{"id":1732,"date":"2018-09-04T08:13:26","date_gmt":"2018-09-04T13:13:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/?p=1732"},"modified":"2018-09-04T08:13:26","modified_gmt":"2018-09-04T13:13:26","slug":"gender-matters-in-every-aspect-of-our-lives-and-what-you-need-to-know-to-keep-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/2018\/09\/04\/gender-matters-in-every-aspect-of-our-lives-and-what-you-need-to-know-to-keep-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender Matters in Every Aspect of Our Lives \u2013 and what you need to know to keep up"},"content":{"rendered":"

CCF\u2019s Online Symposium,\u00a0Gender Matters<\/a><\/em>,\u00a0introduces you to some important new work featured in the newly published\u00a0<\/em>Handbook of the Sociology of Gender<\/a>,\u00a0in which a prestigious roster of contributors examines how gender affects childhood, parenting, work, and sexuality, and comments on the complex interactions between gender relationships, racial inequalities, and globalization. The lead essay in this symposium, by sociologist Barbara Risman, summarizes the extent to which gender continues to influence every aspect of life, despite real progress in breaking down traditional stereotypes and limits. Risman notes the increased normalization of non-binary ways of organizing personal identity and social life and argues \u2014 somewhat controversially even in feminist circles \u2014 that achieving true equality requires us to move beyond gender.<\/em><\/p>\n

Changes in gender values and behaviors are not just making it to the mainstream, they are changing the mainstream. Consider this: Among the most popular\u2014and intensively\u00a0reviewed<\/a>\u2014Netflix<\/em>\u00a0comedy hours currently features\u00a0Hannah Gadsby<\/a>. Part of her routine, as described on her widely\u00a0followed twitter<\/a>\u00a0feed, is to eschew \u201cthe concept of the gender binary.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what does it mean to reject the \u201cgender binary\u201d? And is that even possible? To explain what some gender researchers are arguing, CCF asked several of the contributors to the\u00a0Handbook of the Sociology of Gender<\/a><\/em>\u00a0to summarize their current research. Barbara Risman, lead editor of the\u00a0Handbook<\/em>, gave an\u00a0overview<\/a>\u00a0of the findings, including the evidence that gender identities and behaviors are not determined by biology, as so many people believe, and that they vary substantially by race, ethnicity, and class.<\/p>\n

Risman presents three pieces of this new reality:<\/p>\n

Women are never returning to domesticity.<\/em>\u00a0Mothers are far more likely to work for pay than in the past; they return to work earlier after having a child; and they work for longer periods of their lives<\/a>. As highlighted in the interviews Risman conducted for her recent book,\u00a0Where the Millennials Will Take Us: A New Generation Wrestles with the Gender Structure<\/a><\/em>, youth today overwhelmingly reject the expectation that women belong in the home specializing in the care of children.<\/p>\n

Feminism is not just a women\u2019s movement.\u00a0<\/em>The\u00a0latest General Social Survey data<\/a>\u00a0show that gender equality \u2013 at home and at work \u2014 is embraced nearly as much by men as by women. In fact, the gap between men\u2019s and women\u2019s attitudes is now the smallest ever recorded.<\/p>\n

Millennials are mainly gender libertarians:\u00a0<\/em>For the youngest generation of adults, the Millennials, Risman found that independence, autonomy, and self-determination are key features of how they identify themselves\u2014and free will is what they expect for others. This aligns with\u00a0research highlighted here<\/a>\u00a0where only a small fraction of survey respondents rated themselves \u201chighly\u201d gender typical: in other words, a representative sample showed that a gender \u201cbinary\u201d (aka people are simply all\u00a0this<\/em>\u00a0kind or all\u00a0that\u00a0<\/em>kind) is not all that common.<\/p>\n

But, Risman points out,\u00a0<\/strong>remnants of the older gender system continue to be reproduced in family rituals, child-raising, educational institutions, public policy, and work. Several contributors to the symposium describe how.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Not Just Kid Stuff: Becoming Gendered<\/a><\/strong>, Heidi Gansen (Northwestern University) and Karin Martin (University of Michigan show how differential discipline reinforces gender disparities in preschools. But as Kenly Brown (University of California at Berkeley) reports in\u00a0Gender, Race, and Girls in California\u2019s Alternative Schools<\/a><\/strong>, racism also creates differential discipline, sometimes masquerading as protection, that results in the marginalization of poor Black girls.<\/p>\n

Emily W. Kane, in\u00a0Parenting and the Gender Trap<\/a><\/strong>, reports on how parenting practices create inequalities in wages and housework between mothers and fathers, even those who share breadwinning, and how that imbues children with gendered expectations for their own futures. Immigrant families face added challenges, because many host countries grant one partner a work visa but forbid the other to work. In\u00a0Housewife Visas and Highly Skilled Immigrant Families in the U.S.<\/a><\/strong>, Pallavi Banerjee (University of Calgary), explains the hardships that will result from the current administration\u2019s proposal to reinstate the H-4 visa, barring \u201ctrailing spouses\u201d of high-skill workers (who come to the U.S. under an H-1B visa) from any kind of employment.<\/p>\n

In other cases, immigration policies interact with gender inequalities to create widespread patterns of family separation that result in chains of displaced caregiving. Maria Hwang (Rice University) and Carolyn Choi and Rhacel Parre\u00f1as (University of Southern California) note in\u00a0Separating Migrant Families, as Practiced around the Globe<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0that \u201cfamily separation is a\u00a0central<\/em>\u00a0feature of international temporary labor migration policies that promote the recruitment of migrant workers but bar them from migrating with their families.\u201d Often, women in third-world countries can support their own children only by migrating abroad to care for other women\u2019s children, requiring female kin and friends at home to try to fill their shoes.<\/p>\n

Two other briefs in the\u00a0Gender Matters Online Symposium<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0focus on hidden bias in the workplace. Indiana University\u2019s Koji Chavez, in\u00a0Gender, Tech Jobs, and Hidden Biases that Make a Difference<\/a><\/strong>, points out that even when tech firms hire equal numbers of males and females, they \u201ctend to hire male engineers more for their perceived technical skills and female engineers more for their perceived \u2018people\u2019 skills.\u201d This channels women into a track with fewer pay and promotion possibilities than those available to their male counterparts.<\/p>\n

Yet Alison Wynn and Shelley Correll, from Stanford\u2019s Clayman Institute for Gender Research, report some good news in\u00a0Combating Gender Bias in Modern Workplaces<\/a><\/strong>: \u201cResearch consistently shows that unconscious or implicit gender biases systematically hinder women\u2019s advancement in the workplace,\u201d especially when criteria for hiring and advancement are ambiguous or informal. Using a\u00a0\u201csmall wins model\u201d<\/a>\u00a0of organizational change, however, they were able to significantly reduce the role of implicit bias in hiring and promotion decisions.<\/p>\n

The symposium also includes work on sexuality: Nicholas Velotta and Pepper Schwartz write about\u00a0The Push and Pull of Sex, Gender, and Aging<\/a><\/strong>. Increasingly, women feel entitled to have a romantic and sexual life as they age. Although women face more pressure than men to retain youthful-looking sexiness, often making them feel they must have cosmetic surgery, Velotta and Schwartz point to a growing number of older Hollywood icons who still make it into the \u201csexy\u201d category as evidence of change. Ironically, however, men as well as women now report pressure to maintain their youthful looks.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s much more.\u00a0<\/strong>Reporters can find a host of other sources in the\u00a0Handbook of the Sociology of Gender<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0C.J. Pascoe<\/a>\u00a0writes about sex in high school.\u00a0Virginia Rutter<\/a>\u00a0and Braxton Jones compile the latest work on the impact of gender fluidity on doing sex.\u00a0Georgiann Davis<\/a>\u00a0writes about human rights for intersex people.\u00a0Arielle Kuperberg<\/a>\u00a0profiles the latest work on hooking up.\u00a0Katie Acosta<\/a>\u00a0examines gender non conformity in families. The entire table of contents is\u00a0here<\/a>, and CCF can help connect you to all authors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis research is just the tip of a very large iceberg,\u201d says Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education at the Council on Contemporary Families. \u201cCCF has been a focal point for research on the gender\u00a0revolution<\/a>, including\u00a0setbacks<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0stalls<\/a>\u00a0that continue to be evident even in the context of historic change. But as many authors here point out, the advantages and disadvantages that men and women encounter in a gendered world are often modified, and occasionally counteracted, by the dynamics of race, ethnicity, sexuality, and class. Researchers need to explore the contradictions, trade-offs, costs, and benefits of our changing gender order.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CCF\u2019s Online Symposium,\u00a0Gender Matters,\u00a0introduces you to some important new work featured in the newly published\u00a0Handbook of the Sociology of Gender,\u00a0in which a prestigious roster of contributors examines how gender affects childhood, parenting, work, and sexuality, and comments on the complex interactions between gender relationships, racial inequalities, and globalization. The lead essay in this symposium, by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2095,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30834],"tags":[55],"class_list":["post-1732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-reports","tag-gender"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2095"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1732"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1733,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732\/revisions\/1733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}