sociology

Project
Name: Owais Zargar
Course: BA LLB
Subject: Sociology
Reg No: GU17R0837
Teacher: Mr Khalid Ansari
Project Submittet By
owais zargar
Project Submitted To
Mr Khalid Ansari (prof. Sociology)

Introduction
Sociology has contributed to the transformation of the traditional perception of
the relations between men and women from one primarily rooted in biology to one
that acknowledges their social constitution, and hence variability and
malleability. The fundamental re-thinking of this aspect of life is a process in
which sociology has played a significant role alongside popular movements.
There is today a mountain of empirical research in sociology that thoroughly
documents the variations in patterns of gender difference and gender inequality
across a myriad of social domains, including employment, caring, politics,
violence, culture, sexuality, development, globalization and many more. This work
is rich, diverse, innovative and comprehensive.

Gender
The definition of sex (the categories of man versus woman) as we know them today
comes from the advent of modernity. With the rise of industrialisation came better
technologies and more faster modes of travel and communication. This assisted the
rapid diffusion of ideas across the medical world.
Sex roles describes the tasks and functions perceived to be ideally suited to
masculinity versus femininity. Sex roles have converged across many (though not
all) cultures due to colonial practices and also due to industrialisation. These
roles were different
prior to the industrial revolution , when men and women worked alongside one
another on farms, doing similar tasks. Entrenched gender inequality is a product of
modernity . It’s not that inequality did not exist before, it’s that inequality
within the home in relation to family life was not as pronounced.
In the 19th Century, biomedical science largely converged around Western European
practices and ideas. Biological definitions of the body arose where they did not
exist before, drawing on Victorian values. The essentialist ideas that people
attach to man and woman exist only because of this cultural history. This includes
the erroneous ideas that sex:
Is pre-determined in the womb;
Defined by anatomy which in turn determines sexual identity and desire;
Differences are all connected to reproductive functions;
Identities are immutable; and that
Deviations from dominant ideas of male/female must be “unnatural.”
As I show further below, there is more variation across cultures when it comes to
what is considered “normal” for men and women, thus highlighting the ethnocentric
basis of sex categories. Ethnocentric ideas define and judge practices according to
one’s own culture, rather than understanding cultural practices vary and should be
viewed by local standards.

Social Construction of Gender

Gender, like all social identities, is socially constructed . Social
constructionism is one of the key theories sociologists use to put gender into
historical and cultural focus. Social constructionism is a social theory about how
meaning is created through social interaction – through the things we do and say
with other people. This theory shows that gender it is not a fixed or innate fact,
but instead it varies across time and place.
Gender norms (the socially acceptable ways of acting out gender) are learned from
birth through childhood socialisation. We learn what is expected of our gender from
what our parents teach us, as well as what we pick up at school, through religious
or cultural teachings, in the media, and various other social institution. Gender
experiences will evolve over a person’s lifetime. Gender is therefore always in
flux. We see this through generational and intergenerational changes within
families, as social, legal and technological changes influence social values on
gender. Australian sociologist, Professor Raewyn Connell, describes gender as a
social structure – a higher order category that society uses to organise itself:
Gender is the structure of social relations that centres on the reproductive arena,
and the set of practices (governed by this structure) that bring reproductive
distinctions between bodies into social processes. To put it informally, gender
concerns the way human society deals with human bodies, and the many consequences
of that “deal” in our personal lives and our collective fate.
Like all social identities, gender identities are
dialectical : they involve at least two sets of actors referenced against one
another: “us” versus “them.” In Western culture, this means “masculine” versus
“feminine.” As such, gender is constructed around notions of Otherness : the
“masculine” is treated as the default human experience by social norms, the law and
other social institutions. Masculinities are rewarded over and above femininities.
Men in general are paid better than women; they enjoy more sexual and social
freedom; and they have other benefits that women do not by virtue of their gender.
There are variations across race, class, sexuality, and according to disability and
other socio-economic measures.

Masculinity
Raewyn Connell defines masculinity as a broad set of processes which include gender
relations and gender practices between men and women and “the effects of these
practices in bodily experience, personality and culture.” Connell argues that
culture dictates ways of being masculine and “unmasculine.” She argues that there
are several masculinities operating within any one cultural context, and some of
these masculinities are:
hegemonic;
subordinate;
compliant; and
marginalised.
In Western societies, gender power is held by White, highly educated, middle-class,
able-bodied heterosexual men whose gender represents hegemonic masculinity – the
ideal to which other masculinities must interact with, conform to, and challenge.
Hegemonic masculinity rests on tacit acceptance. It is not enforced through direct
violence; instead, it exists as a cultural “script” that are familiar to us from
our socialisation. The hegemonic ideal is exemplied in movies which venerate White
heterosexual heroes, as well as in sports, where physical prowess is given special
cultural interest and authority. A 2014 event between the Australian and New
Zealand ruby teams shows that racism, culture, history and power complicate how
hegemonic masculinities play our and understood.
Masculinities are constructed in relation to existing social hierarchies relating
to class, race, age and so on. Hegemonic masculinities rest upon social context,
and so they reflect the social inequalities of the cultures they embody.
Similarly, counter-hegemonic masculinities signify a contest of power between
different types of masculinities. As Connell argues:
“The terms “masculine” and “feminine” point beyond categorical sex difference to
the ways men differ among themselves, and women differ among themselves, in matters
of gender.”
Sociologist CJ Pascoe finds that young working-class American boys police
masculinity through jokes exemplified by the phrase, “ Dude, you’re a fag .” Boys
are called “fags” (derogative word for homosexual) not because they are gay, but
when they engage in behaviour outside the gender norm (“un-masculine”). This
includes dancing; taking “too much” care with their appearance; being too
expressive with their emotions; or being perceived as incompetent. Being gay was
more acceptable than being a man who did not fit with the hegemonic ideal – but
being gay and “unmasculine” was completely unacceptable. One of the gay boys in
Pascoe’s study was bullied so much for his dancing and clothing (wearing “women’s
clothes”) that he was eventually forced to drop out of school. The school’s poor
management of this incident is an unfortunately all-too-common example of how
everyday policing of gender between peers and inequality within institutions
reinforce one another.

Femininity
Judith Lorber and Susan Farrell argue that the social constructionist perspective
on gender explores the taken-for-granted assumptions about what it means to be
“male” and “female,” “feminine” and “masculine.” They explain:
women and men are not automatically compared; rather, gender categories (female-
male, feminine-masculine, girls-boys, women-men) are analysed to see how different
social groups define them, and how they construct and maintain them in everyday
life and in major social institutions, such as the family and the economy.
Femininity is constructed through patriarchal ideas. This means that femininity is
always set up as inferior to men. As a result, women as a group lack the same level
of cultural power as men. Women do have agency to resist these ideals. Women can
actively challenge gender norms by refusing to let patriarchy define how they
portray and reconstruct their femininity. This can be done by rejecting cultural
scripts. For example:
Sexist and racist judgements about women’s sexuality;
Fighting rape culture and sexual harassment;
By entering male-dominated fields , such as body-building or science;
Rejecting unachievable notions of romantic love disseminated in films and novels
that turn women into passive subjects ; and
By generally questioning gender norms, such as by speaking out on sexism. Sexist
comments are one of the everyday ways in which people police and maintain the
existing gender order.
As women do not have cultural power, there is no version of hegemonic femininity to
rival hegemonic masculinity. There are, however, dominant ideals of doing
femininity, which favour White, heterosexual, middle-class cis-women who are able-
bodied. Minority women do not enjoy the same social privileges in comparison.
The popular idea that women do not get ahead because they lack confidence ignores
the intersections of inequality. Women are now being told that they should simply “
lean in ” and ask for more help at work and at home. “Leaning in” is a limited way
of overcoming gender inequality only if you’re a White woman already thriving in
the corporate world, by fitting in with the existing gender order. Women who want
to challenge this masculine logic, even by asking for a pay rise, are impeded from
reaching their potential.
Some White, middle-class, heterosexual cis-women may be better positioned to “lean
in,” but minority women with less power are not; they’re fighting sexism and racism
and class discrimination all at once.
Cross-national studies show that social policy plays a significant role in
minimising gender inequality, especially where publicly funded childcare frees up
women to fully participate in paid work. Cultural variations of gender across time
and place also demonstrate that gender change is possible.

Gender Across Time and Place

Behaviours that come to be understood as masculine and feminine vary across
cultures and they change over time. As such, the way in which we understand gender
here and now in the city of Melbourne, Australia, is slightly different to the way
in which gender is judged in other parts of Australia, such as in rural Victoria,
or in Indigenous cultures in remote regions of Australia, or in Lima, Peru, or
Victorian era England, and so on. Still, the notion of difference, of otherness, is
central to the social organisation of gender. As Judith Lorber and Susan Farrell
argue :
“What stays constant is that women and men have to be distinguishable ” (my
emphasis).
Gender does not look so familiar when we look at other cultures – including our own
cultures, back in time. Here are two examples where hegemonic masculinity (issues
of gender and power) look very different to what we’ve become accustomed to in
Western nations. Let’s start with an historical example from Western culture.
16th Century Europe
European nations have not always adhered to the same ideas about feminine and
masculine. As I noted a few years ago , aristocratic men in Europe in the 16th and
17th Centuries wore elaborate high-heeled shoes to demonstrate their wealth. The
shoes were impractical and difficult to walk in, but they were both a status symbol
as well as a sign of masculinity and power. In Western cultures, women did not
begin wearing high heeled shoes until the mid-19th Century. Their introduction was
not about social status or power, but rather it was a symptom of the increasing
sexualisation of women with the introduction of cameras.
The cultural variability of how people “do gender” in different parts of the world
demonstrates the cultural specificity of gender norms. Gender has different norms
at different places at different points in time. The Wodaabe nomads from Niger are
a case in point.

Approach for women’s development

These have been critiqued by a group of women who promoted the gender analytical
approach to development for being too monolithic to be of much use in practice. At
the same time the WID promotion of the category “woman” was also found wanting for
the exclusive focus on women creates woman and man as isolable categories. Those
who promote the gender analytical approach adopt social relations of gender as
their chief analytical category and extend the Marxist concept of social relations
beyond the production of objects and commodities to areas of gender relations such
as procreation, care of children, old and sick and to what all comes under the
daily reproduction of labour. Instead of seeing power rooted in men and denied to
women in all circumstances, this approach sees power in general inherent in gender
relations.
While it explains women’s subordination in gender relations in the household it
does not limit itself to the household and analyses how asymmetrical gender
relations springing from the household interact, relate and define relations in the
broader economic arena. Gender relations, thus are not merely male-female
relations, they refer to the “full ensemble of social relationships”, through which
men become men and women become women. More than the sex, it is the socially
differentiated arrangements and patterns of gender behaviour and relations that
define the differential experience of the world by men and women.
The gender relations framework thus frees woman and man from any biologistic
determinism, while at the same time not negating the fact of different sex bodies
leading to different rules and practices coming into operation so as to define
gender relations and make for gender inequality. The framework goes further to
emphasise that other social relations such as class, race, ethnicity, religion,
etc. mediate to define and translate gender inequality, so that neither class, nor
sex, nor any other attribute has prominence over other as a determining principle
of individual identity, social position or power. By rethinking of men and women
without a universal structure of patriarchy, the gender relations approach makes it
possible for constructing gender subordination in different societies, communities,
institutions and arenas of action in a historically specific manner thus making for
a more realistic and pragmatic attempt at changing how men and women work, live and
relate.
Ascription of gender roles is often done discreetly, it may be implicit rules and
practices that promote one gender rather than the others and there are strong
biologistic ideologies supporting them. Many gender discriminatory practices like
the sexual division of labour, construction of an elaborate and sacrificial
motherhood or violent and aggressive manhood stand to be questioned more logically
once it is realised that they are neither instinctual, nor dictated by biology,
rather it is an elaborate social system of gender relations that defines them and
that privileges one gender over the other in terms of resources and power.
Lastly, development planners must realise that gender is never absent, though
family is a critical site for the beginning of its operations, it operates as a
pervasive allocation principle determining the participation of men and women in
all social institutions. It links production with reproduction, the domestic domain
with the public domain and the microeconomic units with the larger economy.
A gender relations approach has the advantage of being an inductive mode of
analysis and can thus explain empirically found contradictions of subordination and
power and the multiplicity of outcomes of developmental interventions, sometimes
“emancipatory”, sometimes making for more oppressive and subordinating conditions
for women across the world.

Empowerment of Women
The term ‘women empowerment’ has become popular in the development field since
1980s. It is vividly recognized that women empowerment is essential for sustainable
economic growth andReduction in poverty in developing countries.(Chaudhary,
2009).‘Empowering’ women has become a frequently cited goal of development
interventions. However, while there is now a significant body of literature
discussing how women’s empowerment has been or might be evaluated, there are still
major difficulties in so doing. (Mosedale, 2005).Women empowerment is central to
human development. Human development as a process of enlarging people’s choices of
half of the humanity is restricted. Targeted actions aimed at empowering the women
and righting the gender inequalities in the social and economic share, as well as
in terms of social and political rights, must be taken alongside effort to en-
gender the development process. The extent of women empowerment in the country is
largely determined by three factors economic, social and political identity.
(A.Sangamithra, 2008).
Women in India are divided in caste , class, rural , urban , educational ,
occupational, and linguistic groups ; but marginalization is the common thread of
uniformity among them and it begins with the non-recognition of women’s work
(kumar, 2005).One has to recognize the fact that women works at two level , at the
private one and the public level. She forms network with the family of her birth
and the one she is married into. Women also had a focal importance in contributing
the livelihood of the family. Proverbially as the weaker sex, women in reality has
proved to be the weaker sex women In reality have proved to be tougher biologically
and not inferior psychologically and culturally. Without the work done by the women
everyday life could not be managed.(Chakrapani, 2005).
Empowering women is the only solution for all questions. Her potential hidden power
is to be utilized for which, her status in the society must be improved and
economically she should be strengthened. The poverty is the main cause for her low
bargaining power hence poverty should be removed. Empowering women and removal of
poverty go hand in hand. Woman if is educated and empowered, her potential power
can be utilized for the economic development. Mahatma Gandhi says, "You educate a
man, you educate an individual. You educate a woman, you educate an entire family".
(Kadam, 2012)
Gender subordination is a strategy of a tradition-bound society , fact remains that
majority of the women even today live in a mirage brainwashed by the custodians of
the traditions , customs and patriarchs, sacrificing their owner , dignity and
pride and even their identity with no reference in the human history whatsoever.
Consequently women’s multi-faced personality are little or seldom known, they still
continue to live as an extensions of their male counterparts(Arunachalam, 2005)
2. Need and Importance of the Study:
Women play an important role in all the fields of development. Socially
economically if she is strengthened then she will create wonders. Women contribute
directly and indirectly for the economic development. Over the years women has been
treated as the soul property of husband, father, brother not given any choice or
freedom of her own. The present scenario were women are been subjected to violence,
and it includes even the increasing number of rape cases in the country were the
recent example is the Delhi gang rap case of 2012, this current situation raises
the questions not only on the empowerment but also on the security of women , it
seems that the dignity of women which was there in the ancient Indian society is
lost in the fog of wild human urges , and our ultra-modern Indian society.
Empowering women is the only solution for all questions. Hence it is essential to
study the past and present position of women and suggest measures for their
upliftment