GEE2: GENDER AND

SOCIETY
THE BIRTH OF
GENDER-RELATED
ISSUES
JONATHAN P. ESPINOSA
INSTRUCTOR
WHAT WE
ALREADY
DISCUSSED…
 Course Orientation
 F. Feminism & Gender-Based Coalition
 A. Interpreting Societies
 G. National & International Policies on Gender
 B. The Birth of Gender-Related Issues
 H. Gender-Related Violence
 C. Theories of Gender Development
 I. Gender Sensitivity & Responsiveness
 D. Worldviews on Gender
 Final Exam
 E. SOGIE: Concepts and Issues
 Midterm Examination
 In this lesson, we hope to…

Explain and familiarize

Define and differentiate
the development of
basic concepts on sex,
feminism, gender, and
gender and gender roles
gender studies
RETHINK

How will you react if

you were grouped
like this when face-
to-face class comes
back this year?
Why?
 Sex Gender

Male Man
Binary
Female Woman

Male Man
Non-
Female Woman
Binary
Intersex LGBTQIA+
Sex Biological -Primary Sex Characteristics
-Secondary Sex Characteristics

Gender Socially Constructed? How can

someone

incoherence
claim to have
Tasks, Activities, an innate
Gender Roles Expectations
gender
identity if
gender is
socially

Self-Identification
constructed?
Gender Identity
-feelings
-innate?
-fluidity?
-unchangeable?
-personal choice?
 Social Construction

IF… through socialization process

ISSUES
1. Then, how can
someone claim to
have an innate
Family Family gender identity if
Social / Digital gender is socially
Social / Digital constructed?
School Media
School Media

Socially
Socially Religious Mainstream
Religious Mainstream Constructed
Constructed Institution Media
Institution Media Gender 2. Then, if gender is
Gender
socially constructed,
there is no absolute
truth about gender.
Truth is relative from
Government Government Peers one society to
Peers another.
Workplace
Workplace

Society A Society B
1. Gender refers to the social categories of male and female.
-Vicki Helgeson, The Psychology of Gender

2. Gender encompasses all the traits that a culture assigns to and inculcates in males and females.
-Conrad Phillip Kottak, Cultural Anthropology

3. Gender refers to those social, cultural, and psychological traits linked to males and females
through particular social contexts.
-Linda Lindsey, Gender Roles: A Sociological Perspective

4. Gender refers to the personal traits and social positions that members of a
society attach to being female or male.
-John Macionis, Sociology

5. Gender refers to the attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that a given culture associates with a person’s biological sex.
-APA
6. Gender is social and cultural construct, which distinguishes differences in the attributes of men and women, girls
and boys, and accordingly refers to the roles and responsibilities of men and women.
-UNICEF
7. Gender is not a social construct. Rather, gender is divinely instituted, and it's an essential aspect of personal
identity that follows from biological reality.
-Adam Groza, Philosophy of Religion
If: Gender is socially constructed.
And: Gender identity is a deeply-felt self-identification.
Then: Gender identity is not socially constructed.
 Trajectory of the Feminism Movements
Second Wave Third Wave Fourth?
First Wave
Feminism Feminism Hashtag Era?
Feminism

1800s 1880s-1920s 1960s-1970s 1990s onwards 2021

struggle for the vote, for access to
education and the professions, to
have legal rights of property
ownership, rights in marriage and
divorce and so on
The second wave feminists talked in terms of ‘liberation’
from the oppressiveness of a patriarchally defined society.
(equal pay; equal education and opportunity;
twenty-four hour childcare; free access to contraception
and abortion; right over own body: “My body, my
choice.”)
genesis is based on a resistance to the ‘old
guard’ or framed in terms of the need for
the ‘daughter’ to break away from her
feminist ‘mother’ in order to define her
own agenda.

NOTE (Holmes, 2007): Theory of

• Classic sociology and other social theory contain little attention to the social
differences between women and men. Intersectionality
• Before the concept of ‘gender’ came into sociological usage in the 1970s, mid-century
functionalists talked about ‘sex role differences’ –to promote social stability. Gender
Class
Race
 REFLECT
1. Should gender be classified as binary or
non-binary? Why?

2. Is gender innate? Mere product of

socialization process? Or, a sex-based, God-
given identities to live by?