9.10 Conclusion
We opened this chapter by discussing some of the key implications for women, women’s bodies, and families with the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. In addition to the individual hardships women may experience during a time when they have fewer reproductive rights, nationally we are seeing a shift in how women are viewed. A judicial decision by the U.S. government has rendered women less powerful when it comes to making medical decisions regarding their bodies. Regardless of your personal views on abortion, we can see that the decision removes women’s rights that were previously protected at the federal level.
In this chapter, you learned more about gender through a social constructionist perspective. You learned to distinguish between concepts like sex, gender, gender identity, transgender, and intersex. In addition to interactional inequalities related to gender, you examined how inequalities are embedded in some of our social institutions.
Gender is experienced at the individual, interactional, and structural levels. From our gender identity to our interactions with others, we constantly participate in the process of “doing gender.” We tend to be held accountable for performances of masculinity and femininity that align with our sex. Yet, for some of us, those performances may be unattainable. Others may choose to intentionally avoid participation in hegemonic forms of masculinity and femininity. The experience and embodiment of gender also intersects with other aspects of our lives, such as race and class. As you’ve learned in this chapter and others, our identities are closely tied to power relations. We can encounter sexism during our interactions, but what escalates the experience of oppression is when we begin to see sexism built into our social institutions. Finally, you learned about social change through the continual evolution of feminist theory. The next chapter will explore the ways sociologists study sexuality.
Review of Learning Objectives
Key Terms
- Cisgender: people who identify with the sex they were assigned at birth are often referred to as cisgender, utilizing the Latin prefix cis-, which means “on the same side.”
- Doing gender: the idea that individuals perform gender based on the way that gender is socially constructed within their society; they are held accountable for enacting gendered behaviors. These gendered performances are expected and contribute to why we think of gendered behavior as “natural.”
- Emphasized femininity: the pattern of femininity that is given the most cultural and ideological support. This type of femininity involves compliance with subordination and is oriented to accommodate the interests and desires of men.
- Essentialism: a view of gender as a biological and unchanging, two-category system.
- Feminism: a perspective based on the idea that women and men should have equal legal and political rights. Feminism views the systematic oppression of people based on gender as problema