gender identity

Examples of gender identity in the following topics:

• Gender Identity in Everyday Life

  • Gender identity is one's sense of one's own gender.
  • Gender identity is one's sense of being male, female, or a third gender.
  • Gender identity is not only about how one perceives one's own gender, but also about how one presents one's gender to the public.
  • What causes individuals to sense a sort of confusion between their biological gender and their gender identity?
  • Gender identities, and the malleability of the gender binary, vary across cultures.

• 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.
  • Early gender identity research hypothesized a single bipolar dimension of masculinity-femininity—that is masculinity and femininity were opposites on one continuum.
  • This led to the development of a two-dimensional gender identity model, in which masculinity and femininity were conceptualized as two separate, orthogonal dimensions, coexisting in varying degrees within an individual.
  • Other conceptions of gender influenced by queer theory see gender as multidimensional, fluid and shifting; something that cannot be plotted linearly at all.
  • Two instruments incorporating the multidimensional aspects of masculinity and femininity have dominated gender identity research: the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) and the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ).

• Gender Socialization

  • Gender is included in this process; individuals are taught how to socially behave in accordance with their assigned gender, which is assigned at birth based on their biological sex (for instance, male babies are given the gender of "boy", while female babies are given the gender of "girl").
  • Gender stereotypes can be a result of gender socialization.
  • For example, individuals that identify as transgender feel that their gender identity does not match their biological sex.
  • These identities demonstrate the fluidity of gender, which is so frequently thought to be biological and immutable.
  • Gender fluidity also shows how gender norms are learned and either accepted or rejected by the socialized individual.

• Gender and Health

  • Disparities in health services play out based on different systems of stratification, such as gender.
  • Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary, from sex to social role to gender identity.
  • 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

• The Interactionist Perspective

  • Notably, when these workers were asked to describe the attributes of a healthy person without a specific gender in mind, the list that was produced was almost identical to the one created for men.
  • In sociology, interactionism is a theoretical perspective that understands social processes (such as conflict, cooperation, identity formation) as emerging from human interaction.
  • Both masculinity and feminity are performed gender identities, in the sense that gender is something we do or perform, not something we are .
  • Thus, when people perform tasks or possess characteristics based on the gender role assigned to them, they are said to be doing gender (rather than "being" gender), a notion first coined by West and Zimmerman (1987).
  • West & Zimmerman emphasized that gender is maintained through accountability.

• Gender Differences in Social Interaction

  • Social and cultural norms can significantly influence both the expression of gender identity, and the nature of the interactions between genders.
  • Differences between "gender cultures" influence the way that people of different genders communicate.
  • However, both genders initiate opposite-gender friendships based on the same factors.
  • Gender cultures are primarily created and sustained by interaction with others.
  • Women adhering to a feminine gender culture often feel more comfortable being intimate with one another.

• 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.
  • Blending aspects of Conflict and Symbolic Interaction theories, Feminist Theory critiques hierarchical power relations embedded within existing gender structures, cultures, beliefs, discourses, identities, and processes of self presentation.

• 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.
  • A social constructionist view of gender looks beyond categories and examines the intersections of multiple identities and the blurring of the boundaries between essentialist categories.
  • 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 vs. Sex

  • Sociologists make a distinction between gender and sex.
  • Sociologists further distinguish between cis sex/gender people and trans sex/ gender people.
  • Adopting the behaviors and norms of a gender leads to the perception that someone belongs in that gender category.
  • Such individuals will develop cisgender identities.
  • However, gender - like sex - is fluid and can change.

• Research Examples

  • A powerful example of how gender affects every day life comes from the recently published research of Kristen Schilt on female-to-male (FTM) transexuals in the workplace.
  • Schilt interviewed FTM transsexuals after they had undergone their sex changes and found that, following their change to a male identity, two-thirds of the FTM transsexuals saw increased benefits in the workplace, including receiving greater rewards for doing less work.
  • The lesson: Perceived gender has a powerful influence on every day social interaction.
  • Another interesting example of gender's influence on social organization comes from the recently published research of J.
  • The lesson: Masculinities may be constructed via the use of everyday assumptions and beliefs built into the gender norms of a given society.