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5 They are largely excluded from high-status occupations and from positions of power.
These generalizations have applied to the vast majority
of known human societies. Some sociologists and anthropologists believe that there does not exist, and never has
existed, a society in which women do not have an inferior
status to that of men. In recent decades, particularly with
the development of feminist (and post-feminist) ideas, the
explanation for such differences has been hotly debated.
CHAPTER 2
Introduction
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Brain lateralization
Sociobiology the
evolution of human
behaviour
There have been a number of attempts to relate sex differences to differences in the behaviour of men and women
by using evolutionary ideas. Of these, perhaps the most
influential today is sociobiology.
Sociobiology was first developed by E.O.Wilson (1975)
and has been applied to sex and gender by David Barash
(1979). It is based in part on Charles Darwins theory of
evolution, but it goes well beyond Darwins original
theory.
Like Darwin, sociobiologists believe that humans and
other species develop and change through a process of
natural selection. Individuals of a species vary in their
physical characteristics, and those which are best adapted to
their environment are most likely to survive and reproduce.
Since offspring tend to have characteristics similar to those
of their parents, due to genetic inheritance, the characteristics of a species can change as the fittest survive.
Thus, to use a simple example, giraffes have gradually
evolved long necks because members of the species with
longer necks had better access to food supplies in the
upper levels of trees than their shorter-necked counterparts. As longer-necked giraffes and their offspring tended
to survive longer, a long neck became encoded in the
genetic make-up of the species.
Sociobiologists go beyond Darwin in two main ways:
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Criticisms of sociobiology
Sociobiologists assume a direct link between patterns of
genetic inheritance and behaviour in humans. However,
there is no scientific evidence that such a link exists.
In contrast to animals, human behaviour is shaped by
environment rather than instinct. Steven Rose, Leon
Kamin and R.C. Lewontin note that, unlike most animals:
the human infant is born with relatively few of its neural
pathways already committed. During its long infancy
connections between nerve cells are formed not merely on
the basis of specific epigenetic programming but in the
light of experience. Rose et al., 1984, p. 145
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Source: Photofusion
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The social
construction of
gender roles
Oakley believes that gender roles are culturally rather
than biologically produced. Whatever the biological
differences between males and females, it is the culture of
a society that exerts most influence in the creation of
masculine and feminine behaviour. If there are biological
tendencies for men and women to behave in different
ways, these can be overridden by cultural factors.
Criticisms of Oakley
Oakleys work was enormously influential and was
important for challenging the idea that differences
between males and females were not natural. Nevertheless
she has been criticized for the narrowness of her approach,
which is based upon the idea that individuals are simply
socialized into different sex roles.
Gender attribution
From the viewpoint of writers such as Oakley, gender is
socially constructed in the sense that differences in the
behaviour of males and females are learned rather than
being the inevitable result of biology. Suzanne J. Kessler
and Wendy McKenna (1978) go a stage further. As
ethnomethodologists (see Chapter 15, pp. 8857), they are
interested in the ways that members of society categorize
the world around them. From their perspective, gender
attribution the decision to regard another person as male
or female is socially produced in much the same way as
gender roles.
For most people, it seems obvious whether someone is
male or female, and it is taken for granted that a decision
about the sex of another will coincide with the biological
facts. Kessler and McKenna disagree; they deny that there
is any clear-cut way of differentiating between men and
women.
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Allocation to sexes
public physical appearance. For example, femaleto-male transsexuals may disguise their breasts by
wearing baggy clothing or by using strapping.
3 The information people provide about their past
life helps to determine gender attribution. Again,
transsexuals have to be careful to avoid suspicion.
They may need a cover story. In one case a femaleto-male transsexual explained his pierced ears by
saying he had once belonged to a tough street gang.
4 The final important factor is the private body.
Usually there is little problem in keeping the body
covered, but transsexuals may need to avoid certain
situations (such as visiting beaches or sharing rooms
with others) if they have not undergone the
appropriate operations to change their sex physically.
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Gender inequality
So far in this chapter we have examined explanations for
differences between men and women. These differences
have sometimes been seen as the basis for inequalities
between them, and we will now look at those inequalities
in more detail. The development of feminism has led to
attention being focused on the subordinate position of
women in many societies. Feminist sociologists have been
mainly responsible for developing theories of gender
inequality, yet there is little agreement about the causes of
this inequality, or about what actions should be taken to
reduce or end it. More recently, the focus has changed from
an emphasis on inequality to an emphasis on difference.
Several feminist approaches can be broadly distinguished:
1
2
3
4
5
Radical feminism
Marxist and socialist feminism
Liberal feminism
Black feminism
Postmodern feminism
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Radical feminism
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Liberal feminism
Liberal feminism does not have such clearly developed
theories of gender inequalities as radical and Marxist and
socialist feminism. Nevertheless, liberal feminism probably
enjoys greater popular support than the other perspectives. This is largely because its aims are more moderate
and its views pose less of a challenge to existing values.
Liberal feminists aim for gradual change in the political,
economic and social systems of Western societies.
To the liberal feminist, nobody benefits from existing
gender inequalities; both men and women are harmed
because the potential of females and males alike is
suppressed. For example, many women with the potential
to be successful and skilled members of the workforce do
not get the opportunity to develop their talents to the full,
while men are denied some of the pleasures of having a
close relationship with their children. The explanation of
this situation, according to liberal feminists, lies not so
much in the structures and institutions of society, but in its
culture and the attitudes of individuals.
Socialization into gender roles has the consequence of
producing rigid, inflexible expectations of men and
women. Discrimination prevents women from having
equal opportunities.
The creation of equal opportunities, particularly in
education and work, is the main aim of liberal feminists.
They pursue this aim through the introduction of legislation and by attempting to change attitudes. In Britain, they
supported such measures as the Sex Discrimination Act
(1975) and the Equal Pay Act (1970) in the hope that
these laws would help to end discrimination.
Liberal feminists try to eradicate sexism and stereotypical views of women and men from childrens books and
the mass media. They do not seek revolutionary changes
in society: they want reforms that take place within the
existing social structure, and they work through the
democratic system. Since they believe that existing gender
inequalities benefit nobody (and are particularly harmful
to women), liberal feminists are willing to work with any
members of society who support their beliefs and aims.
Abbott et al. (2005) believe that liberal feminism is a
modernist theory because of its emphasis on human
progress through rational thought, its belief that a just
society can be planned and its belief in emancipation. It
stresses the rights of individuals and is based upon the
assumption that men and women are very similar to one
another because of their shared humanity.
Although the least radical of feminist perspectives, it
has probably had more impact than any other in
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Black feminism
Black feminism has developed out of dissatisfaction
with other types of feminism. Abbott et al. (2005) identity
four main criticisms that Black feminists level at feminism:
Source: Corbis
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The origins of
gender inequalities
feminist views
Although many feminists clearly align themselves with
one of the perspectives that we have just outlined, others
do not. Thus, in the subsequent sections, not all the
explanations for gender inequalities that we will discuss
can be neatly attributed to one perspective.
Feminists do not agree about the origins of inequality
between men and women. Some believe that women have
always had a subordinate position in all societies; others
argue that the origins of gender inequalities can be traced
back to particular historical events.
The following are some influential examples of radical
feminist theories of gender inequality.
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Criticisms of Rosaldo
Undoubtedly the distinction between the domestic or
private sphere and the public sphere provides a useful way
of analysing and explaining the relative powerlessness of
women in many societies. If women are largely excluded
from the institutions that exercise power in society, then it
is hardly surprising that men possess more power than
women. Furthermore, this distinction helps to explain
how the position of men and women in society has
changed (see, for example, the section on The origins of
gender inequalities and industrialization, pp. 1089).
However, Linda Imray and Audrey Middleton (1983)
argue that womens activities tend to be devalued even
when they take place in the public sphere.When women
take paid employment outside the home, the jobs they do
are often regarded as being of less importance than those
of men. From this point of view, the devaluation of
women must have deeper roots than their association
with domestic life. Certainly, as we will see in later
sections, the increasing employment of women outside
the private home has not produced equality for women
within work.
Firestone, Ortner and Rosaldo all agree that womens
subordination to men is universal.They all to some extent
agree that the ultimate source of inequality between the
sexes is biology, or the interpretation placed on biology.
These views are not accepted by all sociologists. Marxist
and socialist feminists question the view that womens
subordination has always been universal.They claim that it
is necessary to examine history to find out how and why
inequality between the sexes came about.
We will examine some of these viewpoints in the next
section.
The origins of
gender inequalities
Marxist and socialist
perspectives
Marxs associate, Friedrich Engels, devoted more attention
to the sociology of gender than Marx himself. In The Origin
of the Family, Private Property and the State (1972), Engels
outlined his theory of how human societies developed.
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Criticisms of Engels
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The origins of
gender inequalities
and industrialization
a liberal feminist
approach
Ann Oakley has been a prominent figure in the development of feminist sociology. She does not align herself
strongly with a particular feminist perspective. Her work
includes elements of socialist feminism, arguments that fit
well with radical feminism, and studies that fall more
within the liberal feminist tradition. The study discussed
below fits most closely with the liberal feminist tradition
because it suggests that womens oppression is not
universal but is historically variable. She emphasizes the
importance of opportunities (or lack of opportunities) in
paid work in explaining gender inequality.
Oakley (1981) traces the changing status of women in
British society from the eve of the industrial revolution, in
the eighteenth century, to the 1970s. She claims that the
most important and enduring consequence of industrialization for women has been the emergence of the modern
role of housewife as the dominant mature feminine
role. In this section, we summarize Oakleys views on
the emergence of the housewife role.
Restrictions on womens
employment
From 1841 until the outbreak of the First World War in
1914, a combination of pressure from male workers and
philanthropic reformers restricted female employment in
industry.Women were seen by many male factory workers
as a threat to their employment.As early as 1841, committees of male factory workers called for the gradual
withdrawal of all female labour from the factory. In 1842
the Mines Act banned the employment of women as
miners. In 1851 one in four married women were
employed; by 1911 this figure was reduced to one in ten.
Helen Hacker states that, with the employment of
women as wage earners:
Men were quick to perceive them as a rival group and
make use of economic, legal and ideological weapons to
eliminate or reduce their competition.They excluded
women from the trade unions, made contracts with
employers to prevent their hiring women, passed laws
restricting the employment of married women, caricatured
the working woman, and carried on ceaseless propaganda
to return women to the home and keep them there.
Hacker, 1972
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And in 1865:
Gender in
contemporary
societies radical
feminist perspectives
For radical feminists, patriarchy is the most important
concept for explaining gender inequalities. Although
literally it means rule by the father, radical feminists have
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Criticisms of Millett
Millett made an important contribution towards
explaining the disadvantaged position of women within
society. However, her work has been criticized by socialist
and Marxist feminists. They have identified three main
weaknesses in her theory of sexual politics:
Gender in
contemporary
societies Marxist
and socialist
perspectives
Marx and Engels and women
under capitalism and communism
Apart from explaining the origins of inequality between
men and women, Engels (1972) also tried to foresee how
womens position in society would change as capitalism
developed. Engels believed that economic factors caused
womens subservience to men, and only economic
changes could lead to their liberation. He stated that the
predominance of the man in marriage is simply a
consequence of his economic predominance and will
vanish with it automatically. Men enjoyed greater power
than women because it was men who owned the means
of production, or who earned a wage outside the home.
However, Marx and Engels believed that capitalism
would eventually lead to some reduction in inequalities
between men and women. They argued that the demand
for female wage labour would raise the status and power
of proletarian women within the family. Female employment would largely free women from economic dependence upon their husbands and so from male dominance
within the family.
Although women have entered the labour force in
increasing numbers, some Marxist and socialist feminists
deny that this has led to the changes anticipated by Marx
and Engels. As we will indicate in a later section, women
continue to be financially disadvantaged compared to
men, even when they take paid employment.They tend to
get lower wages and lower-status jobs than men (see pp.
1214). Furthermore, they still seem to have less power
than men within the family (see Chapter 8).
Engels believed that true equality between men and
women would arrive with the establishment of
communism, when the means of production would be
communally owned. Engels predicted that the communal
ownership of the means of production would be accompanied by the socialization of housework and childcare. Sexual
inequality would end. Gender roles would disappear.
Evidence from former communist countries suggests
that Engels was wrong. In a review of studies of the
USSR, Nickie Charles (1993) found that women did
make some progress under communism. However, in
1991, just before the USSR broke up with the collapse of
communism, average wages for women were only about
two-thirds of those for men, and women still took responsibility for most of the childcare.
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Sylvia Walby
Theorizing Patriarchy
Sylvia Walby (1990, 1997) has developed an approach to
understanding gender in contemporary societies which
does not fit into any of the types of feminism described in
earlier sections. Indeed, she starts her 1990 book,
Theorizing Patriarchy, by pointing out the main
criticisms that have been made of other approaches.
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Household production
According to Walby, households sometimes involve
distinctive patriarchal relations of production.
Individual men directly exploit women by gaining
benefits from womens unpaid labour, particularly in the
home. Women still do most of the housework and
childcare and some women suffer violence and abuse in
marriage. However, easier divorce means women are not
as trapped as they once were by marriage. Furthermore,
some Black feminists see family life as less exploitative
than life in the labour market where there is considerable
racism.
Patriarchy
Culture
1
2
3
4
5
6
Paid work
Patriarchal relations within the household
Patriarchal culture
Sexuality
Male violence towards women
The state
Sexuality
Walby argues that heterosexuality constitutes a patriarchal
structure, but again the nature of it has changed.
In the nineteenth century womens sexuality was
subject to strict control within monogamous marriage,
where the husbands pleasure was far more important than
the wifes. In the twentieth century better contraception
and the greater ease of divorce increased womens sexual
freedom. Walby quotes research which suggests that more
women were being unfaithful to their husbands and that in
general women had experienced sexual liberalization.
However,Walby believes that the sexual double standard is
still alive and well.Young women who are sexually active
are condemned by males as slags; those who are not are
seen as drags. On the other hand, males with many sexual
conquests are admired for their supposed virility.
There is more pressure on women today to be hetero-
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Violence
Private patriarchy
In private patriarchy an individual patriarch, the male
head of household, controls women individually and
directly in the relatively private sphere of the home. It is
the man in his position as husband or father who is the
direct oppressor and beneficiary, individually and directly,
of the subordination of women. Women remain
oppressed because they are prevented from entering the
public sphere in areas such as employment and politics.
Household production was the most important structure
of private patriarchy, but its importance has now declined.
The state
Private
Dominant structure
Household production
Employment/State
Employment
State
Sexuality
Violence
Culture
Household production
Sexuality
Violence
Culture
Period
Nineteenth century
Twentieth century
Mode of expropriation
Individual
Collective
Patriarchal strategy
Exclusionary
Segregationist
Public
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Variations in patriarchy
Walby believes that there has been some reduction in
patriarchal exploitation in certain areas as a result of the
changes. There is a generational difference in the way
older and younger women have experienced patriarchy,
with younger women being somewhat less oppressed.
However, the effect is not the same for all groups of
women. For example,Walby believes that Muslim women
are more restricted by family structures than other
women, and are therefore more subject to private
patriarchy than other groups. Afro-Caribbean women, on
the other hand, are more likely than other ethnic groups
to have paid employment and to head their own families,
and are therefore more subject to public patriarchy.
Furthermore, there has been a polarization in the
position of women from different classes. Middle-class
women compete with men in the public sphere on less
unequal terms than working-class women. Job opportunities have begun to open up for well-educated women, and
some women are playing a greater part in political and
social movements; however, patriarchy remains very
restrictive for working-class women and those with few
qualifications. In a post-Fordist economy (see pp. 1278
and website) many women are still restricted to part-time,
low-paid and insecure employment.
Evaluation of Walby
Walbys theory of patriarchy incorporates the insights of
many different feminists. Nevertheless, her work has been
criticized. Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis (1992)
criticize her for using what they see as a three-systems
approach. According to them, Walby treats gender, race
and class as separate systems which interact with one
another. Anthias and Yuval-Davis believe that patriarchy,
capitalism and racism are all part of one system, which
advantages some groups and disadvantages others.
Jackie Stacey (1993) praises Walby for an allencompassing account of the systematic oppression of
women in society and for showing an awareness of historical changes in the position of women. However, she
criticizes her for her use of the concept of structure. Stacey
says that some structures are more clearly conceptualized
than others (for example, paid employment and culture).
In the case of some other structures,Walby does not make
such a good case for the existence of relatively fixed
relationships which contain women. Stacey believes that
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Destabilizing theory
Pollert (1996) notes that some sociologists who have
rejected structural concepts such as patriarchy have turned
to postmodernism as an alternative to detailed empirical
studies.As we have just seen, Pollert herself rejects postmodernism, but in recent years it has become an increasingly
influential approach to the study of sex and gender.
Michlle Barrett and Anne Phillips (1992) argue that
new feminisms have developed because of a dissatisfaction
with the general theories characteristic of traditional
male-dominated social science. Feminism has always been
suspicious of theories developed by men, but in the past
liberal and socialist feminists have embraced aspects of
male theories. Recently, however, there has been a
sweeping attack on the falsely universalizing, overgeneralizing and over-ambitious models of liberalism,
humanism, and Marxism. Many feminists have joined
sympathies with poststructuralist and postmodernist
critical projects. Barrett and Phillips describe this attack as
a process of destabilizing theory.The apparent certainties offered by the liberal, Marxist/socialist and radical
feminisms developed in earlier decades are no longer
uncritically accepted. Despite the differences between
these types of feminism, they were united in seeking to
115
Postmodernism,
sex and gender
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Influences on postmodern
feminism
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida is a French writer who has had a great
influence on postmodern feminism (see Kamuf, 1991, for
extracts from Derrida). Derrida is often described as a
poststructuralist. Poststructuralism is a general term
to describe diverse theorists who reject the view that there
are rigid social structures, and who emphasize the
importance of language (see Chapter 11, pp. 6812).
Other poststructuralists include Jacques Lacan and Michel
Foucault (see pp. 55962).
Derridas ideas derive from linguistics, the analysis of
language. By questioning the nature of language, Derrida
opens up a whole range of implications for the study of
society in general, and sex and gender in particular.
The Swiss linguistic theorist Ferdinand de Saussure first
distinguished between the signifier, a word, and the
signified, the thing to which it refers.Thus the word dog
is a signifier that refers to the signified, the actual animal.
Saussure argued that signifiers were arbitrary. For example,
there was no necessary connection between the word
dog and the animal to which it referred. Any other word
would serve just as well as the signifier. However, Derrida
went much further in questioning the nature of language
and in doing so opened up questions of sex and gender.
Derrida argued that language was a self-contained
system of signifiers. Signifiers referred not to some
independent reality but to other signifiers.Thus the word
dog can only be understood with reference to other
words or signifiers such as animal,bark and so on.There
is an unbridgeable gap between objects and the way we
describe them. The objects are physically separate from
those people who describe them and separated in time.We
use the term dog as an alternative to producing an actual
dog to illustrate what we are talking about. Using the sign
or signifier dog is therefore based on the absence of a dog
itself. Derrida uses the French word diffrence to indicate
how the signifier is unlike the signified. Diffrence has two
meanings in French: being unlike or dissimilar, and being
delayed. Diffrence indicates, therefore, that words are
fundamentally different from the things to which they
refer and are postponed or delayed representations of
things which are not present.
This abstract analysis of language leads Derrida to be
highly suspicious of any claims to have established the
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Hlne Cixous
Hlne Cixous is a French novelist and feminist writer who
sees language as a key part of gender difference. She says:
117
Postmodern feminists
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Such a change would not be easy. Current maledominated language is incapable of expressing feminine
sexual pleasure.
Cixous goes into further detail about the aspects of
male language that need to be countered. Following
Derrida, she claims that phallocentric language is based
around dualisms, or pairs of opposites.These are all related
to the couple man/woman (Cixous, 1981a).
Examples include:
Activity/Passivity
Sun/Moon
Culture/Nature
Day/Night
Father/Mother
Head/Heart
Intelligible/Sensitive
Logos/Pathos
Man/Woman
Postmodern feminism an
evaluation
Rosemarie Tong (1998) is among those who are generally
supportive of postmodern feminism. She argues that it
encourages an awareness and an acceptance of differences:
differences between men and women, the masculine and
the feminine, and different types of masculinity and
femininity. It supports an acceptance of the validity of the
points of view of the excluded, ostracized, and alienated
so-called abnormal, deviant, and marginal people.
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119
Postmodernism as a delusional
system
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Evaluation
Oakley succeeds in linking gender into very important
issues, particularly environmental issues, which are neglected
by most other feminists. However, in doing so she perhaps
stretches the boundaries of feminism a little and is not always
convincing in showing that patriarchy is the cause of the
problems. Indeed, in many cases it could be argued that
capitalism is a more important factor than patriarchy.
Following Walbys criticisms of Hartmann (see p. 112),
Oakley could also be accused of using a dual-systems
approach in which the tensions between patriarchy and
capitalism are not fully explored. Following Pollerts
criticism of the use of the term patriarchy (see pp.
11415), Oakley could be accused of failing to show that
patriarchy is a system or a structure. Although Oakley
refers to patriarchy as a system, most of her descriptions
seem to depict cultural practices which are not as clearly
interlinked and interdependent as the parts of a system.
With a book as wide-ranging and ambitious as Oakleys
some limitations may be inevitable, but she can be praised
for helping to extend the scope of feminist analysis.
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122
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Women
40
20
0
1971
1976
1981
1986
1991
1996
2001
2005
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Table 2.2 Employment in Great Britain, by sector, 2005 (employees and self-employed aged 16 and over)
Women
Industry sectors
Men
thousands
thousands
2638
79
703
21
Education
1810
73
666
27
652
56
519
44
592
51
567
49
963
51
933
49
2088
50
2067
50
1330
42
1824
58
921
25
2693
75
Manufacturing
Transport, storage & communication
453
24
1439
76
Construction
215
10
1895
90
12668
47
14558
53
All sectors1
1Including
Source: EOC Facts about Women and Men in Great Britain 2006, Equal Opportunities Commission, Manchester, p. 21 (figures based on
Labour Force Survey, 2005).
Table 2.3 Employment in Great Britain, by occupation, 2005 (employees and self-employed aged 16 and over)
Women
Occupational groups
Men
thousands
thousands
Personal service
1767
84
339
16
2750
81
653
19
1479
69
677
31
1898
50
1911
50
Elementary
1405
45
1724
55
Professional
1451
42
1988
58
1393
34
2679
66
269
13
1776
87
Skilled trades
247
2798
92
12668
47
14558
53
All
occupations1
1Including
Source: EOC Facts about Women and Men in Great Britain 2006, Equal Opportunities Commission, Manchester, p. 23 (figures based on
Labour Force Survey, 2005).
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Table 2.4 Occupational segregation in the United Kingdom, 2005 (employees on adult rates)
Average pay, 1
Employees
% women % men Thousands
High-paid jobs
Directors & chief executives of major organizations
56.33
17
83
87
Medical practitioners
33.01
37
63
176
29.92
32
68
176
25.89
47
53
94
24.10
30
70
84
ICT managers
23.94
21
79
163
22.68
29
71
513
22.37
58
42
95
HE teaching professionals
21.83
41
59
132
21.02
43
57
149
7.09
50
50
84
Receptionists
7.07
95
219
6.78
52
48
115
6.24
96
114
Low-paid jobs
6.16
72
28
1170
6.04
76
24
590
5.85
67
33
221
5.74
73
27
376
5.50
74
26
133
Bar staff
5.43
60
40
176
1Mean
Source: EOC Facts about Women and Men in Great Britain 2006, Equal Opportunities Commission, Manchester, p. 24 (figures based on
Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, 2005).
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3
4
5
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participation in the labour market as a temporary phenomenon. High levels of female employment have continued
through both booms and slumps, while unemployment has
risen most among men. Thus, while women continue to
have more flexible patterns of work than men, they cannot
be seen as a reserve army of labour as such.
advantaged jobs
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Evaluation
Approaches such as those developed by Stanko and
Pringle illustrate how men may use intimidation and
ideological power to maintain their domination at work.
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Evaluation
The Commission certainly identified some important
causes of the pay gap, and outlined a number of practical
proposals to address it. However, it perhaps overestimated
the degree to which piecemeal government intervention
could deal with this problem.The reduction in the pay gap
has been disappointing, given over thirty years of government intervention. Furthermore, the Commission did not
take into consideration the sorts of structural and cultural
factors identified by Marxists and radical feminists. These
groups would be sceptical that the modest measures
proposed by the Commission could make a fundamental
difference.
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Postfeminism
Natasha Walter (1998) offers a very different view of contemporary feminism and the future of feminism from that of
postfeminists. She rejects the view that there are no longer
common causes for which women need to unite. Although
she acknowledges that there has been considerable progress
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Solutions
Progress and the problems of feminism
Walter starts off by documenting a wide range of improvements in the position of women in Britain. She says,
everywhere you look there are women who are freer and
more powerful than they have ever been before. More
women are working; they are doing better than males in the
education system; they have reached positions of great power
and status (such as prime minister, head of MI5, speaker of
the House of Commons); they have more control over
when and whether to have children; similar numbers of men
and women are entering the legal and medical professions;
and women feel able to act in traditionally masculine ways.
Above all, women seem to have the independence and
confidence to choose the lifestyle they wish, free of most of
the constraints which limited their options in the past.
In these circumstances, many women feel that
feminism is irrelevant to their lives. According to Walter,
many British women associate feminism with a rather
restrictive and intolerant creed. They see feminism as
telling them that men are the enemy.They regard it as an
inflexible set of beliefs which intrudes into their personal
lives and tells them they must not wear make-up, accept
pornography or use politically incorrect phrases. It tells
them how they should make love so that womens sexual
pleasure is always paramount.
All these aspects of feminism (which tend to be associated with radical or postmodern feminism) are off-putting
to women. Walters own research suggests that many
women do not want to call themselves feminists because
of these associations.They reject the view that every aspect
of personal life is political and dislike the excessive
emphasis on language and political correctness they
dislike being told what they are and are not allowed to say.
Evaluation
Walter clearly identifies areas in which women have failed
to achieve equality with men. She attempts to make
feminism relevant to women in contemporary Britain and
suggests ways of countering the negative image which
feminism sometimes suffers, and she suggests ways of
addressing inequality which seem realistically achievable.
However, Whelehan (2000) criticizes Walter for
providing a misleading characterization of feminism and an
acceptance of popular myths about it.To Whelehan, the idea
of political correctness, attempts to tackle stereotypes of
femininity and the insistence that the personal is political
have all made an important contribution to increasing the
choices open to women. While Whelehan welcomes
Walters attempt to make feminism relevant to a new
generation, she is concerned that Walter may be abandoning
too many of the concerns of other feminist approaches.
1 Inequality at work
2 A lack of high-quality affordable childcare
3 Womens continued responsibility for most childcare
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The singleton
Another increasingly common way of portraying women
in the media is in terms of the Bridget Jones effect.The
1996 book and 2001 film Bridget Jones Diary portray a
woman who is aware of feminism, but is also desperate to
find a decent man before she gets too old. It portrays the
single woman, or the singleton, who is
the elder sister of the ladette. Once snogging and
shagging of the early years are over and she has reached
a certain level in her career, the biological imperative to
nest takes over. It is only then that the singleton realizes
that her success in other fields has been at the expense of
the only thing that really matters finding a man.
Whelehan, 2000, p. 136
This theme is also the basis for the television series Sex
and the City and Ally McBeal. The message of all these
media portrayals is that, however independent and
resourceful a woman is, in the end she has to make herself
attractive to men.They play upon womens fears of being
left single, of leaving it too late to find a partner with
whom to have children, and their fear that they might be
sacrificing true fulfilment in their search for independence
and material success. They therefore offer a kind of
postfeminist message that taking feminist ideas too far will
undermine womens happiness.
Lads
If the portrayal of women is damaging to feminism, the
portrayal of men is even worse. In particular, retrosexism
(a nostalgia for and return to traditional sexism) is particularly evident in the popularity of laddism. Laddism
involves a celebration of the worst and often extremely
sexist behaviour of young men. It is most clearly evident
in relatively new and very popular mens magazines such
as Loaded, Maxim and FHM. Commenting on Loaded,
Whelehan says, the lads frame of reference is very clearly
demarcated sport, pop, alcohol, soft drugs, heterosex and
soft porn. Further, this is the domain of the male, and the
male alone, where women function only as objects.
An important feature of the magazines is the use of
scantily clad or naked women. Whelehan describes an
article on the accomplished actress Helen Mirren which is
accompanied by six pictures of her nude or semi-nude.
She is described as a lot more than just a bit of middle
aged crumpet (quoted in Whelehan, 2000, p. 59), but her
sexuality is the focus of the whole article. In the same
magazine there are even descriptions of sex as the act of
silencing shrill women. For example, the May 1997
edition included the following letter:Whatever happened
to that annoying bird Sarah from Clevedon who kept
writing in to beg for a shag? A good work fella! Blue Peter
badge to whoever managed to shut her up by giving her
a proper seeing to! (quoted in Whelehan, 2000, p. 59).
Conclusion
Whelehan argues that the media have constantly
reinvented ways to make womens oppression seem sexy.
Retrosexism is based on a myth that women today are in
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Liberation
Greer is dismissive of the claims of some postmodernists
and new feminists who celebrate increased lifestyle
choices for women. She says: A new feminism that
celebrates the right (i.e. duty) to be pretty in an array of
floaty dresses and little suits put together for starvation
wages by adolescent girls in Asian sweatshops is no
feminism at all.The reference to the poverty of women in
parts of the developing world shows that Greer is
concerned with material inequality. However, it is not
equality that Greer seeks for women, but liberation. For
Greer, true liberation will only come when women do
not have to be like men to succeed and do not have to
dress and act in ways that men want them to. She does not
want women to adopt the competitiveness and aggression
of men and she wants them to stop pandering to male
sexual fantasies.
Women continue to be oppressed through intimate
relationships. Unlike Walter, Greer believes that the
personal is still political and liberation will only come
from women being able to express their femininity in a
social world in which patriarchy no longer holds sway.
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Masculinity
In the earlier parts of this chapter we saw how feminists
have succeeded in putting the sociology of gender and
of women in particular on the sociological map. Before
1970, few sociological studies were conducted about
women and womens lives. Yet, paradoxically, some male
sociologists have argued that men have also in some senses
been invisible in much sociology.While most studies have
been conducted by men and the subjects of the research
have been men, few have been about masculinity. Men are
simply taken for granted in studies; they are assumed to be
the norm and their behaviour is not explained in terms of
gender or compared to that of women.
In this section we examine some of the attempts that
have been made to put right this neglect of masculinity
and to explore how masculinity shapes the lives of men
and the social world in general.
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Evaluation
Many feminists could criticize Gilmore for his apparent claim
that men usually protect and provide for women.As we have
seen in earlier sections of this chapter, far from protecting
their wives, some men abuse and attack them; and it is often
the case that women work harder than men. However,
Gilmores work does succeed in showing that culture has a
strong influence on ideologies of masculinity and that
masculinity can therefore assume very different forms.
Although Gilmore does use some examples from technologically advanced industrial or post-industrial societies,
he relies mainly on examples from more traditional
agricultural societies. Victor J. Seidler (1989, 1994)
concentrates instead on men in Western societies.
The Enlightenment
According to Seidler, ideas of masculinity in Western
societies are closely connected with the thinking and
beliefs associated with the Enlightenment. The
Enlightenment is the name given to a range of interconnected philosophical, scientific and social beliefs which
developed in Western Europe in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries.
Enlightenment thinking rejected emotion, superstition
and belief in the supernatural as ways of understanding the
world. It argued that the natural world could only be
understood through objective, detached, unemotional
science. Knowledge could only come from reason and
rationality. Reason was contrasted with nature. As Seidler
puts it, Nature is real but is bereft of consciousness and of
value. It exists as separate and independent of the consciousness that is attempting to grasp it. To understand the
physical world, humans had to detach themselves from it.
To Seidler and many other writers, Enlightenment
thinking is the foundation of modernity. Modernity is a
phase in human history in which it is believed that
humans can use scientific knowledge to ensure progress.
Science allows nature to be conquered and controlled for
the benefit of people. (We discuss these ideas in more
detail in Chapter 14.)
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Evaluation
Seidlers argument provides some interesting insights into
the nature of masculinity in Western societies. However, it
is somewhat abstract and is not based upon detailed
empirical evidence. He admits that it may not be possible
to generalize his claims about masculinity, saying: I am
talking from a particular experience of white, middle-class
Jewish masculinity. He also admits that it is not possible to
identify one dominant form of masculinity in Western
society. Feminism and an increasing distrust of science
have both contributed to the creation of a wider variety
of masculinities in contemporary Western societies. We
will examine some of these in the next section.
Types of masculinity
Having established a foundation for the study of masculinities, Connell then discusses the different forms
masculinity can take. Masculinities constantly change, new
forms can emerge and old forms decline, but in any
particular era a broad distinction can be made between
hegemonic and other types of masculinity.
Hegemonic masculinity is the form of masculinity
that claims and tries to maintain a dominant influence
over social life in a particular society at a particular time.
Hegemonic masculinity never enjoys complete
dominance, it is always contestable. It can be challenged by
women and also by other masculinities. Thus white,
heterosexual and middle-class masculinity might be
dominant in contemporary Western societies, but black,
homosexual and working-class masculinities also exist and
sometimes challenge hegemonic masculinity.
Hegemonic masculinity may try to maintain its
dominance through control over institutional structures. It
can also be maintained through a rich vocabulary of
abuse. For example, the masculinity of heterosexual males
can be put down through words such as wimp, milksop,
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Conclusions
CHAPTER 2