Villeda 1

Jhelayny Villeda

Professor Lookholder

Sociology 001

December 14, 2017

Chapter 9: The Social Construction of Gender

Chapter nine is about the construction of gender and how it plays a vital role in society.

Gender has raised many questions concerning the debate between equality of males and females.

However, sex and sexuality play a key role in the construction of gender because based on your

sex, also depends what society thinks what gender you should fulfill and who we should be

attracted to. Each of them are essential to the construction of gender, and the way they define

their gender. Essentialists believe that gender roles are genetic, and cannot be changed.

Constructionist’s suggest that our perspective of “real” is the result of human interaction. There

are several factors that we need to understand to comprehend the construction of gender, these

factors are patriarchy vs. feminism, gender role socialization, the 3 gender theories and

perspectives on gender.

Patriarchy is a system of society in which men hold the power and women are excluded

from it. We often learn about patriarchy at home through observing a male figure, either from

our fathers, or on media. A man’s role is more commonly known as the instrumental role

according to Talcott Parson’s beliefs because he believed that this role should be fulfilled by the

one who provides the family with essential material support. A women’s role in the household is

more associated with the expressive role because it more associated with a sensitive/ attentive

person. Feminism is a range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements that all

coincides with one goal, to establish a range of equality among politics, economics, and social
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issues among sexes. The conflict theory is a theory that has stated that men have had access to

the limited resources society has had. It also states that men over history had more privileges

than women, hence what pushes the feminist movements.

Gender role socialization is the concept where you learn how to embrace masculinity or

femininity through socializing with family, schools, peers, and what you see on the media. This

specific concept affects us greatly on how we should behave how we should present ourselves in

public, and who we should be attracted to. Gender role inequality is most often referred to the

unequal opportunities given based on your gender. Majority of the time, your job, your wealth,

and education are affected by it. The structural functionalist theory on gender would be how

they believe that social roles are more likely best fitted to one gender rather than the other. It is

also states that certain responsibilities should be fulfilled by a particular sex. A symbolic

interactionist is a concept of gender that is constructed socially, and established to duplicate in

our lives.

I can relate to this chapter because as an individual who identifies as a bisexual, I found

this chapter to be very interesting. Many people state that bisexuality is not a legitimate sexual

orientation. Even though our society has become more open to the LGBT community, there are

still people who discriminate against the LGBT community, and there is discrimination within

the LGBT. Learning the construction of gender was very important to me because even though

many people believe that you can only identify yourself within two categories, masculinity and

femininity, some people can identify with both. In this chapter, I have learned that sex is

biological, gender is in the mind, and sexuality is who you are sexually/ emotionally attracted.