Judith Lorber's The Social Construction of Gender Essay

Gender derives its formative meaning from culture and societal values, it is not a universal entity as there are various cultures, societal values, beliefs, and preferred ways of organizing collective life across the globe and even within a single culture the meaning of gender varies over time. Chapters three and four of Gendered Lives by Julia T. Wood helps to insightfully look at those views, and rhetorical movements (women and men’s movements) that have overtime influenced, defined and given various meanings to gender (masculinity and femininity).

Men throughout history have been the dominant gender, from the times of hunting with stone weapons to the modern day metal and automated machines. Many negative connotations are thought of when comparing women to men like strength, but less so when comparing men to women. Is it the society’s view that women are weaker than men or is it a natural fact brought to light? In sports women experience many prejudices, but even so some sports are equal or even female dominant. However the sheer majority lie in the male dominated section leaving women feeling oppressed and as if they have unequal rights, and they mostly do. Some instances of women oppression or unequal rights in sport belong to the sponsorships they receive, the effect media plays on children and women and also the history of sport and of gender inequality itself. The physical make up of each gender also effects stereotyping and how people perceive each gender.

Women in professional sports fits into the Sex and Power: Global Gender Inequality class because many female athletes have experienced the inequalities in a professional sports setting. Female athletes are being put down by gender inequalities, causing less females participating in athletic programs. Women athletes are being paid less than their male counterparts. Along with being paid less, female and males are receiving unequal benefits in the form of scholarship, media coverage, transportation, and stadium conditions. The professional sport’s world is filled with the obsession of body image and sexuality. Through this obsession, female athletes have been abused from the people they trust the most. There is an increasing inequality in women’s professional sports in the form of pay, sexuality, and abuse.

As Lorber explores in her essay “Night to His Day”: The Social Construction of Gender, “most people find it hard to believe that gender is constantly created and re-created out of human interaction, out of social life, and is the texture and order of that social life” (Lorber 1). This article was very intriguing because I thought of my gender as my sex but they are not the same. Lorber has tried to prove that gender has a different meaning that what is usually perceived of through ordinary connotation. Gender is the “role” we are given, or the role we give to ourselves. Throughout the article it is obvious that we are to act appropriately according to the norms and society has power over us to make us conform. As a member of a gender

Lorber uses logical reasoning to illustrate her conclusion. As Lorber introduces the subject matter she briefly discusses gender as a persistent presence throughout life. "The work we do...shapes women's and men's life experiences, and these experiences produce different feelings, consciousness, relationships skill -- ways of being that we call feminine or masculine. All of these processes constitute the social construction of gender" (p. 65). In this quote, Lorber uses logical reasoning to rationalize her point.

Gender as a Social Construction This annotated bibliography is focused on research that supports the idea that gender has been socially constructed. Haslanger’s chapter offers an understanding of what is meant by the term ‘socially constructed’ and how gender can be defined from this viewpoint. Zimman complements Haslanger’s argument by explaining that it is our discourse that influences our perceptions of gender. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet’s chapter is helpful when explaining how gender is socially constructed by exploring how from birth we are treated and labeled according to whether we’ are male or female.

Gender has been a big issue in society. Sex is biological, and it is through sex that gender is produced (which according to West and Zimmerman, “gender, we said, was an achieved status: that which is constructed through psychological, cultural, and social mean” (West and Zimmerman 1987, 125) - in other words, it is the categorization of both sex to act in a certain and acceptable way by the society, also known as norms) and can be recreated through human interaction and social life. All of this is being constructed by our environment; Inequality is being formed through identity. Everything all begins from when we are born. In society, it is believed that boys are tough while the women are believed to be soft and nurturing. There

Every society around the world has traditional gender roles that are accepted as normal and are rarely even consciously thought about in any detail. The man’s role is often to provide for and protect the family, while the women’s role is to care for children and look after the duties of the home. Analyzing Judith Lorber’s Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender, will help understand the concept of “gender as a structure” and “gender as a social institution” along with demonstrating the significant differences that gender categories have for individuals and society.

-each time we meet a new person we make a gender attribution and based on appearance and mannerisms we make a distinction between men and women

Gender is a social construct that consists of a set of social arrangements that are built around sex. Gender roles are sets of behavioral norms assumed to accompany one’s status as a male or female. According to Lorber, Gender is a social institution because these gender roles are being changed over time. Moreover, she defines gender roles as process of creating distinguishable social statuses for the assignment of rights and responsibilities. As a process, gender creates the social differences that define "woman" and "man." In social interaction throughout their lives, individuals learn what is expected, see what is expected, act and react in expected ways, and thus simultaneously construct and maintain the gender order. In this paper, I will discuss how the article untiled “"Night to His Day": The Social Construction of Gender helps clarify how gender roles is a social constitution.

“The social construction of gender comes out of the general school of thought entitled social constructionism. Social constructionism proposes that everything people "know" or see as "reality" is partially, if not entirely, socially situated. To say that something is socially constructed does not mitigate the power of the concept. These basic theories of social constructionism can be applied to any issue of study pertaining to human life, including gender. This is

“As a social institution, gender is a process of creating distinguishable social statuses for the assignment of rights and responsibilities.” This quote from Judith Lorber’s work, “Night and Day” brings up an interesting idea. Men and women are held in very different regard because of gender. It is drilled into our core at birth that our gender defines us. This causes a split in both behavior and treatment that we encounter in our everyday lives.

Gender, race, and class has always been a big concept throughout the years. These three categories determined a person’s future years ago. If you were black, you grew up to be a slave and all of your relatives who lived before you, lived to serve as a slave. Then if you were a woman, it was against the rules to see a woman working in the same capacity/ role as men. Their work was more domestic in nature.

In the reading “The social Construction of Gender” by Judith Lorber she describes how gender is socially constructed. Sex is the biological difference while gender is the social and cultural meanings attached to femininity and masculinity (lecture). From the time that a child is born the doctor assigns it a gender, girl or boy, depending on its genitalia. In the reading “Naming All the Parts” it focused on how when doctors view genitalia to decide the gender they say there is a penis or there is no penis, no acknowledgment of the vagina. Gender construction begins when we start using gender markers such as naming a child a certain name, dressing it in certain colors such as pink or blue, and giving it gender based toys such as dolls for girls and cars for boys. As we get older we learn to behave in ways that are associated with hegemonic masculinity or exaggerated femininity (lecture). We are also expected to have specific careers based on our gender. Due to gender stratification, which is the ranking of the sexes in such a way that women are unequal in power, resources, and opportunities (lecture),women are more likely to have lower paying jobs, take care of children, and keep up with housework. At the same time men can earn more working the same job. We become who we become in response to the social forces relevant to society (lecture). Gender is socially constructed, but the function of gender in

During this century women have been able to break out of the traditional female mold. Women have broken the chains that bond them to the home and have emerged into all sorts of male dominated arenas, including sports. Women have become athletes in their own right. In the last ten years there has been validation for the female athlete. The WNBA was created giving women a professional league in a mainstream traditionally male sport for the first time since the All American Girls Professional Baseball League went out of existence in the 1950s. And recently a woman made the cut and participated on the professional golf circuit with the men. Today, we see women athletes in the media regularly. Women's college basketball is given airtime on weekends just as men's is.