Critically assess the relevance of gender to contemporary sociology. Use two sociological examples.

Gender is a fundamental element of contemporary sociology. Integral to modern studies and societies, it helps shape the lens through which society is viewed. Traditionally seen as biological differences between humans, with increasingly grey areas in both the biological and social meanings of the term, definitions are changing. Understanding gender has developed considerably since the androcentric classical sociology of Durkheim and Weber, who like Marx, ‘rendered [women] invisible’, barely recognising them in their studies (Jackson, Scott 2002: 3). Though not previously acknowledged, gender has always been present in sociology, and conclusions can be drawn even when it is not explicitly featured, highlighting androcentrism, where ‘men pass off knowledge as objective when it is, in fact, constructed from a masculine perspective’ (Jackson, Scott 2002: 3). In such, the relevance of gender to contemporary sociology is apparent – there is a need to uncover these androcentric biases (Jackson, Scott 2002: 13). With the post-war advances in contraception, education and female employment, it could be argued that the relevance of gender in contemporary sociology is questionable, given that today, gender stereotypes are frequently contested. However, it is the unrelenting inequality in gender relations that is relevant to contemporary sociology. To understand the relevance of gender, we can look firstly on a societal level in the norms of culture, consumption and sexuality and secondly on a broader level in democracy and power and historical perspectives. Given all recent societal changes, gender shouldn’t be relevant, but it still is, because despite developments, inequality and discrimination remains. Attitudes are changing, but very slowly, and gender will only become less relevant to contemporary sociology as current predominant attitudes change over time.  

In assessing the relevance of gender, it is important to understand exactly who defines gender and gender norms, and why they are problematic in society. Despite the absence of gender in classical sociology, Simmel suggested that it has a social constructionist nature, that ‘the fact that the male sex is not only considered relatively superior to the female, but that it is taken as the universal human norm…is…based on the power position of the male’ (Jackson, Scott 2002: 3). We label to associate meaning, yet it is the negative connotations of meaning, and the advantageous abuse of labels that is problematic. Problems arise from the historically gendered dominance of ‘males’ over ‘females’ in societies worldwide. Furthermore, why do we continue to promote norms of gender? Durkheim asserts that ‘in a public gathering we can be victims of an illusion which leads us to believe that we have ourselves produced what has been imposed upon us externally’ (Durkheim: 1982, 53), that gender is ‘a socially imposed division of the sexes’ (Rubin 1975: 179 cited in Jackson, Scott, 2002: 9). Indeed, societal norms are easily entrenched, ‘even by 6/7 children have absorbed the basic values and attitudes of their subculture’ (Giddens: 1994, 148). Gender norms are internalised from a young age, to the point that many do not question, but accept their role in society.

This internalisation is evident in consumption and media and de Beauvoir’s belief that ‘one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’ (Jackson, Scott, 2002: 9). While de Beauvoir was explaining that masculinity and femininity are products not of biology but of the social and psychological (Jackson, Scott, 2002: 9), arguably, in contemporary consumer society, one is born a woman. Even before birth, awareness of the sex, determines the colour of the room, toys and clothes – everything gender orientated. Of course, de Beauvoir is making the important point that the social character of womanhood is distinct from biological features (Jackson, Scott, 2002: 9), but the pervasive nature of gender stereotypes cannot be avoided. Such stereotypes must be considered in contemporary sociology, as cultural norms are promoted in everything from Yorkie’s ‘NOT FOR GIRLS’ chocolate, to Kleenex’s ‘mansize’ tissues. Even music offers no escape from gender roles, with lyrics objectifying and confining women to subordinate roles. It is in the written and spoken word that the power relations in gender are most subtly effective. From the presentation of men and women in the media, to the use of masculine or feminine pronouns in many romance languages, stereotypes continue to seep into our subconscious, surreptitiously shaping our view of relationships and statuses in society. 

Sociological and biological developments highlight inconsistencies in such gender norms, negating the idea that ‘while gender was treated as socially constructed, it was assumed to rest on an existing ‘natural’ division’ (Jackson, Scott, 2002: 15). With awareness of the variation within the biology and body forms that fit scientific norms of ‘male’ and ‘female’, the rigidity and relevance of gender must be addressed. Assessing sex and gender enables a more substantial social understanding of the distinctions within gender (Jackson, Scott, 2002: 15), and arguably, if sex, as well as gender is a construct, it follows that the body does not have a pre-given essential sex (Jackson, Scott, 2002: 19). Society is reluctant to consider that gender is perhaps not binary, but a scale, indeed ‘how is a social reality where there are two, and only two, genders constructed?’ (Kessler and McKenna, 1978: 3 cited in Jackson, Scott, 2002: 16). It is only because we make a gender distinction that we are able to talk about masculine or feminine characteristics or activities (Jackson, Scott, 2002: 16), and ‘rather than biological, the recognition of gender differences is always a social act’ (Jackson, Scott, 2002: 16). Garfinkel states that ‘the production of a sexed persona is always a performance’ (Jackson, Scott, 2002: 16), and arguably, his assertion is just – as de Beauvoir stated, we learn to fit our gender role. Though arguably ‘gender’ is as much a construction as ‘sex’, the retention of gender to describe differences remains appropriate, while sex is more ambiguous (Jackson, Scott, 2002: 20). It is difficult to separate the two terms, and any understanding involves consciously distinguishing between the body and the persona. In fact, any refusal to, or difficulty in acknowledging a separation between the body and the persona is integral to this debate – though the biological ‘fact’ of the ‘sexed’ male or female body is increasingly questionable, the ‘gendered’ persona is largely constructed, while the physical body is arguably less so, making the role of gender in society all the more relevant.

Gender is central to power relations in modern societies, promoted by both men and women, in the continuation of the norm. This relationship between power and gender is perhaps most explicit in the Arab world, where the democratic deficit can be explained by the status of women (Jamal, 2002: 7). Though many may be surprised that women ‘are more likely than men to support Islamism as a means of preserving the traditional status quo’ (Jamal, 2002: 9) from a Foucauldian perspective this confirms that ‘the exercise of power is not added on from the outside, but is so subtly present…as to increase efficiency by itself increasing its own points of contact’ (Foucault 1995:201). Women in many Muslim societies feel that such an un-democratic structure keeps "their men checked" from pursuing the ways of the West (Jamal, 2002: 9). Indeed, the ‘cultural fault line that divides the West and the Muslim world is not about democracy but sex’ (Inglehart and Norris, 2003: 63) and ‘a society’s commitment to gender equality and sexual liberalization proves time and again to be the most reliable indicator of how strongly that society supports principles of tolerance and egalitarianism’ (Inglehart and Norris, 2003: 65). Indeed, ‘gender attribution as an interactive process is androcentric’ (Jackson, Scott, 2002: 17) - women are subordinate because of patriarchal domination and ‘the two groups are distinguished socially because one dominates the other’ (Delphy and Leronard, 1992: 258 cited Jackson, Scott, 2002: 18). Mead questioned these naturalistic assumptions in her study of three New Guinean societies, finding they had different ideas about the temperament of each sex. Controversially for a time of rigid gender roles, she found ‘feminine and masculine attributes and roles were largely cultural rather than natural’ (Jackson, Scott, 2002: 7). Culture over nature does not, however, negate the relevance of gender in contemporary sociology. Gender is relevant to contemporary sociology, because it continues to shape political structures across the world that subordinate women and favour men, perpetrating a deep, gendered inequality.

Reflecting on such imbalances, it is important to understand how it is men, not women, who are dominant. Engels suggested social constructionism, that ‘at sometime in prehistory men and women were equal’ (Jackson, Scott 2002: 3). Fedigan pursues this understanding of our categorical sexual history questioning the part that women are seen to have played in human society, believing that we have an ‘urge to know our origins…to justify our present social arrangements through reference to historical precedents’ (Fedigan, 1986: 26, 25). Focusing on Darwin, who after publishing The Origin of the Species in 1859, ‘was left with the puzzle of the explanation of secondary sexual characteristics in a wide range of species’, she shows his reasoning that secondary sexual characteristics ‘were the result of two types of interactions between the sexes – competition and choice’ (Fedigan, 1986: 27). Darwin argued that competition occurred between males for access to female mates, and choice was exercised by females over the males available to them.’ (Fedigan, 1986: 27). This suggests that females had the power in natural selection, yet Darwin was using this example to show that males, in their competition, survived natural selection through fighting off the competition. Many have since stated that Darwin ‘projected onto nature his own images of appropriate role behavior for men and women, clearly drawn from upper-class Victorian culture in Britain in the 1800s’ (Fedigan, 1986: 27). Fedigan herself states that ‘it is possible for people to widely and passionately hold cultural beliefs that are in direct contradiction to their social actions’ (Fedigan, 1986: 61). It is politically convenient for men to maintain such beliefs, and indeed ‘the accuracy and applicability [of female domesticity as a pillar of history has] never been openly debated’ (Fedigan, 1986: 61). Fedigan concludes that ‘some readers may find it hard to accept that cultural beliefs and narrative traditions play a significant role in scientific models of human evolution’ (Fedigan, 1986: 61) and her paper shows that ‘in these origin tales we try to coax the material evidence into telling us about the past, but the narrative we weave about the past also tells us about the present’, (Fedigan, 1986: 63) illustrating the difficulty in separating current cultural ideals from an historical understanding of gender, but also the extreme relevance of thinkers such as Klein, de Beauvoir and Mead in debunking many of these androcentric biases in sociology.

With progressions in education, rights, healthcare and social norms the relevance of gender has been slowly changing. Indeed, as scientific developments and societal understanding of gender have advanced, gender is becoming less relevant, in the biological and the social sense. And yet, it continues to be impossible to escape stereotypes and discrimination based on gender distinctions. Arguably, this is not just a question of whether the term ‘gender’ is relevant – it is about the distinctions and the discrimination that accompany it. Across the world, women are predominantly leading the drive for gender equality – from protests to blogs, books to employment rights, efforts are being made to reassess and reassert the assumptions and position of women, and men, in society. Furthermore, with the scientific ability to dramatically reconstruct the ‘gender’ of a body, the lines between the rigid ‘male’ and ‘female’ gender forms are increasingly blurring. Given these changes, it is arguable that gender should not be relevant in contemporary sociology, but until society becomes comfortable with the possibility that gender is a scale, and not so biologically categorical, it will continue to be. Gender is relevant in contemporary sociology: it still shapes societies and individuals, and it’s normalizing power, of the subtlest form, often detrimentally impacts individuals, societies and research, and instils a deeply unequal core at the heart of our understanding of the world.

Bibliography

1.     Giddens, A (1994) Beyond left and right: the future of radical politics (Cambridge: Stanford University Press)

2.     Foucault, M (1995) Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison (Paris: Second Edition Vintage Books)

3.     Jackson, S, Scott, S (2002) Gender: a sociological reader (London: Routledge)

4.     Jamal, A (2002) Reassessing Support for Islam and Democracy (World Affairs, 51-63)

5.     Fedigan, L, M (1986) The Changing Role of Women in Models of Human Evolution (Alberta: Annual Review Inc.)

6.     Durkhiem, E (1982), The Rules of Sociological Method (London: Macmillan)

7.     Inglehart, R and Norris, P (2003) The True Clash of Civilizations (Foreign Policy, 63-70)