a boat gazing into each others' eyes

Role modeling

  • Interactionist framework: children learn about gender roles by watching the behavior of others
  • Movies, games, social media
  • “…nearly half of all three- to six-year-old girls worry about being fat”
    Bloom, Lisa. “How to Talk to Little Girls.” Huffington Post (blog), June 22, 2011.

Gendered socialization

Reflexivity of gendered socialization

  • Gender categories and gendered expectations mutually reinforce one another
  • Gender boundaries are maintaned through everyday interaction and institutionalization
diagram showing two boxes with arrows pointing back and forth between them. First box: 'Doing gender: Gender identity is performed by individuals through behavior and presentation'. Second box: 'Determining gender: People are placed by others into gender categories based on normative expectations'


Gender boundaries

Diagram showing standard mens' and womens' bathroom signs, with arrows pointing in opposite directions

Westbrook & Schilt (2014)

  • Research questions?
  • Methodology?
  • Findings?

Discussion

Socially constructed categories

  • We have discussed several different social categories that can be understood as social constructs
  • E.g. race, ethnicity, disability, sex, & gender

Boundaries

  • Analyses have focused on the ways the inclusion in these categories is socially determined
  • The social deliniation of boundaries

How is the social determination of gender described by Westbrook and Schilt similar to the social determination of race? How is it different?

Image credit

Two kids wearing 19th-century style suits. One of them is pointing toward the horizon.

Photo via Wikimedia

Photo from the bottom of three parallel escalators. The escalator on the left has everyone going down, the one on the right has everyone going up. The one in the center has nobody riding it, but painted on the steps is the message 'STAND ON THE RIGHT'

Photo by Tom Parsons on Unsplash

Photo of two hands engaged in a handshake.

Photo by Cytonn Photography on Unsplash

Photo of a person dressed in a pilot's outfit, wearing a large mascot head shaped like a scowling bird with black spikey feathers.

Photo by yogurt on Unsplash

An adult holding a small child in a large meadow, looking at an imposing granite mountain in front of them

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Photo of a simple sidwalk chalk drawing of a rainbow

Photo by Alex Jackman on Unsplash

A bowl of cooked crawdads in a bright red sauce

Photo by tommao wang on Unsplash

Photo of a pug dog, wrapped in a tattered blanket with only their sad little face exposed. They look like they are experiencing deep existential malaise.

Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

Image credit

Two WWE wrestlers looking angrily at each other before a match. The referee stands in the background scowling.

Photo from WWE

A hand holds a black and white pregnancy ultrasound image. Their apparently pregnant belly is visible and blurry in the background

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

Ms. Pac-Man logo from the 1980s. Features a drawing of a heavily feminized Pac-Man with a bow on her head, blue eyeshadow, long eyelashes, red cheeks, red lipstick, high-heal shoes, and doing a sexy pose. There is a red ghost oggling her.

Image by Midway/Bally via Arcade Marquee.com

Black and white line drawing showing a naked idealized European man and woman standing in front of various geometric diagrams.

Image by NASA via Wikimedia

Close-up hoto of a Barbie doll posed in front of a window wearing a tanktop with the words 'Be Your Self'

Photo by Sandra Gabriel on Unsplash

Closeup photo of two cupcakes. One is decored in blue with the word BOY, the other decorated in pink with the word GIRL.

Photo by kgroovy on Flickr

A baby's onesie with the text 'Lock up your daughters' written on it along with a drawing of a padlock.

Product image from StoykoTs on Etsy

screenshot from Disney's Frozen. Anna and Hans hold hands in a boat gazing into each others' eyes

Still from Frozen (2013) via Animated Film Reviews

Blackless, Melanie, Anthony Charuvastra, Amanda Derryck, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Karl Lauzanne, and Ellen Lee. 2000. “How Sexually Dimorphic Are We? Review and Synthesis.” American Journal of Human Biology 12 (2): 151–66. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1520-6300(200003/04)12:2<151::AID-AJHB1>3.0.CO;2-F. Hull, Carrie L., and Anne Fausto-Sterling. 2003. “Letter to the Editor.” American Journal of Human Biology 15 (1): 112–16. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.10122. Image from the plaque attached to the Pioneer spacecraft, launched in the early 1970s by NASA

West, Candace, and Don H. Zimmerman. "Doing gender." Gender & society 1, no. 2 (1987): 125-151.