INTRODUCTION

1 TO THE SOCIOLOGY
OF GENDER AND SOCIETY
 INTRODUCTION
1.1 TO THE SOCIOLOGY
OF GENDER AND SOCIETY
 INTRODUCTION TO THE SOCIOLOGY
OF GENDER AND SOCIETY

OBJECTIVES
■ At the end of the discussion, the learner should be able to:
• 1. Identify the underlying sociological varying definitions of gender
and society
• 2. Evaluate the three sociological frameworks of gender and society
GENDER AND SOCIETY
• 1. What is sociology and why is it
important and beneficial for us in
understanding “Gender”?

• 2. How is sociology related to gender?

• 3. Why is it important to utilize sociology

to understand gender inequality?
• Sociology: scientific study of
social interactions, social
organization, and the connection
between individuals and society-
rigorous and systematic-powerful
scientific tool.

• Why is sociology considered a

soft science?
• “Common ground for Sociology is by making the
familiar strange; questioning what is often presumed
to be the natural order of things.”

• i.e.: What is something that most Filipinos do that you

find strange? What is a gender norm here in Philippines
that newcomers may find strange?
• The Sociological Imagination

• The sociological imagination

helps us to understand how the
social structure affects our lives
and the lives of others

• Private troubles VS. Public

issues
• C. Wright Mills
• Personal troubles refer to a
problem affecting individuals, as
well as other members of society,
typically blame on the individual’s
own personal and moral failings.

• Examples include such different

problems as eating disorders,
divorce, and unemployment.
Public issues, whose source
lies in the social structure and
culture of a society, refer to
social problems affecting many
individuals. Problems in
society thus help account for
problems that individuals
experience.
• Mills felt that many problems
ordinarily considered private
troubles are best understood as
public issues, and he coined the
term sociological imagination to
refer to the ability to appreciate
the structural basis for individual
problems.
• What determines an individuals behavior?
• 1. Agency-making individual choices based on free-will

• 2. Structure (sociological)-cultural and structural

influences operate in the decision making process

• Note: This is how society is organized.

• Society is patterned.
• All societies are structured around relatively stable patterns
that establish how social interaction will be carried out…
• Status-A category or position a person occupies that is a
significant determinant in how one is defined and treated
• Status set
• Achieved vs ascribed statuses
Ascribed Status Achieved Status
Ascribed status refers to a position one An achieved status is a position in a social
holds in a social system that one attains group that one earns based on merit or one's
involuntarily or by birth. choices.

E.g. E.g

Since ascribed status is given to us when we Examples of achieved status include

are born and is often involuntary, they can becoming an athlete, lawyer, doctor, parent,
be rigid and unchanging. For example, one spouse, criminal, thief, or a university
cannot change his birth parents. Nor can one professor.
change his parents' wealth or his/her family's
high place in society. He/she also can't
change the fact that he/she was born as a
male.
• Social stratification refers to a
system by which a society ranks
categories of people in a hierarchy.

• Types: Social Class, Ethnicity, Age,

and Gender
Society is stratified into social classes
on the basis of wealth, income,
educational attainment, and
occupation.

• Prestige is often related to the

other two indicators of social class
– property and power.
• Low prestige vs high prestige
• Social roles are the part people
play as members of a social
group. With each social role
you adopt, your behavior
changes to fit the expectations
both you and others have of
that role.
Social Norms are
unwritten rules about how
to behave. They provide us
with an expected idea of
how to behave in a
particular social group or
culture.
How does all this relate to gender?
1. The sociology of gender examines how
society influences our understandings
and perception of differences
between masculinity (what society
deems appropriate behaviour for a “man”)
and femininity (what society deems
appropriate behaviour for a “woman”).
• 2. We examine how this
perception, in turn, influences
identity and social practices.
• 3. We pay special focus on the
power relationships that follow
from the established gender
order in a given society, as well as
how this changes over time.
1. Sociology is the best fit to understand gender because it
focuses on how gender is socially constructed through
social roles, social class, social stratification, and social
norms.
2. Sociology of Gender will focus on understanding how
gender evolves and how are we affected with this
development especially if we are going to talk about
gender inequality.
 Major Sociological
1.2 Paradigms of Gender
and Society
 Major Sociological Paradigms
In the Study of Gender and Society

OBJECTIVES
■ At the end of the discussion, the learner should be able to:
• 1. Evaluate the three sociological frameworks of gender and society
• 2. Identify the underlying sociological varying definitions of gender and
society
GENDER AND SOCIETY
• Functionalist Theory

• Conflict Theory

• Symbolic Interaction

• Feminist Perspectives
• Society is a set of
interrelated parts
that work
together to
produce a stable
social system.
• A structural functionalist view of gender inequality applies
the division of labor to view predefined gender roles as
complementary: women take care of the home while men
provide for the family. Thus gender, like other social
institutions, contributes to the stability of society as a
whole.
• Society is characterized
by competition and
dominance of some
groups over others.
• According to conflict theory, society is defined by a
struggle for dominance among social groups that compete
for scarce resources. In the context of gender, conflict
theory argues that gender is best understood as men
attempting to maintain power and privilege to the detriment
of women.
• Friedrich Engels compared the
family structure to the
relationship between the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat,
suggesting that women had
less power than men in the
household because they were
dependent on them for wages.
• Symbolic interactionism is a theoretical approach to
understanding the relationship between humans and society.

• The basic notion of symbolic interactionism is that human

action and interaction are understandable only through the
exchange of meaningful communication or symbols.
• Symbolic interaction theory is very
useful to those seeking to understand
the social significance of sex and
gender. Sociologists point out that
gender is a social construct: that is,
one’s gender does not need to
correspond to one’s biological sex—but
there are strong social pressures to
act in particular ways based on one’s
sex.
• The powerful force that gender
exerts on us is especially visible
when one considers interactions
between adults and infants. Based
on their sex, the process of
gendering a baby begins almost
immediately (and may even
happen before birth, as the trend
of elaborate “gender reveal”
parties demonstrates).
• Feminist theories explain the social, economic, and political
position of women and men in society. Focus is on gender
issues.
• Maintain that (primarily) women suffer injustice
because of their sex/gender.
• Seeks to free women (and men) from traditionally
oppressive/limiting expectations and constraints.
• Looks at the complex intersection between one’s gender
and other socially constructed categories of difference.
1. We learn that these sociological paradigms have their own
way in looking on how society works based on gender
expectations and gender roles.

2. They theorize various perspectives on how society works

and how it looks at gender inequality.