gender

Over at The Global Sociology Blog, SocProf put up some interesting visuals about social mobility, the likelihood that you have a significantly different economic status than your father.  Social mobility is important because it measures the degree to which a society has a caste system (in which you are restricted to the class you are born into, by whatever means) or one that gives people equal opportunities to ascend or descend the class hierarchy according to their hard work and talent.

Compared to similar countries, the U.S. has low social mobility (though most Americans think the opposite), along with Italy, the U.K., Chile, and Slovenia .  Scandinavian countries, Canada, and Australia have the most (see SocProf’s data here).

SocProf, however, asked a question I’ve never seen asked before: does this mobility differ by gender?  It does.  She found that daughters are more upwardly mobile than sons.

This first graph shows the percent of sons, born to a low-earning father, who will end up the top 40% of earners (orange) or the bottom 40% (blue).  Social mobility in the U.S. is lowest among the countries featured; almost 70% of American sons of low-earners stay in the bottom 40%.

The second graph is the same data for daughters.  Mobility for daughters is higher in all countries, but it is especially so in the U.S.  While 70% of sons stay in the bottom 40%, we can say the same for less than half of daughters.

Reflecting on the fact that the difference between daughters and sons was higher in the U.S. than in the comparison countries, SocProf suggests that “[g]reater mobility seems to go together with greater gender equality” in mobility.

See also this interactive graph mapping social mobility where you can see how you compare to the rest of the U.S.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Cross-posted at Sociology Lens.

A number of researchers suggest that the marketing and advertising of Gardasil has been aimed at girls and women instead of boys and men. In this post I discuss two contradictory messages aimed at women through these advertisements.

The first type of ad focused around the protection of young girls. The makers of Gardasil imply that being a good parent means vaccinating your daughter and therefore protecting her from cervical cancer (an observation also made here at Sociological Images). For example, one advertisement read, “How do you help your daughter become one less life affected by cervical cancer?” Another advertisement had a similar sentiment, stating “Your daughter can’t possibly know the importance of the cervical cancer vaccine, but thankfully, she has her mother” (source).

This narrative of protectionism is not surprising. In other contexts, like sex education debates, the discourse about adolescent sexuality, and in particular, girls’ sexuality, reveals a desire to protect their “innocence.”

The other type of ad moves away from the narrative of protectionism and focuses on empowerment and choice. One ad stated, “I chose to get vaccinated after my doctor to me the facts” (source). Another ad read, “I chose to get vaccinated because my dreams don’t include cervical cancer” (source).

Instead of focusing on the ways in which girls and women can be protected, the ads suggest that girls and women need to protect themselves. It seems like the advertising department at Merck (the makers of Gardasil) recognize that they needed another strategy if they wanted to appeal to young women who feel empowered about their sex lives.

These two strategies are opposed to one another. One strategy suggests that girls and women need to be protected, while the other strategy relies on the ability of girls and women to be active and educated decision makers. Merck is tapping into two gendered narratives in order to sell to as many people as possible. This is, of course, the way that advertising works. But it does reveal the different, and sometimes contradictory, cultural ideas about women’s sexuality, ideas that advertisers will draw on in order to make a profit.

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Cheryl Llewellyn is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Stony Brook University.  She writes for Sociology Lens, where you can read her post about the feminization of the Gardasil.

While I’m most well-known for my work on hook up culture, I’ve written extensively on a different topic altogether: how Americans talk about female genital cutting practices (FGCs), better known as female genital “mutilation.”  While FGCs are passionately opposed by essentially all Americans who learn about them, our understanding of the practices is, in fact, skewed by misinformation, ethnocentrism, and a history of portraying Africa as naively “backwards” or cruelly “barbaric.”

The main source of distortion has been the mass media.  Aiming to encourage journalists to think twice when covering the topic, the Hastings Center has released a report by the Public Policy Advisory Network on Female Genital Surgeries in Africa.  In the rest of this post, I briefly discuss some of the things they want journalists — and the rest of us — to know and add a couple of my own:

Using the word “mutilation” is counterproductive.

People who support genital cutting typically believe that a cut body is a more aesthetically pleasing one.  The term “mutilation” may appeal to certain Westerners, but people in communities where cutting occurs largely find the term confusing or offensive.

Media coverage usually focuses on one of the more rare types of genital cutting: infibulation.

Infibulation involves trimming and fusing the labia so as to close the vulva, leaving an opening in the back for intercourse, urination, and menses.  In fact, 10% of the procedures involve infibulation.  The remainder involve trimming, cutting, or scarification of the clitoris, clitoral hood (prepuce), or labia minora or majora.  While none of these procedures likely sound appealing, some are more extensive than others.

Research has shown that women with cutting are sexually responsive.

Women who have undergone genital surgeries report “rich sexual lives, including desire, arousal, orgasm, and satisfaction…”  This is true among women who have experienced clitoral reductions and undergone infibulation, as well as women who’ve undergone lesser forms of cutting.

Health complications of genital cutting “represent the exception rather than the rule.”

News reports often include long lists of acute and long-term negative medical consequences of FGCs, and these may feel intuitively true, but efforts to document their incidence suggest that health problems are, for the most part, no more common in cut than uncut women.  The Report concludes: “…from a public health point of view, the vast majority of genital surgeries in Africa are safe, even with current procedures and under current conditions.”

Girls are not generally cut in response to the influence of cruel patriarchs.

Most societies that cut girls also cut boys; some groups that engage in cutting have relatively permissive sexual rules for women, some do not; and female genital cutting practices are typically controlled and organized by women (correspondingly, men control male genital surgeries).

FGCs are not an “African practice.”

The procedures we label “female genital mutilation” occur only in some parts of Africa and occur outside of the continent as well (source):

Moreover, cosmetic genital surgeries in the U.S. are among the fastest growing procedures.  These include clitoral reduction, circumcision of the clitoral foreskin, labia trimming, and vaginal tightening, not to mention mons liposuction, collagen injected into the g-spot, color correction of the vulva, and anal bleaching.  While it would be simplistic to say that these are the same as the procedures we typically call “mutilation,” they are not totally different either.

Western-led efforts to eliminate FGCs are largely ineffective and sometimes backfire.

It turns out that people don’t appreciate being told that they are barbaric, ignorant of their own bodies, or cruel to their children.  Benevolent strangers who try to stop cutting in communities, as well as top-down laws instituted by politicians (often in response to Western pressure), are very rarely successful.  The most impressive interventions have involved giving communities resources to achieve whatever goals they desire and getting out of the way.

In sum, it’s high time Americans adopt a more balanced view of female genital cutting practices.  Reading The Hastings Center Report is a good start.  You might also pick up Genital Cutting and Transnational Sisterhood by Stanlie James and Claire Robertson.  Full text links to my papers on the topic, including a discourse analysis of 30 years of the academic conversation, can be found here.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College.  She frequently delivers public lectures about female genital cutting. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Cross-posted at Ms. and the Huffington Post.

I loathe to weigh in on the “war on men” conversation, but… alas.

While one can use both logic and data to poke gaping holes in Suzanne Venker’s argument that women need to surrender to their femininity and let men think that they’re in charge if they ever want to get married, I just want to point out one thing — one endlessly repeated thing — that she gets very, very wrong.

Venker claims that there has “been an explosion of brain research” that proves that men and women have different brains.  This research, she claims, shows that men are loners who like to hunt and build things and women are nurturers who like to talk and take care of people.

This false on two fronts.

First, she’s wrong about the brain research.  The books and articles claiming that there are “pink” and “blue” brains are not consistent with existing research.  (They are out there because people can make a lot of money by confirming other people’s biases.)

What does the research say?

It’s true that scientists have documented a number of small, average sex differences in brain anatomy, composition, and function, as well as differences in size and tissue ratios.  (Other differences — such as the size of the corpus callosum and lateralization, whether one sex uses one side of their brain more than the other — have proven to be wrong.)

So, scientists do find some differences, but they have largely failed to link these to differences in men’s and women’s observed emotions, cognition,  or behavior.  That is, we’ve found some differences, but we have no proof that they translate into anything. Moreover, new research suggests that differences we observe may be designed not to create differences between men and women, but to reduce them.  The brain may have two strategies for achieving the same outcome or one difference may compensate for another.  (For more, see Brain Gender by Melissa Hines.)

That’s one reason why Venker is wrong.

The second reason is even more damning.  Most of the research attempting to explain gender difference assumes that there differences to explain.   In fact, meta-analyses aimed at summarizing the literature on human sex differences and similarities in traits, personality, cognitive abilities, sexuality, temperament, and motor skills offer better evidence for similarity than difference.  On the vast majority of traits, men and women overlap tremendously.

Janet Hyde, a pioneer in this area, did a meta-analysis of meta-analyses that combined the results of 7,084 separate studies. She found evidence for a large or very large difference on 8% of characteristics and evidence for medium-sized differences on 15%.  She found evidence for small differences on another 48%.  What does a small difference look like?  Here’s an example of a mid-range small difference (for self-esteem):

For the final 30% of characteristics, she found no evidence gender difference.  So, on 78% of characteristics, she found teensy differences or none at all.  Wow, “opposite sexes” indeed.

The truth is, men aren’t loners and women aren’t talkers. Venker assumes the stereotypes and counts on her readers to agree that they are true, but the data doesn’t back her up.

Two excellent books summarize the debates over gender and neuroscience.  Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender is great for a beginner. She’s funny and you’ll learn a lot. Rebecca Jordan-Young’s Brain Storm is great for someone who wants and intermediate to advanced introduction to these issues.  Her book is downright brilliant.  I highly recommend both.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College.  Feel free to take a look at her forthcoming article, “The New Science of Sex Difference.”  You can also follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog.

Liberal women want more sex.

Controversial sociologist Mark Regnerus has been fooling around with the New Family Structures Survey.  Back in June, Regnerus used the NFSS data to conclude that gay parents are bad for children.  Now, he runs the regressions and finds that liberalism leaves women sexually dissatisfied.

Question:“Are you content with the amount of sex you’re having?”

The possible answers:

• Yes
• No, I’d prefer more
• No, I’d prefer less

The differences were clear.

Those liberal women, they try and they try and they try; they can’t get no… satisfaction. Hey, hey, hey — that’s what they say.

The differences held even with controls for how much sex the woman had had recently.  Nor did adding other possible explanatory variables dampen the effect:

[T]he measure of political liberalism remains significantly associated with the odds of wanting more sex even after controlling for the frequency of actual intercourse over the past two weeks, their age, marital status, education level, whether they’ve masturbated recently, their anxiety level, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, depressive symptoms, and porn use.

Regnerus says he was puzzled and asked an economist friend for her explanation.  She, like Regnerus, is a serious Christian, and saw it as a matter of seeking “transcendence.”  Liberal women want to have more sex because they feel the lack of sufficient transcendence in life and seek it in sex.  Conservative women find transcendence in the seemingly mundane — “sanctifying daily life” — so they do not need sex for transcendence.  Or as Regnerus puts it, “Basically, liberal women substitute sex for religion.”

To test this idea, Regnerus controlled for religious attendance.  When he did,  “political liberalism finally went silent as a predictor.”  Churchgoing liberals were no more insatiable than were their sexually content conservative co-worshipers.

So here’s the scenario.  All women want transcendence.  Since liberal women are not religious, they seek transcendence in sex and don’t find it.  They’re dissatisfied, but they cling to the idea that sex will bring them transcendence if only they have more of it.   So they keep looking for transcendence in all the wrong places.  Conservative women seek transcendence in religion and in everyday activities.  And that works.

Conclusion: Religion is deeply satisfying; sex, not so much.

This explanation, with its attribution of psychological-spiritual longing, makes some huge assumptions about what’s going on inside women’s heads.

I can offer a contrasting sociological explanation for Regnerus’ findings.  It looks not to deep inner longings for transcendence but to social norms, beliefs, and values.  It rests on the assumption that people’s desires are shaped by external forces, especially the culture of the social world they live in.  In some groups, sex for women is good, so it’s OK for them to want more sex.  In other social worlds, sex for women has a lower place on the scale of values.  It is less of a “focal concern.”

These differences make for differences in who is content with what — a liberal, East Coast man and a WASP woman from the Midwest, for example:

Can we really say that the difference here is about spiritual transcendence?

In some social worlds, a woman can never be too thin or too rich.  In those worlds, women diet and exercise in a way we might find obsessive.  But that’s what their culture rewards.  Some cultures hold that sex is a good thing — certainly more pleasurable than dieting and exercising — therefore,  more is better.  In some social worlds, that’s the way some people feel about money.  Are these desires really about transcendence, or they about cultural values?

Oh, and on the sexual discontent matter, there are two other possibilities that may not to have occurred to Regnerus: (1) maybe conservative men are better lovers; they satisfy their conservative bedmates in ways liberals can only dream of.   Or (2) conservative men are so bad at sex that when you ask their partners if they want more, the answer is, “No thanks.”

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Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University.  You can follow him at Montclair SocioBlog or on Twitter.

Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University. You can follow him at Montclair SocioBlog or on Twitter.

Cross-posted at the Huffington Post.

Anjan G. alerted us to an internet sensation, Liu Xianping.  The 72-year-old man in China has risen to fame modeling for his granddaughter’s clothing store, Yuekou.  The clothes are designed for teen girls:

Commenters are impressed about Xianping’s ability to “pull off” this look, but we shouldn’t be surprised.  Masculinity and femininity are performances, and so is age.

While the idea that we “do” gender is no surprise to SocImages regulars, we also “do” age.  In fact, we have a whole language of age-related chiding that serves to get people to act in ways that we deem suitable for their number of birthdays.  Says sociologist Cheryl Laz:

“Act your age. You’re a big kid now,” we say to children to encourage independence (or obedience). “Act your age. Stop being so childish,” we say to other adults when we think they are being irresponsible. “Act your age; you’re not as young as you used to be,” we say to an old person pursuing “youthful” activities.

Age, then, is a social construction too.

Accordingly, Xianping’s adoption of feminine poses and youthful fashions makes him appear younger and more girly than we think he should look.  Importantly, though, he is no more an actor here than are actual teen girls.  Each is playing a part, both with the help of just the right accessories.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Cross-posted at Jezebel.

I’d love to draw your attention to The Alpha Parent, a blogger who has collected a stunningly large number of toys for infants that socialize girls into preening.

Some of the toys are purses/handbags that include pretend lipsticks, compacts, and related-items.  My Pretty Learning Purse includes a toy lipstick and a mirror; the Gund Sesame Street Abbey Purse Playset includes a compact and powder brush; the Lilliputiens Liz Handbag includes an eye shadow compact complete with three shades and an eye shadow applicator.

In case you were wondering if this is a trend, the Alpha Parent post features TWENTY examples of purses filled with such toys.

It also includes examples of toy make-up bags. Going beyond the inclusion of beauty items in infant toys, these make beauty the sole point of the play.  Here are just two of the NINE pretend make-up bags she collected, the Oskar & Ellen Beauty Box and the Learn and Go Make-Up and Go:

Since we wouldn’t want a baby to miss the point, companies also produce and sell vanities for infants. The Alpha Parent’s post included FOUR; here’s two, the Perfectly Pink Tummy Time Vanity Mirror and the Fisher Price Laugh and Learn Magical Musical Mirror:

The Alpha Parent goes on to cover real nail polish made for infants, beauty-themed clothes for little girls, and a common category of dress up: beautician outfits.  I counted a surprising ELEVEN of these:

The latter reverses into a nurse’s uniform.

The Alpha Parent concludes:

Makeup toys prime girls for a lifetime of chasing rigid norms of physical attractiveness through the consumption of cosmetics and fashionable accessories.

They are also generally non-sex-transferable, meaning that parents are often loath to allow their boys to play with girl toys.  Gendered toys, then, increase the rate of toy purchasing, since parents of a boy and a girl have to buy special toys for each.

It’s a win-win for corporate capitalism.  Socialize the girls into beauty commodities by buying these toys now, plan on reaping the benefits with the real thing later.  Brainwash the boys in an entirely different way (the Alpha Parent notes tools and electronics), do the same with them simultaneously.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Back in 2009, Lisa posted about microscopes and telescopes in a Toys’R’Us catalog. In both cases, the pink version was the least powerful option.

Reader Claudia, who lives in Ireland, found a similar example. Back in October, a supermarket outside Dublin sent out a mailer that advertised boys’ and girls’ laptops. The boys’ version has 50 functions; the girls get just half as many:

Also, it looks more like a packet of birth control pills than a laptop.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.