GENDER DIFFERENTIATION AND

GENDER INEQUALITY:

STRUCTURAL VS CULTURAL ARGUMENTS

some basic facts: men and women do different things, get paid different amounts for doing them, and that gap has not narrowed

0) --sex: the biological fact of maleness or femaleness

--gender: the socially constructed idea of maleness or femaleness

1) the structural argument: GUTTENTAG AND SECORD

--the ratio, # males : # females, shapes the degree and kind of empowerment of each sex

--not a logic of supply and demand: the scarcer sex does NOT have an advantage

--instead, a logic of structural power and compensatory gender differentiation

--norms of chastity & fidelity

--keeping women in private spaces and domestic work

--dev't of male clubs: e.g.., fraternities and monasteries

2) critique of the structural argument

a) doesn't seem to work for wilson's truly disadvantaged

population

b) unbalanced sex ratios are in fact produced by cultural factors

1) geographic mobility

2) female infanticide

3) health and diet

4) war as "men's work"

c) thus, sex ratios are an artifact of preexisting cultural

dispositions

3) gender socialization: Simone de Beauvoir's THE SECOND SEX

--to attack and unpack the idea of "woman," i.e., the myth of femininity; woman as mystery, as sensuality/emotion

--"man" as the neutral term, and the standard of judgment

--women's bodies and bodily functions as markers of difference,

as taboo

--the two contradictory destinies of women: temptress and

mother, and now professional

4) Consider the treatment of women in SIDEWALK

--consider the interaction between gender and race here