How do sociololgists construct gender in their analysis on social inequality?. (UPSC CSE Mains 2022 - Sociology, Paper 1)
Gender refers to the meaning a culture attaches to being female or male.
Functionalists like Talcott Parsons observed, gender helps integrate society, at least in its traditional form. Gender establishes a complementary set of roles that links men and women into family units and gives each sex responsibility for carrying out important tasks. Society encourages gender conformity by instilling in men and women a fear that straying too far from accepted standards of masculinity or femininity will cause rejection by the other sex.
The symbolic-interaction approach suggests that individuals socially construct the reality they experience as they interact, using gender as one element of their personal “performances.” Gender can be a useful guide to how we behave. Yet gender, as a structural dimension of society, is beyond the immediate control of any of us as individuals and also gives some people power over others. Hence patterns of everyday social interaction reflect our society’s gender stratification. Everyday interaction also helps reinforce this inequality. For example, to the extent that fathers take the lead in family discussions, the entire family learns to expect men to “display leadership” and “show their wisdom.”
From a social-conflict point of view, gender involves differences not just in behavior but in power as well. Conflict theory thus argues that gender is best understood as men attempting to maintain power and privilege to the detriment of women. Men can be seen as the dominant group and women as the subordinate group. While certain gender roles may have been appropriate in a hunter-gatherer society, conflict theorists argue that the only reason these roles persist is because the dominant group naturally works to maintain their power and status. Social problems are created when dominant groups exploit or oppress subordinate groups. Hence, their approach is normative in that it prescribes changes to the power structure, advocating a balance of power between genders.
Friedrich Engels tied gender stratification to the rise of private property and a class hierarchy. Marriage and the family are strategies by which men control their property through control of the sexuality of women. Capitalism exploits everyone by paying men low wages and assigning women the task of maintaining the home.
Feminism
- endorses the social equality of women and men and opposes patriarchy and sexism.
- seeks to eliminate violence against women.
- advocates giving women control over their reproduction.
There are three types of feminism:
- Liberal feminism seeks equal opportunity for both sexes within the existing society.
- Socialist feminism claims that gender equality will come about by replacing capitalism with socialism.
- Radical feminism seeks to eliminate the concept of gender itself and to create an egalitarian and gender-free society
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