gender studies

Examples of gender studies in the following topics:

• Leadership and Gender

  • Studies on the role of gender in leadership success show mixed results.
  • The studies also showed men as more goal- and task-oriented and less relationship- and process-focused than women.
  • 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.
  • In Kanter's study, men and women, given the same degree of power and opportunity, behaved in similar ways.

• Gender and 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.
  • For example, a sociologist interested in gender stratification in education may study why middle-school girls are more likely than their male counterparts to fall behind grade-level expectations in math and science.
  • Starting in the late 20th century, the feminist movement has contributed extensive study of gender and theories about it, notably within sociology but not restricted to it.
  • Theories that have contributed to gender research and the realm of gender studies include structural functionism (the theory that gender roles were originally functional; for example, women took care of the domestic responsibilities in or around the home because they were often limited by the physical restraints of pregnancy and nursing and unable to leave the home for long periods of time); conflict theory (seeing society as a struggle for dominance among social groups, such as women versus men, that compete for scarce resources); feminist theories (which use the conflict approach to examine the maintenance of gender roles and inequalities); and symbolic interactionism (which aims to understand human behavior by analyzing the critical role of symbols in human interaction).
  • Sex and gender research, therefore, focus on different areas of study.

• Gender and Health

  • One study found that women are less likely than men to be recommended for knee replacement surgery, even when they have the same symptoms.
  • Studies demonstrate the positive impact of girls' education on child and maternal health, fertility rates, poverty reduction and economic growth.
  • Researchers also find health disparities based on gender stratification.
  • One study found that women are less likely than men to be recommended for knee replacement surgery, even when they have the same symptoms.
  • 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.

• Childhood Socialization

  • Gender roles are taught from infancy through primary socialization, or the type of socialization that occurs in childhood and adolescence.
  • Gender is instilled through socialization immediately from birth.
  • Because gender norms are perpetuated immediately upon birth, many sociologists study what happens when children fail to adopt the expected gender norms rather than the norms themselves.
  • This is the standard model of studying deviance in order to understand the norm that undergirds the deviant activity.
  • Children can resist gender norms by insisting on dressing in clothing more typically associated with the other gender, playing with toys more typically associated with the other gender, or having opposite-sex playmates .

• Gender and Sociology

  • From birth, children are assigned a gender and are socialized to conform to certain gender roles based on their biological sex.
  • From birth, children are socialized to conform to certain gender roles based on their biological sex and the gender to which they are assigned.
  • Each agent reinforces gender roles by creating and maintaining normative expectations for gender-specific behavior.
  • Cross-cultural studies reveal that children are aware of gender roles by age two or three; at four or five, most children are firmly entrenched in culturally appropriate gender roles (Kane, 1996).
  • Studies have shown that children will most likely choose to play with "gender appropriate" toys even when cross-gender toys are available, because parents give children positive feedback (in the form of praise, involvement, and physical closeness) for gender-normative behavior (Caldera, Huston, and O'Brien, 1998).

• Gender

  • Studies demonstrate that educating girls and women has a positive impact on child and maternal health, fertility rates, poverty reduction, and economic growth.
  • In a given society, sexual beliefs, values, and attitudes reflect the accepted norms of that society, and individual feelings and opinions are largely bypassed in the assignment of gender and gender roles.
  • Gender-related intersections and the crossing of defined gender boundaries are generally unaccounted for in socially constructed notions of gender.
  • Studies demonstrate that educating girls and women has a positive impact on child and maternal health, fertility rates, poverty reduction, and economic growth.
  • Examine the role gender plays in health care and healthy lifestyles, especially for women

• Development of Gender Identity

  • Gender identity is a person's subjective experience of their own gender; how it develops is a topic of much debate.
  • Gender identity is the extent to which one identifies with a particular gender; it is a person's individual sense and subjective experience of being a man, a woman, or another gender.
  • Studies suggest that children develop gender identity in three distinct stages:
  • According to social-learning theory, children develop their gender identity through observing and imitating the gender-linked behaviors of others; they are then rewarded for imitating the behaviors of people of the same gender and punished for imitating the behaviors of another gender.
  • Apply social-learning theory and gender-schema theory to the context of gender identity development and the gender spectrum

• 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.
  • These basic theories of social constructionism can be applied to any issue of study pertaining to human life, including gender.
  • 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.
  • In other words, by doing gender, we reinforce the notion that there are only two mutually exclusive categories of gender.
  • Gender is maintained as a category through socially constructed displays of gender.

• 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.
  • However, empirical studies give mixed evidence as to the efficacy of single-sex schooling, and critics worry that it constitutes a separate-but-equal form of discrimination.
  • 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 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.
  • In the second model, men and women would be educated in the same institutions and study the same content in classes.