SOC275H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Social Constructionism, The Sociological Imagination
Document Summary
Sex = biological and physiological characteristics that define male and female. Gender = sociologically and culturally constituted behaviours, activities and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women. This definition implies that gender is just a label we slap on arbitrarily. We think that gender inequality is a result of gender differences: wrong gender ineq gender differences, how we are socialized brings greater differences. An analytic tool to relate personal problems to a larger historical and social context. Meaning of what it means to be a man/ woman changes over time and from culture to culture. Issues = larger social context: called an issue bc it"s contested. Definitions of masc/fem vary: from culture to culture, in any one culture over historical time, over course of one"s life, within any one culture at any time.
