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1 – 10 of over 5000Emily Keener, Clare M. Mehta and Kimberly E. Smirles
This chapter uses Sandra Bem’s scholarship to demonstrate the intersections between developmental and social psychological approaches to understanding masculinity and femininity.
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter uses Sandra Bem’s scholarship to demonstrate the intersections between developmental and social psychological approaches to understanding masculinity and femininity.
Methodology/approach
To highlight Sandra Bem’s contributions, we examined masculinity and femininity, broadly defined, from a socio-developmental theoretical perspective, conceptualizing gender development as embedded within a socio-historical context.
Findings
Our review of the literature illustrates that both age and social contextual features influence femininity and masculinity and more specifically that in childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, femininity and masculinity vary depending on the sex (same- vs. other-sex) of those in the social context. Along with demonstrating the current utility and extensions of Sandra Bem’s research, we also emphasize the feminist and social justice applications of her body of work.
Research limitations
Weaknesses in the existing methodology where instruments are designed based on the assumption that masculinity and femininity are stable traits rather than characteristics that vary are discussed. Limitations to research focused on either social or developmental perspectives are highlighted and suggestions for a more integrative approach are provided.
Originality/value
Similar to how Sandra Bem’s work showed that sex and gender need not be linked, research and theory on the developmental and contextual specificity of gender also demonstrate that there is freedom in the expression of gender.
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Shannon L. Rawski, Emilija Djurdjevic and Leah D. Sheppard
Findings regarding the relationship between biological sex and job stress remain inconsistent. In the present chapter, we suggest that this is due to the overly simplistic and…
Abstract
Findings regarding the relationship between biological sex and job stress remain inconsistent. In the present chapter, we suggest that this is due to the overly simplistic and synonymous treatment of biological sex and gender. Specifically, researchers have operationalized gender as sex, neglecting the inherent complexity of the gender construct. To address this, we take a more nuanced approach and develop a theory around the effects of biological sex and gender on job stress, considering how sex, gender, sex-based prescribed gender roles and work roles interact to create role conflict. We predict that a lack of congruence between any of the aforementioned variables results in various types of role conflict, leading to stress, and requiring coping. Drawing on the literature on role conflict, emotional labor, and facades of conformity, we introduce the concept of gender façades as a coping mechanism. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
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Most well-known conceptualizations of sex, gender and sexuality privilege one version or another of a Western European or North American bi-polar paradigm. However, such a focus…
Abstract
Most well-known conceptualizations of sex, gender and sexuality privilege one version or another of a Western European or North American bi-polar paradigm. However, such a focus ignores the ethnographic evidence for a larger range of sex–gender–sexuality constructs. This paper outlines parameters for known variations in cultural constructs of sex–gender–sexuality systems, and raises questions about contemporary trends in understanding sex, gender and sexuality. As a first step, and because the data are more plentiful, I focus on variations in cultural constructions of sex, gender and sexuality relevant to physiological males, leaving a thorough exploration of constructions relevant to physiological females for another paper. The contemporary spread of Western cultural hegemony, as well as some opposition to that model, has categorized many indigenous, multi-polar sex–gender–sexuality systems as either in need of modernization or simply not quite civilized. The result is a loss, not only of knowledge about human plasticity in this area, but also a loss of cultural flexibility in organizing and dealing with human biocultural variation.
Purpose – This chapter responds to interdisciplinary debates regarding studies of sex, sexuality, and gender. I briefly examine how the sex/gender paradigm of the 1960s shaped…
Abstract
Purpose – This chapter responds to interdisciplinary debates regarding studies of sex, sexuality, and gender. I briefly examine how the sex/gender paradigm of the 1960s shaped feminist theory in the social sciences and explore two feminist frameworks that have contested the sex/gender paradigm: West and Zimmerman's “doing gender” and Butler's performativity. I situate this literature, and related debates about intersectionality, in the context of Margaret Andersen's (2005) Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS) feminist lecture.
Methodology/approach – Using empirical analyses of brief television excerpts, I develop an ethnomethodological study of practice and poststructural analysis of discourse to demonstrate how trenchant forms of cultural knowledge link together gender, sex, and sexuality.
Findings – Sex and gender function as disciplinary forces in the service of heterosexuality; consequently studies of gender that do not account for sexuality reproduce heterosexism and marginalize queer sexualities. These findings, considered in relationship to Andersen's analysis of intersectionality, illustrate both a narrow conceptualization of the field rooted to a 19th century European model and a methodological mandate that must be examined in relationship to the politics of social research.
Practical implications – A more fruitful conceptual starting point in thinking through intersectionality may be citizenship, rather than systematic exploitation of wage labor. In addition, a more full analysis of intersectionality would also require that we rethink our methodological orientations.
Originality/value of paper – The chapter illustrates some of the analytic effects and political consequences that commonsense knowledge about gender, sex, and sexuality holds for feminist scholarship and advances alternative possibilities for future feminist research.
In the binary sex-segregated space of professional sports, sex-gender diversity is met with suspicion, derision and exclusion. In the United States, along with widespread…
Abstract
In the binary sex-segregated space of professional sports, sex-gender diversity is met with suspicion, derision and exclusion. In the United States, along with widespread anti-trans policies at various societal levels, legislations and regulations are being pushed to limit or eliminate transgender athletes from competing in all levels of sports. However, little scholarship has considered the implications of the presence of nonbinary athletes, those who identify outside the spectrum of man and woman, beyond the conversation of a ‘third gender’ category in sport. In this chapter, I seek to examine how nonbinary athletes embody disobedience by challenging the binary categorization of sex-gender within professional sports. I explore the racialized embodiment of sex and gender in professional women's sports, specifically WNBA player Layshia Clarendon. I explore how disobedience is employed to incite resistance against the narrow sex-gender categories that are forced upon athletes. Finally, I argue that embodied disobedience provides a key pathway for nonbinary athletes to undermine the regulatory nature of sex-gender categorization in sport. Particularly, nonbinary athletes may seek medical and social forms of gender affirmation, while simultaneously embodying disobedience by continuing to actively participate in professional sports categories in which they may not neatly fit.
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Purpose: In this chapter, I critically examine how federal regulation and guidance impact gender policing and transgender inclusion within educational institutions.Approach: I…
Abstract
Purpose: In this chapter, I critically examine how federal regulation and guidance impact gender policing and transgender inclusion within educational institutions.
Approach: I utilize feminist critical discourse analysis to examine the “Dear Colleague Letter on Transgender Students” and its underlying assumptions related to transgender inclusion and gender policing in institutions of education.
Findings: While the federal regulations and guidance currently in place protect some transgender individuals, they also re-stigmatize some transgender individuals by policing the acceptable ways of being transgender and reinforcing the gender binary.
Social Implications: I suggest other areas within the educational institution to address in order to achieve transgender inclusion.
Value of Paper: This chapter critically examines the logistics and effects of federal regulation on gender and transgender inclusion.
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Purpose – Historically, the gay and lesbian community has been divided over same-sex marriage along gender lines, with gay men its most frequent supporters and lesbians its most…
Abstract
Purpose – Historically, the gay and lesbian community has been divided over same-sex marriage along gender lines, with gay men its most frequent supporters and lesbians its most frequent critics. In recent years, however, in localities where same-sex marriage has been available, the gender polarity around same-sex marriage has reversed, with lesbian couples constituting the majority of those married. Although same-sex marriage is framed in a gender-neutral way, the higher rate of lesbians marrying suggests that gay men and lesbians may have different stakes in, demand for, and benefits from access to marriage.Methodology – Drawing on interviews with 42 participants (24 women; 18 men) in the 2004 San Francisco same-sex weddings, I qualitatively analyze how and when gender comes to be salient in the decision by same-sex couples to marry.Findings – Explicitly attending to the intersections of gender, sexual identity, and family, I find that lesbians and gay men did not systematically offer different narratives for why they married, but parents did offer different meanings than childfree respondents: the apparent gender gap is better described as a parenthood gap, which has a demographic relationship to gender with more lesbians than gay men achieving parenthood in California. Scholarship on the gendered experience of reproduction suggests that the importance of gender in the experience of queer parenthood may persist even if parity in parenthood were reached.Originality/value – Findings attest to the importance of attending to the intersections of gender, sexual identity, and family for scholars of same-sex marriage.
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Purpose: This chapter provides a contextualized understanding of the gendered anxieties expressed by elite sport regulators that motivated the formulation of sex testing policies…
Abstract
Purpose: This chapter provides a contextualized understanding of the gendered anxieties expressed by elite sport regulators that motivated the formulation of sex testing policies in sport between 1937 and 1968. The focus is on complicating the claim that sex testing was first instituted to prevent explicit male bodies from fraudulently masquerading as women in sport. Rather, the chapter argues that sex testing policies were formulated in response to anxieties over sex binary pollution.
Methodology: The chapter is based on a genealogical study of the female category in elite sport, built on archival research conducted at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) historical archives and online newspaper archive collections.
Findings: Boundaries around female embodiment were navigated and written into sex testing policy in response to threats to presumed ideas around gendered and sexed normality in sport. These threats were embodied by athletes who polluted or crossed the border between female and male, to the extent that their bodies were rendered hermaphroditic, excessively masculinized, or hybrid. These bodies caused gendered anxieties for sport regulators, who reacted with policy responses that aimed to purify the sex binary from category pollution or sex abnormality.
Implications: As long as sex binary policing in elite sport continues, awareness of the contextual history of sex testing is essential for understanding the underlying ideas upon which sex binary policing in sport has been built.
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