Gender
Inequality
Sociology 125
November 2, 2010
Films: November 3
Freedom on My Mind Tulia, Texas
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This powerful documentary chronicles the The film documents an important episode from the
late 1990s and early 2000s in the complicated racial
Mississippi Voter Registration Project history of Texas. The episode made the news a few
during the Civil Rights movement of the years ago and quickly faded from our collective
early 1960s. Archival footage and memory. The filmmakers present a balanced, if
contemporary interviews explore early critical, view of the events in a small town in the
Texas panhandle and what happened when a rouge
efforts to register disenfranchised blacks, undercover cop arrested 46 people - 39 of whom were
the Freedom Summer drive and the African-Americans. The 46 people were charged with
formation of the Mississippi Freedom selling drugs based solely on the evidence of the
Democratic Party. Freedom on My Mind single undercover cop. While filmmakers clearly side
garnered a Best Documentary Oscar with the victims, they let the sheriff and the
undercover cop speak and they weave together the
nomination and won the Grand Jury Prize at different voices in the town to present the narrative of
the Sundance Film Festival. the events fairly and honestly. The connections
between the fear of drugs and racial prejudices are
self-evident.
November 1 & 2
Killing us Softly Growing Up Female
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Growing Up Female is one of the first films of the modern women's
In this new, highly anticipated update of her pioneering Killing movement. Produced in 1971, it caused controversy and exhilaration.
Us Softly series, the first in more than a decade, Jean Kilbourne It was widely used by consciousness-raising groups to generate interest
takes a fresh look at how advertising traffics in distorted and and help explain feminism to a skeptical society. The film looks at
destructive ideals of femininity. The film marshals a range of female socialization through a personal look into the lives of six
new print and television advertisements to lay bare a stunning women, age 4 to 35, and the forces that shape them--teachers,
pattern of damaging gender stereotypes -- images and messages counselors, advertising, music and the institution of marriage. It offers
that too often reinforce unrealistic, and unhealthy, perceptions us a chance to see how much has changed--and how much remains the
of beauty, perfection, and sexuality. By bringing Kilbourne's same. Purchased by more than 400 universities and libraries.
groundbreaking analysis up to date, Killing Us Softly 4 stands to
challenge a new generation of students to take advertising
seriously, and to think critically about popular culture and its
relationship to sexism, eating disorders, and gender violence.
Boys Will be Men
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Boys are in trouble. The spate of school shootings in 1998 and 1999 amplified a warning being sounded by social scientists. After 20 years
of concern over the status of girls raised by the women's movement, some experts say it is boys we need to turn our attention to. There are
disturbing statistics to back this up. Four boys are diagnosed as emotionally disturbed for every one girl. Six boys are diagnosed with
attention deficit disorder for every one girl. Boys kill themselves five times more often than girls. Boys are four times more likely to drop
out of high school than girls are. Girls now outnumber boys entering college.
How do boys become men? How do they learn courage, the difference between right and wrong, and the meaning of love? What hurts
them, makes them violent, and sometimes kills them? Boys Will Be Men, a documentary film about growing up male in America, seeks
answers to these questions.
Sex and Gender
Sex: a biological distinction based on roles in the process
of biological reproduction
Gender: a social distinction between roles and
expectations linked to sex.
Gender is the social transformation of a biological
difference, sex, into a social difference.
Gender norms are the rules of appropriate behavior and
roles for men and women.
Justice
An inequality is unjust when:
a) the inequality is unfair,
and
b) something could in principle be done to eliminate the
unfairness.
Social injustices persist because of power inequalities and the
unwillingness of those with power to make changes
What is Natural?
Biology and society:
Natural does not necessarily equal desirable or
unchangeable
Egalitarian gender relations = equal power and autonomy
But not necessarily identical social roles
For instance, equality might mean equal amounts of leisure
time.
Is It possible to have a society within which deeply egalitarian
gender relations predominate?
What is Natural?
I. Existing distribution of
caregiving in a world with
strong gender norms
Gender gap in
caregiving
# of people
Men Women
Low High
The intensity of caregiving behavior
(hours/week dedicated to child care)
What is Natural?
I. Existing distribution of II. Hypothetical distributions of
caregiving in a world with caregiving in a world with weak
strong gender norms gender norms
Gender gap in
Gender gap in caregiving
caregiving
Men Men Women
Women
Low High Low High
The intensity of caregiving behavior The intensity of caregiving behavior
Massive Transformation in Gender
Relations
Legal Rights
Labor Force Participation
Occupation Structure and Earnings
Political power
Transformation in Family Structure
Domestic Division of Labor
Sexuality
Legal Rights gained by women
Right to vote (1920; 19th Amendment)
Right to own passport (early 1930s)
Equal right to divorce (gradually since 1940s)
Reproductive rights (1973)
Equal rights to university admission (1960s)
Equal rights to all jobs and equal pay (1960s)
Equal rights to participate in sports (1972)
Paid Work: the new cultural norm
Labor Force Participation Rates
of Married Women with Children, 1950-2007
Occupational Structure and Earnings
% Enrollments in Medical & Law Schools who are women, 1949-2007
Some jobs remain highly gendered
Men’s and Women’s median wages, 1973-2004
Women’s wages = Women’s wages =
63% of men’s wages 82% of men’s wages
Occupational Structure and Earnings
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Educational Attainment
Educational Earnings Gap
In 2001, women with a Doctorate earned 75% of what men with identical
educational attainment earned
What Explains the Gender Pay Gap?
Today, human capital differences (education, workplace experience), as
well as race (another pay gap), explain less of the wage gap.
Unexplained pay gap is between 9 and 17%. Is this the result of
discrimination?
Aggregate data don’t say conclusively audit studies are suggestive of
discrimination
Reflect earnings between gendered jobs: stereotypical women’s jobs pay
less on average.
Discrimination alters incentives: who should drop out of the labor market
at childbirth?
if her expected earnings are lower, perhaps the woman. If so, this would
exacerbate the pay gap but in a way not easily detected as discrimination
% of corporate officers and CEOs who are women
Women elected officials, 1979-2009
Women in national legislatures, 2009 (%)
Political and Economic Power
Transformation of Family Structure:
Heterogeneous families
Probability of
divorce has
increased from 12%
(1950’s) to ~50%
(2002)
Average age of first
marriage delayed
(26 for women, 27
for men)
% of Households that consist of a Married Couple
% of Households that consist
of a Single Person living alone
% of Women ages 30-34
who have Never Married, 1940-2000
Probability of first marriage disruption within 10 years by marriage
cohort and race/ethnicity: marriages begun 1954-1984
Domestic Division of Labor
Decision making in the household
A Pew Research Center survey
(2008) asked men and women
living in couples which one
generally makes the decisions
in four familiar areas of
domestic life:
Who decides what you do
together on the weekend? Who
manages the household
finances? Who makes the
decisions on big purchases for
the home? And who most often
decides what to watch on
television?
mothers fathers
Time devoted by Mothers and Fathers to routine housecleaning
Men have taken on
modestly more amounts
of domestic labor
Women’s domestic
labor has declined
modestly overall, while
simultaneously joining
the paid labor force
Sexuality
Sexuality and gender relations:
Sexuality is governed by rules and norms
Policing rules about sexuality impacts gender equality
rules change over time and have been impacted by birth control,
social movements, and formal laws
Control over sexuality and unequal power relations
Sexual Violence
Laws and norms around sexual harassment
De-criminalization and partial de-stigmatization of homosexuality
Sexual Violence
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04/news/17310748_1_sexual-harassment-harassment-
cases-harassment-claims
Summary
Significant erosion of male domination and substantial
increases in autonomy and self-determination for women
Gender inequality remains
What explains the transformation of gender
relations?
Explaining Changes in Gender
Relations
Women have always tried to increase their autonomy and
reduce their subjection. But throughout most of history
these struggles have produced at best minimal change.
Why do these struggles produce big changes sometimes
and not others? Why in second half of the 20th century
was there such massive transformation?
The general answer
While women have tried throughout history to increase their
autonomy and reduce their subordination, they could only
succeed in doing this on a large scale once social conditions
had changed in ways that made existing gender power
relations fragile.
Three basic processes
1. Decline in a coherent interest among men to
defend male domination
2. Erosion of institutional system of female
domesticity which eroded women’s interest in
traditional gender relations
3. Increase in capacity for challenge by women
The decline of coherent male
interests in male domination
Central explanation:
The rapidly increasing economic demand for literate labor by
male employers
Crisis of female domesticity
• Stable marriage/personal relations fostered domesticity
• blocked work opportunities increased the attractiveness of
domesticity
• A family wage made domesticity economically feasible
• dense social networks supported domesticity (neighbors,
churches, communities, etc.)
• cultural norms and sexism reinforced identities and
expectations
Collapse of the system of coherent
domesticity beginning in the 1960s
decline of stable marriage means women cannot count of
support of husbands
expansion of work opportunities increased the viability of
alternatives to domesticity
decline of the family wage made domesticity economically
difficult decline of unions and de-regulation of labor
markets
erosion of dense social networks makes domesticity more
isolated and difficult
challenge to cultural norms and traditional sexism contributes
to new identities
increasing abilities of women to
struggle against oppression
Members of the Political Equality League
stump for women’s suffrage in Milwaukee
in an early Ford (~1911-12)
Gender relations today
Dramatic decline in family size unlikely to be reversed:
permanent erosion of lifetime domesticity as an ideal
Traditional marriage stability unlikely to be restored
women’s labor force participation unlikely to be reversed
women’s participation in powerful and influential positions
unlikely to decline
How much further can we go in eliminating remaining forms of
gender inequality?
Imagine two possible worlds
World #1 World #2
• Average wages of men and women • Average wages of women are 75-80%
are about the same of wages of men
• Good quality childcare is provided by • No childcare is provided by the city or
the city or employers free or at low cost employers; private daycare is expensive
• Generous paid parental leave for or of poor quality
caregiving emergencies and early infant • no paid parental leave for caregiving
care emergencies or early infant care
World #1 is like Sweden
World #2 is like the United States
Gains and Losses
Gender equality imposes costs on some women and erodes some
of the security that comes with traditional female dependency.
Certain ways of life, valued by many women and men, are
threatened by gender equality.
Men have contradictory interests with respect to gender
inequality: men have much to gain from gender equality, but
some losses as well.
Gains for men: opening up of choices around parenting & work;
the cult of masculinity blocks the full development of
personhood in men.
Losses for men: more competition for higher paying jobs; end of
gender-based privileges at home.
Gendered Division of labor in the
Household
Distribution of free time
Implications for employment
penalties for leaving the labor market
Limitations in types of jobs available to married women
Employer expectations about women
Policy Options
1. Pay equity
not just equal pay for identical work, but equal pay for
comparable work – jobs with similar skill sets would be paid the
same.
would make feminine jobs more attractive to men, because the
pay would be higher, thus leading to occupational equality.
Would contribute to equalizing wages between men and women
and thus alter the gender dynamics of household work
High quality publicly provided childcare
Egalitarian parental leave
Sources of Child Care
Parental Leave
The Family Ideals and Fallback Positions of
Young Men and Women
