Lesson 3: Culture
and Ideology
Introduction to Women’s Studies
Robert Wonser
Lesson 4: Culture and Ideology
2
The Social Construction of Reality
Reality is created, negotiated and agreed
upon (that is, constructed) socially,
through social interaction.
 The world exists before we’re born but we
help (re)create the world by interacting
with others.

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Social Construction of a Gendered
Reality

Because
boys will
be doctors
And girls will be
ballerinas…
Lesson 4: Culture and Ideology
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Grounds Rules for Studying
Gender

A few assumptions:
 Social
life is socially based and politically
(power) structure.
 There are many ways in which we could
categorize and label the world
 Once we have made up categories or
concepts, it is easy to reify them
 That is, to treat them as real and universal
and to forget that we made them up.
 Gender is part of a network of inequalities
Lesson 4: Culture and Ideology
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Gender in the larger world

Gender is a product of interactions between
people, but is also built into the structures that
organize societies
 Researchers
state individuals “perform” or “put-on”
gender, which shows flexibility and social creation
of gender
 Occupations, restrooms, shoes, deodorants, etc.
are gendered (morning routine anyone?)
 This makes gender seem “real” and tangible

But it’s important to remember that because
societies and contexts are constantly changing,
gender is constantly changing.
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Social factors come together to
create our gendered experiences

Three levels:
 1) the individual level of social learning and
psychological sex differences
 2) at the interactional level of social
relations in everyday life
 3) at the level of structural and institutional
forces that constrain and shape action
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Gender Lenses of Androcentrism,
Polarization, and Essentialism

Different ways we see are socialized to
view gender from our culture:

1) androcentrism or, male-centeredness,
makes everything male appear the neutral
norm, the universally human.
 Ex: “he” to
 What if …
refer to men and women
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If Men Could Menstruate




“the characteristics of the powerful, whatever
they may be, are thought to be better than the
characteristics of the powerless—and logic has
nothing to do with it.” – Gloria Steinem
Menstruation would become an enviable,
boastworthy masculine event.
Men would brag about how long and how much.
MENstruate
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Gender Lenses of Androcentrism,
Polarization, and Essentialism

2) gender polarization refers to the ways
that diverse aspects of human experience
are culturally linked to sex differences.
 Examples:
 Cultural
items, emotions are either male or
female.
 Girls wear pink, men are rational.
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Gender Lenses of Androcentrism,
Polarization, and Essentialism

3) essentialism is the view that gender is
a fixed biological or social trait that does
not vary among individuals or over time.
Traits are inborn and immutable.
Also used to argue racial and ethnic
traits are inborn.
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Western beliefs about sex and
gender



Generally taught there are only 2 genders,
and any deviation is unnatural
Also emphasize biological sex, and are
taught gender stems from biology
However, not all men and women are all the
same, all the time.
 Need
to use Sociological Radar to question our
own observations and experiences of gender
 Behavior is flexible, and is based more on
situations and contexts – not biological differences
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Biological variations

Western culture teaches “sex” is
biological, and “gender” is cultural.
 But
there are many variations in DNA, sex
chromosomes, etc., and biology and
culture are inseparable
 Many “intersexed” individuals don’t fit
either sex/gender category

Hormonal research shows men and
women are more similar than different
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So what is gender?
It’s NOT sex – biology doesn’t cause
differences in behavior
 It’s NOT concrete – it changes with
times, places, individuals, etc.
 It IS a human invention – a way to sort
and organize people

 It’s
a way to organize societies and how
resources are allocated, and is a basic part
of how people see themselves and others
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Gender Inequality




Gender inequality can be found in all past and
present societies.
The activities that women could participate in were
limited because they had less physical strength and
because of the demands of bearing and raising
children.
Men delivered the most important resources to the
group, such as food from hunting or land from
warfare, and became powerful by controlling the
distribution of these resources.
There are several sociological theories that attempt
to explain why this inequality has persisted in
contemporary societies. We’re going to discuss
several of these theories now.
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Theories on Gender Inequality

Functionalists:
 Believe
that there are social roles better
suited to one gender than the other, and that
societies are more stable when certain tasks
are fulfilled by the appropriate sex.
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Theories on Gender Inequality
(cont’d)


In the 1950s, Talcott Parsons
advanced the idea that the
nuclear family effectively reared
children to meet the labor
demands of a capitalist system.
According to Parsons:
 Men were more suited for an
instrumental role (the person
who provides the family’s
material support and is often
an authority figure).
 Women were more suited for
an expressive role (the
person who provides the
family’s emotional support and
nurturing).
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Theories on Gender Inequality
(cont’d)

Conflict theorists:
 Believe
men have historically had access to
most of society’s material resources and
privileges. Therefore, it is in their interest to try
to maintain their dominant position.
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Theories on Gender Inequality
(cont’d)

Interactionists emphasize how the
concept of gender is socially constructed,
maintained, and reproduced in our
everyday lives.
 Predicated
in the constructionist approach
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Gender Role Socialization

Gender role
socialization is the
lifelong process of
learning to be masculine
or feminine, primarily
through four main agents
of socialization: families,
schools, peers, and the
media.
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Gender Role Socialization (cont’d)

Families are usually the primary source of
socialization and greatly impact gender
role socialization.
 Social
learning theory suggests that the
babies and children learn behaviors and
meanings through social interaction and
internalize the expectations of those around
them.
 remember:
we learn gender, we are not born
knowing who wears pink
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What does this tell girls?
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Gender Role Socialization (cont’d)
Schools also socialize children into their
gender roles.
 For instance, research shows that
teachers treat boys and girls differently.
 This may teach children that there are
different expectations of them, based on
their sex.

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Gender Role Socialization (cont’d)
In Western societies, peer groups are an
important agent of socialization.
 Teens are rewarded by peers when they
conform to gender norms and stigmatized
when they do not.

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Gender Role Socialization (cont’d)

Finally, there is no
question that sex-role
behavior is portrayed
in a highly
stereotypical manner
in all forms of the
media: television,
movies, magazines,
books, video games,
and so on.
Lesson 4: Culture and Ideology
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A 1975 survey of
children’s books found
that boys played active
roles but girls were
frequently passive. What
messages about gender
roles might readers learn
from this Dick and Jane
book?
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Gendered Language

Even our language and vocabulary tend to
reflect a hierarchal system of gender
inequality.
 What’s
the difference between a stud and slut?
 Mankind, mailman, guys
 The riddle about the doctor?
 Punctuate this sentence:

Woman without her man is nothing
Lesson 4: Culture and Ideology
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Both photographs of women in China were
taken in 1900. The photo to the left shows a
woman with what appears to be extremely
small feet. To get that artificially small size,
women must break and bend the four lower
toes back and under toward the heel.
The photo to the right shows feet
that have been bound but without
the covering or shoe. Notice how
the big toe is prominent while the
other toes have been bent under
and the arch has been pushed 28
up.
Lesson 4: Culture and Ideology
The photo to the rights shows a woman
with feet that have not been bound sitting
next to a woman with one bound food
covered with a tiny shoe and her other
foot without a shoe. Notice how lifeless
and malformed the uncovered foot
appears.
X-ray of bound feet, 1923
Lesson 4: Culture and Ideology
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This image is from the late
1800s/early 1900 in the
United States.
We see a woman's torso with
waist bound so that it
appears about 18 inches in
diameter.
Some women removed lower
two ribs to achieve this effect.
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This illustration is from the
late 1800s/early 1900 in the
United States. The
illustration on the left shows
a normal woman's torso and
the illustration on the right
shows a waist bound so that
it appears about 18 inches in
diameter. The small print
under the illustration to left
warns that to achieve a
waistline small in diameter
the lungs must be contracted
and liver, stomach and
intestines are forced down
crowding the womb seriously.
Lesson 4: Culture and Ideology
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Are there contemporary counterparts to foot
binding and 18-inch waists?
“Acute Right Ventricular Failure Following
Cosmetic Injection of Silicone” - American
College of Chest Physicians, 2011
“Designer vagina surgery: Demand for
cosmetic gynecology has never been
higher. And for plastic surgeons, business
is booming” - The Guardian, 2011
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