GWS 302 Lecture 1: Chapter 1

• School: University of Kentucky
• Department: Gender and Women's Studies
• Course: GWS 302
• Professor: Jacquline Couti

Document Summary

Three distinct social scientific traditions have developed to explain gender: Individual sex differences originate, whether biological or social in origin. Assumptions must be made about individuals to be considered a structural theory, while presumptions must be made about external social control to be considered an individualist theory. I prefer to define gender as a social structure because this brings gender to the same analytic plane as politics and economics (p. 11) The cultural component of the social structure: the taken for granted or cognitive image rules that belong to the situational context (p. 12) The author aims to bring women and men back into a structural theory where gender is the structure under analysis and to identify when behavior is habit. Based on constraints on sex category, the gender structure differentiates opportunities and has consequences on three dimensions: First, at the individual level, for the development of gendered selves.