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Gender as a Social Structure

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Handbook of the Sociology of Gender

Part of the book series: Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research ((HSSR))

Abstract

In this chapter, I provide a history of gender theory in the social sciences. I highlight major themes for explaining apparent gender differences and inequality. While there are many different theories, my conceptual intervention illustrates how seemingly competing paradigms should be synthesized into a holistic integrative theoretical framework that I call gender structure theory. I argue that factors contributing to gender inequality include those at the individual, interactional, and macro level of human society. At each level of analysis, we must attend to material and cultural processes. Understanding gender as a social structure requires us to focus on dynamism in the system: a change at any given level of analysis may reverberate to others. While gender inequality is ubiquitous, change may originate at the individual, interactional or macro level of analysis, and via material or cultural processes. How change happens in the gender structure is an empirical question and one requiring more research in the future.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This article reflects arguments made in those articles and my book, but updated with examples from this Handbook.

  2. 2.

    While women entering the academy itself might not have led to more research on gender, many of the women who entered the academy were also involved in the women’s liberation movement of that decade and brought their questions about women’s subordination and gender inequality to their academic work. Social experiences often influence scientific ideas (Sprague 2016).

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  1. University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, USA

    Barbara J. Risman

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  1. Barbara J. Risman
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  1. University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    Barbara J. Risman

  2. University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, Iowa, USA

    Carissa M. Froyum

  3. University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    William J. Scarborough

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Risman, B.J. (2018). Gender as a Social Structure. In: Risman, B., Froyum, C., Scarborough, W. (eds) Handbook of the Sociology of Gender. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76333-0_2

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