Sosiologi gender
Sociology of gender is a prominent subfield of sociology. Social interaction directly correlated with sociology regarding social structure. One of the most important social structures is status. This is determined based on position that an individual possesses which effects how he/she will be treated by society. One of the most important statuses an individual claims is gender. Public discourse and the academic literature generally use the term "gender" for the perceived or projected (self-identified) masculinity or femininity of a person.
The term "gender role" was coined by John Money in a seminal 1955 paper where he defined it as "all those things that a person says or does to disclose himself or herself as having the status of boy or man, girl or woman."
A person's gender is complex, encompassing countless characteristics of appearance, speech, movement and other factors not solely limited to biological sex. Societies tend to have gender systems in which everyone is categorized as male or female. Some societies include a third gender role; for instance, the Native American Two-Spirit people and the Hijras of India. There is debate over the extent to which gender is a social construct or a biological construct.
During the 1970s, there was no consensus about how the terms were to be applied. In the 1974 edition of "Masculine/Feminine or Human", the author uses "innate gender" and "learned sex roles", but in the 1978 edition, the use of "sex" and "gender" is reversed. By 1980, most feminist writings had agreed on using "gender" only for socioculturally adapted traits.
Liberal feminism is the belief that individuals should be free to develop their own talents and pursue their interests. Individuals seek to expand equality by removing the barriers in society. Socialist feminism thinks that capitalism strengthens patriarchy by concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a few. The traditional family structure should be replaced by a collective revolution. In Radical feminism, they believe that patriarchy is so deeply rooted in society that even a sociological revolution would not end it; Society must eliminate gender itself.
In English, both "sex" and "gender" are used in contexts where they could not be substituted (sexual intercourse; anal sex; safe sex; sex worker; sex slave). Other languages, like German, use the same word "Geschlecht" to refer both to grammatical gender and to biological sex, making the distinction between "sex" and "gender" advocated by some anthropologists difficult. In some contexts, German has adopted the English loan-word "gender" to achieve this distinction. Sometimes 'Geschlechtsidentität' is used as gender (although it literally means "gender identity") and 'Geschlecht' as sex (translation of Judith Butler's "Gender Trouble"). More
common is the use of modifiers: "biologisches Geschlecht" for "sex", "Geschlechtsidentität" for "gender identity" and "Geschlechterrolle" for "gender role" etc.
Media criticism is a reflection of the gender inequality in society through print, advertisements, television and music. Media influences and reinforces the idea of The Beauty Myth as discussed in Naomi Wolf's book, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women, which refers to unrealistic standards of beauty for women. Some argue that the mainstream media perpetuates the idea of hetero-masculinity by portraying men as dominant. Some also argue that the media objectifies and oppresses women, and men who don't fall into the heteronormative category.
Through the media, men are taught to be ultra-masculine by being desensitized, violent, and physically strong. Other forms of media that often portray the ultra-masculine figure are advertisements, specifically beer commercials. These forms encourage men to oppress other men if they do not fit the ideals of heteromasculinity.
Objectification of women refers to instances in the media in which women may be viewed as, or directly compared to, insentient objects that can be acquired and/or possessed. This can be examined in the context of advertisements, where objects may be anthropomorphized and given feminine qualities or aspects of the female form. Some studies indicate that widespread objectification of women in the media may have significant repercussions on society, such as low self-esteem and/or eating disorders among women.
Socialization theory offers a straightforward account of the acquisition of gendered identities. Infants are seen as blank slates, waiting to be written down on by their environment. Through their interactions with people close to them and exposure to the values of their society, infants learn what sex is attributed to them and what roles they are expected to learn. Reinforcement (through rewarding gender-appropriate behavior and punishing what may seem as deviant behavior) socializes children into their genders. Parents, for example, are far more likely to engage with their sons in rough physical play than they are with their daughters, and it has been argued that long-term consequences may follow (in this case, a head start for boys in the development of physical violence and aggressiveness.)
Parents and family can influence the way that a child develops their view of gender. These types of influences can include parental attitudes and difference of treatment regarding male and female children. Researcher Susan Witt claims that parents also expose children to gender from the time they are born via specific toys, colors, and names associated with genders in the binary. Witt suggests that parental attitudes about gender can differ from male to female children and that these attitudes develop quickly after a child's birth.
Author Susan Grieshaber, in "Constructing the Gendered Infant", suggests that attitudes regarding pregnancy change after parents find out the sex of their child, subsequently changing parental attitudes towards the unborn child. According to Grieshaber's theory, once parents determine the sex of their unborn child, they assume a gender while planning for the child's arrival. Because of this, Grieshaber claims that infants are born into a gendered world where they never know anything other than the gender traits that are assumed due to their sex. Dr. Kara Smith utilizes similar theory throughout the analysis of her pregnancy journals kept throughout her second pregnancy. Smith concluded that her attitude towards her child changed after learning that her child's sex was male. Smith's claim is reflected in changes in tone of
voice when talking to the unborn child as well as differences in physical touch of her stomach throughout the rest of her pregnancy. Another theory of gender socialization, discussed by Susan McHale, is that the gender roles and attitudes of older siblings can impact the gender roles adopted by younger children. Throughout the findings of McHale's study, it is maintained that parents still have the most familial influence on childhood socialization.
By the time children reach the age of three, many will have acquired a firm sense of themselves as male or female, a gender identity that remains throughout life. In addition, many pre-schoolers develop a firm awareness of gender stereotypes, insisting that certain activities or items of clothing are not for girls and others not for boys. Yet gender identity does not automatically follow from biological sex.