SOC 1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Metrosexual, Bromance, Gender Role
Chapter 11: Stratification by Gender
Social Construction of Gender
-gender is such as routine part of our everyday activities that we typically take notice only when
someone deviates from conventional behavior and expectations
-gender roles
•expectations regarding the proper behavior, attitudes, and activities of males and females
•application of gender roles leads to many forms of differentiation between women and men
-both sexes are capable of learning to cook and sew, yet most Western societies determine
that women should perform those tasks
-both men and women are capable of learning to wield and to fly airplanes, but those
functions are generally assigned to men
•evident not only in our work and behavior but also in how we react to others
-Gender roles in the United States
•Gender-Role Socialization
-traditional gender-role patterns have been influential in the socialization of children in the
United States
•male babies get blue blankets; boys are expected to play with trucks, blocks, and toy
soldiers; boys must be masculine—active, aggressive, tough, daring, and dominant
•females get pink ones; girls receive dolls and kitchen goods; girls must be feminine—soft,
emotional, sweet, and submissive
-homophobia
•fear of and prejudice against homosexuality
•important element in traditional views of proper “masculine” and “feminine” behavior
•contributes significantly to rigid gender-role socialization, since many people
stereotypically associate male homosexuality with femininity and lesbianism with
masculinity
-men and women who deviate from traditional expectations about gender roles are often
presumed to be gay
•it is adults who play a critical role in guiding children into those gender roles deemed
appropriate in a society
-parents are normally the first and most crucial agents of socialization
•other adults, older siblings, the mass media, and religious and educational institutions
also exert an important influence on gender-role socialization
•Women’s Gender Roles
-if a young girl regularly sees female tv characters of all ages and body types, she is likely to
grow up with a normal body image
-if a young girl only sees only wafer-thin actresses and models on tv, her self image will be
different
-tv is not the only thing stereotyping women
•children’s books published in the U.S. in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s found that females
were significantly underrepresented in central roles and illustrations
-virtually all female characters were portrayed as helpless, passive, incompetent, and in
need of a strong male caretaker
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•Men’s Gender Roles
-stay-at-home fathers
•men who stay at home to care for their children are still an unusual phenomenon
-males who do not conform to the socially constructed gender role face constant criticism
and even humiliation, both from children when they are boys and from adults as men
-R.W. Connell
•Australian sociologist
•multiple masculinities
-men play a variety of gender roles, including a nurturing-caring role and an effeminate-
gay role, in addition to their traditional gender role of dominating women
•brass ceiling
-obstacle to women’s advancement in the Army
•Gender and Human Sexuality
-over time, social norms regarding sexual behavior have changed as gender roles have
changed, becoming more ambiguous
-terms like metrosexual and bromance suggest that men should feel comfortable embracing
traditionally feminine tastes or developing deep friendships with other men
-society is beginning to accept not only same-sex couples, but individuals whose gender and
identity do not fit a simple either/or pattern, such as bisexuals and transgendered people
-Cross-Cultural Perspective
•in any society, gender stratification requires not only individual socialization into traditional
gender roles within the family, but also the promotion and support of those traditional roles by
other social institutions, such as religion and education
•maintenance of traditional gender roles requires constant social controls—and those controls
are not always effective
Sociological Perspectives on Gender
-Functionalist Perspective
•maintain that gender differentiation has contributed to overall social stability
•Talcott Parsons and Robert Bales
-argued that to function most effectively, the family requires adults who specialize in
particular roles
-viewed traditional gender roles as arising out of the need to establish a division of labor
between martial partners
-contended that women take the expressive, emotionally supportive role and men the
instrumental, practical role, with the two complementing each other
-expressiveness
•denotes concern for the maintenance of harmony and the internal emotional affairs of the
family
-instrumentality
•refers to an emphasis on tasks, a focus on more distant goals,and a concern for the
external relationship between one’s family and other social institutions
-Conflict Perspective
•any division of labor by gender into instrumental and expressive tasks is far from neutral in its
impact on women
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