6.3b Gender
Another meaningful way that people are stratified is by sex and gender. Sociologists use sex and gender to refer to distinct but related phenomena (Westbrook & Saperstein, 2015). Sex and gender are socially constructed categories assigned to people by others (doctors, parents) and are also self-selected identities. Sex categorization is assigned at birth (and even before birth) based primarily on an infant’s external genitalia. Parents and others then socialize children into their assumed gender category based on their sex categorization. Gender consists of a person’s behaviors, attitudes, and presentation of self as feminine or masculine. The social group decides which biological signals (such as genitalia) decide sex and which social signals (such as interests) determine gender (Fenstermaker et al., 2002).
How Sex and Gender Are Socially Constructed
Sex and gender are essential areas of sociological research because of their importance in everyday life and in maintaining inequality. In the early 2000s, C. J. Pascoe (2011) conducted ethnographic research for 18 months in a Northern California high school. Her research focused on how sex and gender mattered for high school students. She was surprised by how students used homophobic language to regulate the behavior of all boys—heterosexual and gay. When she began doing research on a high school in Oregon in the 2010s, she found this rampant homophobia had softened a bit, but sexism had changed little.
Sexism consists of prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behaviors directed toward individuals or groups based on their perceived sex or gender. Thus, it helps to uphold inequality and structures like patriarchy.
Sexism takes different forms. For example, benevolent sexism praises women for upholding stereotypical feminine characteristics like being nice, undertaking homemaking, or being physically attractive (Pascoe, 2023). This widespread attitude is seldom even recognized as sexism. Pascoe (2023) observed how the football coach at the school she studied in Oregon, who was a man, instructed the boys to coach the girls in a powder puff football fundraising event. The coach told the boys that the girls are more intelligent and learn faster than boys. Further, he told them that they should not view this as a dating opportunity. These messages exemplify “a tradition of benevolent sexism in which women are talked about as ‘better’ than men because they are smarter, more capable, and more in control” (Pascoe, 2023, p. 108).
Photo 6.6
Powder Puff Football Is Typically Flag Football Played by Women
