Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Sex, and Aging

This is Unit Seven of Sociology, Part Two: gender and sexuality, taught as the second of the unit's three systems of stratification. The part opens by pulling apart three things ordinary usage runs together, and the course holds them apart by rule rather than by preference. A gender role is an expectation applied to a person. A gender identity is a person's own sense of their gender. A sexual orientation is a pattern of attraction. Knowing any one of the three tells you nothing certain about the other two. The same separation runs through the terms for prejudice here. Sexism is an attitude and patriarchy is the system it sits inside; heterosexism is an institutional arrangement and homophobia is a personal aversion. In each pair the structure can operate with nobody in it holding the attitude. Then the wage gap, and the entry about it is a measurement entry rather than a figure. What a reported gap says depends entirely on what was controlled for and what was left in — so the number means nothing until you ask. By the end you will be able to do five things. One: tell role, identity and orientation apart. Two: tell sexism from patriarchy by scale. Three: read a reported wage gap. Four: say what doing gender claims. Five: name the second shift and emotional labor.

Four entries, and the first three are the reason this part opens the way it does. Role, identity and orientation are independent of one another, and the course's terminology lock forbids using any of them as a synonym for another. The fourth entry covers how the first is taught, which is mostly without anybody teaching it.

The expectation.

Soc 1080 Gender Role

Like race, a socially constructed expectation for how a person should look and behave, learned rather than inherited from biological sex. Toys, chores and praise are distributed differently depending on which gender a child is assigned. It names an expectation applied to a person, and is never the same term as gender identity.

How it is transmitted.

Soc 1081 Gender Socialization

The process by which family, school, peers and media teach a person their society's gender roles, largely without anyone stating a rule aloud. A teacher who calls on boys more often than girls reproduces a gendered expectation without announcing one. The four agents act together, and no single one accounts for the pattern.

A person's own sense.

Soc 1083 Gender Identity: Cisgender and Transgender

A person's own deeply held sense of their gender. A cisgender person's identity matches their sex assigned at birth; a transgender person's does not. A transgender man was assigned female at birth and lives, and is properly addressed, as a man. Both terms describe identity alone and say nothing about orientation.

A pattern of attraction.

Soc 1085 Sexual Orientation

A person's pattern of physical and emotional attraction, ranging across categories from exclusively one sex to any sex to none. Kinsey's scale placed orientation on a continuum rather than a strict either-or, a framing later research has kept. Orientation and gender identity are independent categories.

Two entries, and both describe something that runs without anybody deciding it. A form with only two fields encodes an assumption before it is filled in, and an institution can be patriarchal with no individual inside it holding a sexist attitude.

The built-in assumption.

Soc 1087 Heteronormativity

The assumption, built into a society's institutions, that heterosexual attraction is the default and every other orientation departs from it. A form providing only husband and wife fields encodes it before anyone fills it in. It can operate without hostile intent, through defaults nobody examined.

Attitude, and institution.

Soc 1089 Sexism and Patriarchy, Distinguished

Sexism is prejudice that values one sex over the other; patriarchy is the system in which that valuation is embedded in a society's institutions. A single dismissive comment is sexism; a country where most legislative seats are held by one sex reflects patriarchy. An institution can be patriarchal with nobody in it holding a sexist attitude.

Three entries. The first is a measurement entry rather than a statistic, and it belongs with the course's other entries about how an official figure gets manufactured. The next two give structural drivers, and both are inferred from patterns across many careers rather than from any single case.

How it is computed.

Soc 1091 The Gender Wage Gap: How It's Measured

Reported as the ratio of women's to men's median full-time earnings, shaped by which jobs each sex holds. Comparing two ratios computed differently — with or without controlling for occupation — shifts the gap's size without any wage having changed. Read a reported figure by first asking what was controlled for and what was left in.

One driver.

Soc 1093 The Motherhood Penalty and Fatherhood Premium

The motherhood penalty is a hiring and pay disadvantage attached to mothers specifically; the fatherhood premium is the reverse advantage attached to fathers, and studies find both. An identical résumé recommended for a lower starting salary once it signals motherhood shows the penalty directly. The asymmetry is parental status interacting with gender.

Higher up.

Soc 1095 The Glass Ceiling

An invisible barrier limiting women's advancement into an organization's highest positions, visible in the pattern of who does not rise. A legislature with many women in early roles but few in its highest seats reveals it without any single vote proving it. The barrier is inferred from a pattern across many careers.

Five entries. First the movements that contested these arrangements — a family of them, with real internal disagreement, rather than one program. Then four theoretical accounts, and watch the first: it explains why an arrangement took hold without showing that it fits present conditions.

The movements.

Soc 1097 Feminism: A History of Organizing

The organized movements that have contested unequal legal, economic and social standing between the sexes. Suffrage-era organizing, Friedan's 1963 critique marking the second wave, and Title IX each followed sustained organizing rather than arriving on their own. Feminism names a family of movements with real internal disagreement.

What it did.

Soc 1098 Functionalism on Gender

A gendered division of labor fit conditions like pregnancy and nursing, then persisted to keep the family running. In a subsistence economy, nursing intervals decided who could hunt or trade, and tasks sorted by that constraint and outlived it. Explaining why an arrangement took hold does not show it fits today.

Who it serves.

Soc 1099 Conflict Theory on Gender

Gender as a struggle over scarce resources in which men hold the dominant position and set the rules for success. Engels compared the household to the labor market, describing women's dependence on a male wage as resembling a worker's dependence on an employer. The claim concerns structural dominance, not individual intent.

The framework built for it.

Soc 1101 Feminist Theory on Gender

Unit One's feminist theory applied here to gender, examining how roles and institutions maintain men's advantage and treat it as ordinary. Radical feminism examines the family itself as a site where male dominance is produced and then taken for granted. This applies the framework rather than introducing it.

Moment to moment.

Soc 1103 Symbolic Interactionism and "Doing Gender"

West and Zimmerman held that gender is something a person performs moment to moment, not a fixed trait a person has. A loan applicant may present numbers to a male officer and intentions to a female one, appealing to the traits each symbol carries. Performing gender is not free invention — the available scripts are socially supplied.

Two entries, and they hold the same line the sexism-patriarchy pair held. One names a system embedded in policy; the other names two personal aversions that are frequently paired and are not the same prejudice.

The system.

Soc 1104 Heterosexism

Both an ideology and a set of institutional practices privileging heterosexual orientation over every other. A benefits policy recognising only opposite-sex spouses enacts it structurally, without any staff member expressing an attitude. It describes a system; the personal aversion it can accompany is a separate, narrower term.

The narrower terms.

Soc 1106 Homophobia and Transphobia, Distinguished

Homophobia is an aversion to gay or lesbian people; transphobia is an aversion to transgender people — two distinct prejudices, often paired but not identical. A person can hold one without the other, since the aversions target orientation and identity, which are separate categories. Neither substitutes for the institutional term.

Two entries to close. The first is a live dispute the course reports along with what the anchor's reviewed evidence shows, which is a step further than it goes with most disputes. The second names two kinds of work that are real work, fall unevenly, and appear in no wage figure anywhere.

The dispute.

Soc 1108 The Sex Education Debate

U.S. sex education divides into abstinence-focused and comprehensive programs. Abstinence advocates favor delay as surest prevention; comprehensive advocates favor covering contraception, and studies reviewed in the anchor find it more effective at reducing unintended pregnancy. Do not read prevalence as effectiveness — commonality and effectiveness are separate questions.

The uncounted work.

Soc 1109 The Second Shift and Emotional Labor

Hochschild named the second shift, the unpaid domestic work awaiting a paid worker at home, and emotional labor, the management of feeling a job itself requires. A nurse ending a shift goes home to cooking and childcare, having spent the day producing calm she did not feel. Both are work, both fall unevenly by gender, and both go uncounted in wages.

Five things to carry out of Part Two. Gender role, gender identity and sexual orientation are three separate categories. A role is an expectation applied to a person, an identity is that person's own sense of their gender, and an orientation is a pattern of attraction. Knowing one tells you nothing certain about the others, and the course's terminology lock forbids swapping any of them. The prejudice terms hold the same line twice. Sexism is an attitude and patriarchy is the system; heterosexism is the institutional arrangement and homophobia the personal aversion. In both pairs the structure runs with nobody in it holding the attitude — a benefits policy, or a form with two fields. A reported wage gap is a ratio of medians, and its size moves with what was controlled for. Two figures computed differently disagree without any wage having changed, so ask what went into the comparison before reading anything off it. Doing gender says gender is performed moment to moment rather than possessed as a trait — but the scripts available for the performance are socially supplied, so it is not free invention. And the second shift is the unpaid domestic work waiting after paid work, while emotional labor is the management of feeling the job itself demands. Both are work, both fall unevenly by gender, and neither appears in any wage. Part Three turns to aging, the third system, and then closes the unit on all three at once.