Lecture 2/6/02 – Cultural and Historical Constructions of Gender
Gender roles are not natural - they are historically and culturally based.
1. Masculinity is not a fixed, biological essence of men or femininity a biological essence of women, but, rather, a social construction that shifts and changes over time as well as between and among various national and cultural contexts.
2. Power is central to understanding gender as a relational construct, and the dominant definition of masculinity is largely about expressing difference from - and superiority over - anything considered “feminine.”
3. There is no singular male gender role or singular female gender role, rather, at any given time there are various masculinities and femininities. Who gets to play what type of male gender or female gender role will be influenced by where they are positioned in the stratification system.
E. Anthony Rotundo – History of American Manhood
Looking at the concept of man from an historical perspective –
Communal Manhood - Colonial New England There a man’s identity was inseparable form the duties he owed to his community. He fulfilled himself through public usefulness more than his economic success, and the social status of the family into which he was born gave him his place in the community more than his individual achievements did. Through his role as the head of the household, a man expressed his value to his community and provide his wife and children with their social identity.
A man’s failure n his family were a matter of deep concern to those beyond his household.
The shortcomings of the children were charged to the father.
People understood manhood not only in terms of its social setting but also in terms of its contrast with womanhood. The fundamental belief about men and women before 12800 was that men were superior. In particular, men were seen as the more virtuous sex. They were credited with greater reason which enabled them to moderate passions like ambition, defiance, and envy more effectively than women could.
Late 18th century – The self-made man - The new manhood emerged as part of a broader series of changes: the birth of republican government, the spread of a market economy, the concomitant growth of the middle class itself.
In this new world, a man took his identity and his social status from his own achievements, not from the accident of his birth. A man’s work role, not his place at the head of the household, formed the essence of his identity. And men fulfilled themselves through personal success in business and the professions, while the notion of public service declined.
Male passions were now given freer rein. Ambition, rivalry, and aggression drove the new system of individual interest
Era of individualism In the new era of individualism, the old male passion of defiance was transformed into the modern virtue of independence.
Women – took their social identities from their husband. “the chief end of women is to make others happy.”
Woman’s nature was sharply redefined; she was now viewed as the source of virtue. Since woman’s moral sense was considered stronger than man’s was, females took on the tasks of controlling male passion and educating men in the arts of self-denial.
Late 19th century – the new passionate man – was in some respects an elaboration of existing beliefs about self-made manhood, but it stretched those beliefs in directions that would have shocked the old individualists of the early 1800s. In the closing years of the century, ambition and combativeness became virtues for men competitiveness and aggression were exalted as ends in themselves. Toughness was now admired; while tenderness was a cause for scorn. Even sexual desire, an especially worrisome male passion in the 19th century slowly gathered legitimacy. Indeed, the body itself became a vital component of manhood; strength, appearance, and athletic skill mattered more than in previous centuries.
A new emphasis on the self was essential to these changes. The self came to mean that unique core of personal identity that lay beneath all the layers of social convention. A person’s passions were vital components of the self. Play and leisured entertainment – once considered marks of effeminacy – became approved activities for men as the 19th century ended,
Marriage moved to union of unique selves.
Our beliefs about manhood have played a powerful role in determining the kind of life and the kind of society we have. Political language with its profusion of sports metaphors and its preoccupation with toughness.
19th century men and their concepts of manhood helped to define the character of many important American institutions
Lecture to Socratic classroom struggles (law)
Practice of medicine becomes male.
Men in the 20th century –
Team Player – Based on an ethic of sublimation, this ideal takes competitive athletics as a mode for fitting aggression and rivalry into the new bureaucratic work settings of the 20th century. While a man struggles to reach the top within his own organization through fierce competition with his teammates, he also cooperates with them in the contest between his organization and others. In this way, the old investment of aggressive, selfish passions in economic competition has gained new life in the modern world.
Existential Hero – this ideal grows out of a belief that there is, in fact, no proper place for true masculine impulse within modern society. The hero who lives by this belief is suspicious of authority, wary of women, and disgusted with corrupt civilization. If he would be true to the purity of his male passions and principles, be must – and con only – live at the margins of society. Example Clint Eastwood
Pleasure Seeker – this is the man who works hard at his job so that he can afford as much satisfaction of his passions after work as possible. Example the Yuppie
Spiritual Warrior – conjured up in the teaching of Robert Bly – the mythopoetic movement. This ideal was born of dissatisfaction with the other ideals and images of men that have recently dominated American culture. It grows from a direct conscious focus on the passions that its advocates assume are naturally male. The spiritual warrior believes he has lost touch with those passions and lost his ability to connect directly with other men.
There is one important trait that all four ideals share, however; each of them signifies a turning away from women. The ideal of the spiritual warrior represents a ritual quest for manhood in all-male setting. The ideal for the pleasure seeker may treat women as objects of pleasure or as accessory companions in his pursuit of enjoyment, but considers them largely irrelevant to the fulfillment of his yearnings. The ideal oft the existential hero endorses separation from the confinement of civilization and the halter of permanent, personal commitment – and, given our cultural associations between women and the bonds of civilization, it is no surprise that adherents of this ideal view women’s world with suspicion. Team player – technically open to anyone who can play and win according to its competitive rules. In reality, the ideal of the team player posits a world where women have difficulty surviving even though they are not explicitly forbidden to enter.
Second article: R. W. Connell "Masculinities and Globalization." This article examines how local masculinities have been shaped by historical and current influences such as imperialism and globalization. It discusses how globalization has created multiple local masculinities while simultaneously providing resources for dominance by particular groups of men. Masculinities are shaped by : geopolitical struggles, labor migration, global markets and transnational media.
There is a transnational business masculinity - the hegemonic form of masculinity associated with those who control its dominant institutions: the business executives who operate in global markets, and the political executives who interact (and in many contexts merge) with them. This masculinity is increasing egocentric, has conditional loyalties even to the corporation and certainly no personal commitments except to the idea of accumulation itself. The transnational business masculinity has had only one major competitor for hegemony - the rigid, control-oriented masculinity of the military and military-style bureaucratic dictatorships.
Six elements in looking at masculinity. 1. Plural masculinities - in multicultural societies, there are varying definitions and enactments of masculinity. Different cultures and different periods of history construct gender differently. More than one kind of masculinity can be found within a given cultural setting or institution 2. Hierarchy and Hegemony - These plural masculinities exist in definite social relations, often relations of hierarchy and exclusion. There is a generally a hegemonic form of masculinity, the most honored or desired in a particular context. Hegemonic masculinity refers to: a white, middle class, heterosexual and physically dominating form of masculinity. The most valued form of masculinity, and a masculinity that subordinates other masculinities. The hegemonic form need not be the most common form of masculinity. Many men live in as state of some tension with or distanced from, hegemonic masculinity and are required to live up to it strenuously. The dominance of hegemonic masculinity over other forms may be quiet and implicit, but it may also be vehement and violent, as in the important case of homophobic violence. 3. Bodies as Arenas - Men's bodies are addressed, defined and disciplined (as in sport) and given outlets and pleasures by the gender order of society. 4. Active Construction - Masculinities do not exist prior to social interaction, but come into existence as people act." They are actively produced, using the resources and strategies available in a given milieu. 5. Contradiction - Masculinities are not homogeneous. There are contradictory desires and conduct. The bodybuilder who engages in homosexual prostitution to support his bodybuilding is an example. 6. Dynamics - Masculinities created in specific historical circumstances are liable to reconstruct and any pattern of hegemony is subject to contestation, in which a dominant masculinity may be displaced
Film “Rosie the Riveter”
WWII - Women have consistently taken on expanded role in wartime, by choice as well as necessity.
Office of War Information (1941) monitored public opinion to determine the degree of commitment and willingness to sacrifice for the war - women were less enthusiastic about the war. So, there was a coordinated effort to convince women that the war effort was necessary and that women should actively participate in war production.
The War Production Board and the War Manpower Commission were set up to convert to a wartime economy, coordinate labor for the various sectors of the economy, and allocate workers both war and civilian production.
At first defense employers were reluctant to hire women, but the production needs were so great and the propaganda so convincing that by July 1944 19 million women were employed, an increase of over 5 million at the start of the war.
The war allowed African-American women access to employment in defense plants that paid much more than the jobs like domestic work or food services jobs that they had held prior to the war.
Near the end of the war married women outnumbered single women in the labor force. By the close of the war 32% of women who worked in the major defense center had children under the age of 14. Day-care centers, foster home programs, and other variations of child care were developed throughout the country. The Federal Works agency administered a program which enrolled 13,000 children in over 3,000 centers.
Rather than viewing such options as a menace to children and indictment for their mothers, such provisions were praised for allowing mothers of young children to enter the work force where they were needed.
However, the goal was to win the war and to return to the previous gender arrangements. Propaganda campaigns promoted the idea that women were in it only “for the duration” and they would reassume their domestic duties after the war, gladly giving up their jobs to the returning men. As we saw from the film, many women were not interested in giving up their jobs; they were in fact, fired from them. Because they were working-class women before the war, they continued to work after the war. Unfortunately, the jobs then that were available to them were low-paying, unskilled labor. They could not play the dominant post-war female gender role.
The propaganda now portrayed women who wanted to work as selfish, egotistical women and “bad” mothers.
Biological models assume that sex determines gender that innate biological differences lead to behavioral differences that lead to social arrangements. By this account, social inequalities are encoded into our physiological composition.
The variation in gender definitions:
When anthropologists began to explore the cultural landscape, they found far more variability in the definitions of masculinity and femininity than any biologist would have predicted. Men possessed relatively similar levels of testosterone with similar brain structure and laterialization, yet they seemed to exhibit dramatically different levels of aggression, violence and especially, aggression toward women. Women with similar brains, hormones, and ostensibly similar evolutionary imperatives have widely varying experiences of passivity, PMS and spatial coordination.
Margaret Mead – Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935)
Arapesh – both men and women appeared gentle, passive and emotionally warm.
Mundugamor – both women and men were similar – sexes were equally aggressive and violent.
Tchambuli – women and men were seen as extremely different. Polygyny practiced. Men – charming, graceful, coquettish - women entrepreneur, no frills, efficient.
Anthropological research on cultural variations in the development of gender definitions arose, in part, in response to such biological determinism. Gender rituals, sexual diversity, number of genders all demonstrate that biological determinism is fallacious. Yet some themes do remain constant.
Virtually all societies manifest some amount of difference between women and men.
Virtually all exhibit some form of male domination, despite variations in gender definition.
The centrality of the gender division of labor
In almost every society, labor is divided by gender.
Why? Functionalism maintains that a sex-based division of labor was necessary for the preservation of the society. Such models assume that because the sex-based division of labor arose to meet certain social needs at one time, its preservation is an evolutionary imperative or at least an arrangement that is not to be trifled with casually.
But we know that this sexual division of labor have changed and will continue to change. The gender-based division of labor has become a part of our culture, not a part of our physical constitution.
If a sex-based division of labor has outlived its social usefulness or its physical imperatives it must be held in place by something else; the power of one sex over the other. Where did that power come from? How has it developed? How does it vary from culture to culture? What factors exaggerate it: what factors diminish it?
Theories of Gender Differentiation and Male Domination
Several theorists have tried to explain the sexual division of labor and gender inequalities by reference to large, structural forces that transform societies’ organizing principles.
Frederich Engels suggested that the three chief institutions of modern Western society – a capitalist economy, the nation-state, and the nuclear family – emerged at roughly the same historical moment – and all as a result of the development of private property. Capitalism meant private property, which required the establishment of clear lines of inheritance. This requirement led, in turn, to new problems of sexual fidelity if a man were to pass his property on to his son, he had to be sure that his son was, indeed his. Out of this need to transmit inheritance across generations of men the traditional nuclear family emerged, with monogamous marriage and the sexual control of women by men. And if inheritance were to be stable, these new patriarchs needed to have clear, binding laws, vigorously enforced, that would enable them to pass their legacies onto their sons without interference from others., This required a centralized political apparatus (the nation-state) to exercise sovereignty over local and regional power that might challenge them.
Some evidence – Eleanor Leacok’s work on the Labrador Peninsula. Karen Sacks’ work on 4 African cultures
When women and me share access to the productive elements of the society, the result is a higher level of sexual egalitarianism.
Other anthropologists trace the origins of male domination to the imperatives of warfare in primitive society. How does a culture create warriors who are fierce and strong? Best way reward all men with the services of women, excluding only the most inadequate or cowardly. Warrior societies tend to practice female infanticide. Warrior societies also tend to exclude women from the fighting force, since their presence would reduce the motivation of the soldiers and upset the sexual hierarchy. Males come to control the society’s resources, and as a justification for this develop patriarchal religion as an ideology that legitimates their domination over women.
Two other groups of scholars use different variables to explain the differences between women and men. Descent theorists like Lionel Tiger an Robin Fox stress the invariance of the mother-child bond. Men, by definition, lack the tie that mothers have with their children. How the can they achieve that connection to the next generation, the connection to history and society? They form it with other men in the hunting group. Male solidarity and monogamy are the direct result of men’s need to connect with social life.
Alliance theorists like Claude Levi-Strauss are less concerned with the need to connect males to the next generation than they are with the ways that relationships among men come to organize social life, He argues that men turn women into sex objects whose exchange (as wives) cements the alliances among men.
Determinants of Women’s Status –
Virtually every society of which we have knowledge reveals some differentiation between women and men, and virtually every society exhibits patterns of gender inequality and male domination. Gender differences and gender inequality may be more or less pronounced. 4 possibilities –high or low levels of gender differentiation coupled with high or low levels of gender inequality.
What then are the factors that seem to determine women’s status in society? Some suggested factors.
The more a society needs physical strength and highly developed motor skills, the larger will be the differences in socialization between males and females.
It also seems to be the case that the larger the family group the larger the differences between women and men. In part this is because the isolation of the nuclear family means that males and females will need to take the other’s roles on occasion, so that strict separation is rarely enforced.
One of the key determinants of women’s status has been the division of labor around childcare. Women’s role in reproduction has historically limited their social and economic participation. While no society assigns all child-care functions to men, the more that men participate in childcare and the more free women are from childbearing responsibility, the higher women’s status tends to be.
Relationships between children and their parents have also been seen as keys to women’s status. Sociologist Scott Coltrane found that the closer the relationship between father and son, the higher the status of women is likely to be. Coltrane found that in cultures where fathers are relatively uninvolved, boys define themselves in opposition to their mothers and other women and therefore are prone to exhibit traits of hyermasculinity, to fear and denigrate women as way to display masculinity. The more mothers and fathers share child rearing, the less men belittle women. (think Chodorow)
The more men spend with their children, the less gender inequality is present in that culture. Conversely the more free women are from childcare – the more that childcare is parceled out elsewhere and the more that women control their fertility – the higher will be their status.
Coltrane also found that women’s status depended upon their control over property especially after marriage. When she retained control over her property after marriage, a woman’s status was invariably higher.
Daphne Spain argues that the same cultures in which men developed the most elaborate sex-segregated rituals were those cultures in which women’s status was lowest. (male bonding)
All forms of spatial segregation between males and females are associated with gender inequality.
The father’s involvement in child rearing (often measured by spatial segregation) and women’s control of property after marriage- emerge as among the central determinants of women’s status and gender inequality. It is no wonder that they are also determinants of violence against women. Since the lower women’s status in a society, the higher the likelihood rape and violence against women.
Following “Tavris and Wade, we can summarize the findings of cross-cultural research on female status and male dominance. First, male dominance is lower when men and women work together, with little sexual division of labor. Sex segregation of work is the strongest predictor of women’s status. Second, male dominance is more pronounced when men control political and ideological resources that are necessary to achieve the goals of the culture and when men control all property. Third, male dominance is “exacerbated under colonization” – both capitalist penetration of the countryside and industrialization generally lower women’s status. Male dominance is also associated with demographic imbalances between the sexes: The higher the percentage of marriageable men to marriageable women, the lower is women’s status. And finally environmental stresses tend to exaggerate male domination.
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