Gendered Worlds

by Aulette, Judy Root; Wittner, Judith; Blakely, Kristin

• ISBN13: 9780195371116
• ISBN10: 0195371119
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-10-10
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This exciting new text for courses in the sociology of gender brings together the multiple strands of gender and associated research reaching from local and everyday manifestations of masculinity and femininity to the gendered global forces that lie beneath today's political and social crises.To do so, each chapter builds upon four principles:*Theory and empirical data are woven together throughout each chapter, rather than relegating theories of gender into a separate, single chapter. The book gathers together much of the empirical scholarship-mainly sociological, but also interdisciplinary-that has accumulated around a long list ofsubstantive areas. Students will learn about the mass of research on violence, families, media, sports, politics, sexuality, religion, education, and bodies that ground knowledge about gender relations and structures of gender. *The authors connect local events with large-scale organizations, institutions, and global phenomena to show how power operates at the narrowest and at the broadest levels of society and how the two levels are connected. They offer both social constructionist and social structural approaches toexplain the production of inequality in face-to-face interaction within constraining institutional structures. They ask how the gendered features of our everyday lives are given life and shape by the larger institutional and organizational structures which contain them and how, in turn, we act backon those forces, shaping new forms of gendered relationships, remaking gendered worlds, and perhaps even eliminating gendered differences. *Coverage is focused on gender and gendered relationships between men and women. The authors have taken special care to make sure that readers are provided with evidence and ways of understanding how gender touches everyone's lives: both men and women. *Finally, this book takes seriously the understanding that there are important differences among women and among men. The "intersectionality" that differentially locates individuals and groups in what black feminist theorist Patricia Hill Collins called a "matrix of domination" (Collins 2000) is acore feature of each chapter. There is no way to understand gender inequality as a thing in itself, as a phenomenon that can be separated from the multiple cross-cutting inequalities of class, race, sexuality, and nation. The theory of intersectionality and the matrix of domination are conceptsthat help to show how race ethnicity, class, sexuality, and national identity shape gender identities and experiences and how gender differences contribute to differences in the impact of racial ethnic, sexual, class, and national experience.

Author Biography

Judy Root Aulette is Associate Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte.
Judith Wittner is Professor of Sociology at Loyola University, Chicago.
Kristin Blakely received her PhD in Sociology at Loyola University, Chicago, in 2008.

Table of Contents

Introduction

A Few More Inconvenient Truths

Some Ground Rules for Studying Gender

Overarching Theory of Intersectionality

Hegemonic Masculinities and Emphasized Femininities

Making History

Feminist Scholars Seeking Answers

Three Waves

Problems with the Three Waves

African Feminism

Plan of the Book

Bodies and Genders

The Standard Story

The Interplay of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

Chromosomes, Hormones, and Genes

Sexed Bodies in Other Times and Other Places: Believing is Seeing

How Many Genders are There? The Evidence from Other Cultures

Sexuality and Sexual Orientation: The Gendering of Desire

The Basis of Sexuality is Not "Either-Or", but "Both-And"

Bodies are Produced within Society

Sexuality is Socially Scripted

Erotic Relations are Historical Relations

Sexuality is Racialized, Race is Sexualized

Intersex

Embodiment and Intersexuality

A Brief History of Intersex

Intersex as Lived Reality

Intersex Activism Takes off

Intersex as a Human Rights Issue

Concluding Thoughts

Socialization

The Gender Lenses of Androcentrism, Gender Polarization, and Essentialism

Individual Level Theories: Social Roles and Social Learning

The Interactionist Theory of Gender: Gender as a Course of Action

Doing Gender

Props and Resources for Doing Gender

Gender Structures: Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Opportunity Structures

Power Structures

Relative Numbers

Gendered Organizations

Gendered Institutions

Sexuality

Sex and the City

Comparing Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors around the Globe

Changing Attitudes toward Sexuality in the U.S.Orgasm and Sexual Politics

Masturbation

The Racial Subtext of the Double Standard

Racialized Images of Women''s Sexuality

Sex Tourism

What is Your Sexuality?

Lesbian or Bisexual Chic

Competing Perspectives on Gendered Sexuality

Sexual Scripts

Violent Scripts

Resistance Scripts of The Vagina Monologues

Queer Theory

Homophobia

Heterosexism

Sex for Sale

Pornography

Gendered Porn

Feminist Censorship Debate

Prostitution

Legal Prostitution

Feminist Prostitution Debate

Sex Trafficking

Sexual Rights

Education

Elementary School Snapshots

Gender in the K-12 Classroom

What Difference Does Differential Treatment in Schools Make?

Taming Warriors in the Kindergarten Classroom

Medicalizing and Medicating Boys in Schools

Teaching Materials

High School

Math and Science and Gender

Vocational Education

Title IX, No Child Left Behind, and Single Sex Schools

SAT Scores

International Comparisons on Standardized Tests

Higher Education and Gender

What about the Boys?

Global Rates of Illiteracy

Unexpected Connections between Water and Education

Gender and Teachers

Evaluating Professors

The Correspondence Principle

Work

Wal-Mart

Paid Work

Who is in the Paid Workplace?

Equal Pay?

The Glass Ceiling

The Glass Escalator

Emotional Labor

Why is There a Wage Gap between Women and Men?

Discrimination

Subtle Tactics

Human Capital Theory

Social Structural Explanations of Pay Gap

Climbing the Ladder of Success

Bringing Politics into the Picture

How Can the Gender Gap in Promotion be Closed?

Comparable Worth

Success Stories of African American Women and the Importance of Families

Success Stories in Engineering

Retirement

When Work Disappears: Masculinity and Homeless Men

Feminization of Poverty

Unpaid Work through the Life Cycle

Why is Women''s Work Invisible?

Children and Housework

What''s behind the Way People Divide up Housework?

Socialization

Rational Choice Theory

Feminist Theory

Globalization and Gender: WID, WAD, and GAD

Families

Customary Marriage Laws

Marriage

Marriage as a Legal Contract and the Challenge of Gay Rights Activists

History of Marriage in the U.S

Marriage Promotion in the U.S

Love and Marriage

Widowhood

Parenting and Caregiving

Motherhood Mystique

Work and Family in Latino and African American Families

Working Mothers and the Mommy Wars

Welfare Mothers

Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF)

Parenting by Fathers

Men Balancing Work and Family

The Fatherhood Responsibility Movement

Biology and Parenting

Another Kind of Family Caregiving

Gendered Styles of Care Work

Grandparents and Care Work

Balancing Work and Family

International Comparisons on F

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