SOC 808 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Gender Inequality, Gender Role, Impression Management

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 808
• Professor: Mustafa Koc

Document Summary

This week we will be looking at gender differences in relation to food. We like to understand how gender roles affect gender division of labour at the domestic sphere (home) and the public sphere (workplace). Sociologists underline the fact that differences in gender roles are socially constructed. Gender refers to a social distinction based on culturally conceived and learned ideas about what constitutes appropriate appearance and behaviour for males and females. Gender is a social construction with important consequences in everyday life; gender stereotypes hold that men and women are inherently different in attributes, behaviour, and aspirations. Our mothers through the umbilical connection and breast-feeding nurture us. This biological connection is not a justification for the existing patterns of gender division of labour that exists in patriarchal societies. In industrial societies, we see a tendency for separation of domestic sphere (home) from public sphere (work). Care work as domestic labour is not valued.