Gender performativity

Examples of Gender performativity in the following topics:

• The Social Construction of Gender

  • Social constructivists propose that there is no inherent truth to gender; it is constructed by social expectations and gender performance.
  • Butler's most known work is Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, published in 1991, which argues for gender performativity.
  • The repetitious performances of "male" and "female" in accordance with social norms reifies the categories, creating the appearance of a naturalized and essential binary.
  • Gender is never a stable descriptor of an individual, but an individual is always "doing" gender, performing or deviating from the socially accepted performance of gender stereotypes.
  • These performances normalize the essentialism of gender categories.

• Gender Socialization

  • Gender socialization is the process of teaching people how to behave as men or women.
  • In regards to gender socialization, the most common groups people join are the gender categories male and female.
  • Even the categorical options of gender an individual may choose is socialized; social norms act against selecting a gender that is neither male or female.
  • This clearly demonstrates the influence of socialization on the development of gender roles; subtle cues that surround us in our everyday lives strongly influence gender socialization.
  • Research has found that adolescents encounter stereotypes of gendered performance in the workforce in their first jobs.

• Gender and Research

  • Gender, and how it is shaped by societal influences, is an important focus of much sociological research.
  • Sociological research will study such things as social stratification between genders, the socialization of gender, influences of sexism on educational performance, gender and mass media, inequality in the workplace, gender roles and social norms , and other gender-related topics and social phenomena.
  • Other conceptions of gender influenced by queer theory see gender as multidimensional, fluid and shifting; something that cannot be plotted linearly at all.
  • Sex and gender research, therefore, focus on different areas of study.
  • Gender refers to social or cultural distinctions associated with being male or female (Diamond 2002).

• Gender and Health

  • Disparities in health services play out based on different systems of stratification, such as gender.
  • The World Health Organization defines gender as the result of socially constructed ideas about the behavior, actions, and roles a particular sex performs.
  • Researchers also find health disparities based on gender stratification.
  • This often means a focus on gender-equality, ensuring participation, but includes an understanding of the different roles and expectations of the genders within the community.
  • Examine the role gender plays in health care services, particularly for women

• Gender Discrimination

  • Gender discrimination refers to prejudice or discrimination based on gender, as well as conditions that foster stereotypes of gender roles.
  • Gender discrimination, also known as sexism, refers to prejudice or discrimination based on sex and/or gender, as well as conditions or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on gender.
  • Gender stereotypes are widely held beliefs about the characteristics and behavior of women and men.
  • They can also facilitate or impede intellectual performance, such as the stereotype threat that lower women's performance on mathematics tests, due to the stereotype that women have inferior quantitative skills compared to men's, or when the same stereotype leads men to assess their own task ability higher than women performing at the same level.
  • A poster depicting gender stereotypes about women drivers from the 1950s

• Gender Roles in the U.S.

  • There has been significant variation in gender roles over cultural and historical spans, and all gender roles are culturally and historically contingent.
  • Much scholarly work on gender roles addresses the debate over the environmental or biological causes for the development of gender roles.
  • Gender role theory posits that boys and girls learn to perform one's biologically assigned gender through particular behaviors and attitudes.
  • The division of labor creates gender roles, which in turn, lead to gendered social behavior.
  • While some claim that this was a sexist structure, others maintain that the structure simply represented a division of labor, or a social system in which a particular segment of the population performs one type of labor and another segment performs another type.

• Gender Bias in the Classroom

  • Gender-based achievement gaps suggest the existence of gender bias in the classroom.
  • If test score gaps are evidence of gender bias, where does that gender bias come from?
  • Teachers may interact with boys and girls in ways that reinforce gender roles and gender inequality.
  • In fact, the latest national test scores, collected by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, show that girls have met or exceeded the reading performance of boys at all age levels; by fourth grade, boys have fallen two years behind girls in their reading and writing skills.
  • The gendering of school subjects may, in itself, lead to gender bias in the classroom, and, further down the line, gender inequality in the workforce.

• Gender

  • In other words, as a social construct, gender is learned, symbolic, and dynamic.
  • This pattern of gendered socialization continues throughout our lives.
  • This is done in a number of ways, such as indicating independence, showing control, and entertaining or performing for others.
  • All of us are capable of speaking, and do speak, the language of multiple gender cultures.
  • Differences in gender communication styles can sometimes lead to less effective communication.

• Theories of Gender Differences

  • Sociologists and other social scientists generally attribute many of the differences between genders to socialization (note that even physiological differences mirror existing gender socialization processes).
  • In gender socialization, the groups people join are the gender categories, "cisgender women and men" and "transgender people".
  • Preparations for gender socialization begin even before the birth of the child.
  • One illustration of early life gender socialization can be seen in preschool classrooms.
  • Of the 11.5 million cosmetic surgeries performed in 2005, women accounted for 85% to 90% of them.

• Leadership and Gender

  • Studies on the role of gender in leadership success show mixed results.
  • The trend has provided an opportunity to examine differences in how men and women perform in the role of leaders.
  • Other studies show similar results, challenging the notion that leaders' sex shapes their performance as a leader.
  • Management guru Rosabeth Moss Kanter studied men and women in a large corporation and found that differences in their behavior resulted not from gender but from organizational factors.