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Beyond Difference: Gender as a Quality of Social Settings

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Feminist Perspectives on Building a Better Psychological Science of Gender

Abstract

The particular question we take up in this chapter is how can we help move psychological science beyond a “difference” paradigm to incorporate more nuanced understandings of gender. Grounded in social ecological concepts, we emphasize how gender can get embedded in and expressed by the various social settings we inhabit over the course of our lives. We build upon a framework proposed by Bond and Wasco (Gender as context: A framework for understanding and addressing gendered qualities of settings. In: Handbook of community psychology. American Psychological Association, in press) that suggests that gender inequality can become embedded in social settings to the extent that (1) there is an emphasis on discrete gender categories, (2) system dynamics establish different universes of alternatives by gender, (3) one gender group is privileged over the others by considering it normative, and (4) inequity is legitimized and obscured by ignoring the ways that differential access to power and resources—historical and current—is affected by gender. These four dynamics are referred to as setting qualities. Further, specific setting practices that both result from and contribute to the four setting qualities further embed gendered meanings into the ongoing functioning of settings. These practices include the ways in which settings (1) are structured, (2) shape transactional patterns, and (3) communicate values. We illustrate the framework by describing how it can be applied to the issue of sexual assault on college campuses, and we conclude with thoughts on how to disrupt problematic practices. While we address this challenge from the vantage point of community psychology research and action, we hope that the framework can also be useful to other sub-fields of psychology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, MA, USA

    Meg A. Bond & Christopher T. Allen

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  1. Meg A. Bond
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  2. Christopher T. Allen
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Correspondence to Meg A. Bond .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Psychology, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA

    Tomi-Ann Roberts

  2. Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA

    Nicola Curtin

  3. Psychology, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, USA

    Lauren E. Duncan

  4. Psychology and Women’s Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

    Lilia M. Cortina

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Bond, M.A., Allen, C.T. (2016). Beyond Difference: Gender as a Quality of Social Settings. In: Roberts, TA., Curtin, N., Duncan, L., Cortina, L. (eds) Feminist Perspectives on Building a Better Psychological Science of Gender. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32141-7_14

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