Gender

Gender Sandra Bem’s “The Lenses of Gender” – 1993 • Ways people viewed social reality. Shapes how people perceive, conceive and discuss social reality. Lenses are embedded in social institutions (schools, workplaces, governmnent, religions) so they shape material things. Ex. Unequal pay and inadequate daycare. Hidden assumptions about sex and gender are everywhere – in our media, our institutions, our own minds. Male power continues across generations. Situation is very difficult to change. • Three lenses: 1. Androcentrism - “Male centeredness.” Males and male experience are the neutral standard or norm, and females and female experience are a sex-specific deviation from that norm. 2. Gender polarization - Sex differences become an organizing principle for the social life of the culture. 3. Biological essentialism - Rationalizes and legitimates both other lenses by treating them as natural and inevitable consequences of the intrinsic biological nature of women and men. Way lenses become internalized by children - Gender Schema Theory Children internalize (unconscious part of their minds) lends of gender polarization and become gender polarizing (gender schematic). They judge what they should do based on what they think is appropriate for their sex. Become conventionally gendered. • Daily experiences are programmed by institutionalized social practices. • Difference between biological and “real” male and female • Males tend to be insecure, but women and homosexual men are beneath them. • Gendered personality – process and product. Collection of masculine and feminine traits and a way of constructing reality that itself constructs those traits. • Gender nonconformist – Challenges the idea that socially constructed gender roles are good to have.