This results in the man having more power over the woman as he is the individual working and bringing an income, enabling him to make the decisions whereas the woman would have no power for this to happen. In relation to having an income, feminists see the workplace as another place in which inequalities occur. ‘The Glass Ceiling’ is a phrase commonly used by feminists. It is related to women and their careers and how they are able to see promotion but are not going to be considered as they are women. This is highlighted in the report ‘Sex and authority in the workplace: the causes of sexual inequality’, Wendy C. Wolf
The women’s movement and the consequent development of feminist ideas in the 1960s and 1970s influenced the question of gender and began emphasise the importance of gender as a concept of its own. (Howson, 2013, 51). To understand the differences between male and female, it is important to formulate a basic distinction between gender and sex. The key distinctions to note are based around biology and social arrangements. Oakley (1972, cited in Howson, 2013) refers to gender as the ‘psychological, social and representational differences between men and women, which are socially determined and culturally variable’.
In Two ways a Woman Can Get Hurt, Jean Kilbourne points out that ads affects us in potentially damaging ways than helping us informing us about the product. She says that advertisements are used to depict power than passion. It uses gender identities/roles to show the power the men have over women. In the attached ad, the woman is underneath the man, which suggests that man have more power and therefore, woman are mere objects that man “use” in a daily life. The ad is supposed to promote the jeans by Calvin Klein.
Feminists do however disagree on the extent of patriarchy in society and what need to happen to create gender equality. Liberal feminism is a march of progress theory as it sees a trend towards improvement and believes all humans should be equal. Oakley, as a key sociologist, distinguishes between sex and gender; sex refers to biological differences whereas gender refers to the culturally constructed differences between the roles and identities assigned to men and women. Liberal feminists argue there has been a move towards greater gender equality and that a gradual reform is necessary through changing laws and cultural changes away from gender stereotypes. They also believe that the ideas about gender are culturally constructed and transmitted through socialisation.
122 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 pg. 123 As part of a stratification system, gender ranks men above women of the same race and class pg. 123 The dominant categories are the hegemonic ideals, taken so for granted as the way things should be that white is not ordinarily thought of as race, middle class or men as a gender. The characteristics of these categories define the Other as that which lacks the valuable qualities the dominants exhibit. Pg.
According to de Beauvoir, religion acts very similar to women as Marxists see it acting on oppressed classes. She says; there must be a religion for women as there must be one for the common people, and for exactly the same reasons.’ She notes that men have exercised control over religious beliefs, however in modern societies, ‘religion seems much less an instrument of constraint than an instrument of deception.’ She notes that women are deceived by religion into thinking of themselves as equal to men, despite their evident inequality. Simone de Beauvoir compares religion to how Marx’s proletariat, in that it gives women the false belief that they will be compensated for their sufferings on earth by equality in heaven. She
There a many different types of feminist theories but they all share a few common interests. They all believe there is a fundamental division in society between men and women, that women are to some extent exploited by men and that society is male-dominated or patriarchal. They also criticize existing sociology by saying it has a pro-male bias. They call this ‘malestream’ sociology claiming most sociology is written by men, about men and for men. In the early 1970s feminist ideology became influential in sociology and this was reflected in a growing number of studies of the family from a feminist point of view.
Feminists characterise our society as patriarchal, which means male dominated, and they argue that mainstream sociology focus on the concern of men and not on the concern of women. There are many elements within feminist attitudes and this incudes Marxism feminists. Liberal feminists, Radical feminists and Black feminists all have a similar goal which is to end male patriarchy in society and free society of exploitation to women by focusing on achievements and accomplishments that women have achieved throughout the years. Another example of a macro theory is Marxism, this is a conflict theory in which people believes that we as people are victims of capitalism and our whole world essentially focuses on money, social and political problems, based on the social change in terms of economic factors. Within
Reasons for the gender differences in the prevalence of depression and other disorders I favor the socio- cultural level of analysis when explaining gender differences in the prevalence of depression and other disorders primarily because I see societies’ way of perceiving one’s gender as a cultural matter in the first place. Gender, as oppose to Sex, is closely related to, but isn’t defined by biological or physiological factors but by socially constructed roles and behaviors. Therefore it seems logical to me that psychological disorders, as well as the differing symptoms they carry between men and women will have more to do with one’s culture and society and its way of attributing roles according to gender. When going over possible cognitive explanations of prevalence of depression among women (such as their tendency to ruminate more than men do), it seems that the roots of these explanations still originate in gender roles and expectations. Differences in cognition between men and women are highly influenced by their roles in the society and culture they belong to.
“Feminists can produce a positive stereotype, considering that women work just as hard as a man, inside and outside of the home. It’s unfair that women who participate in the feminist movement are accused of being butch or trying to live in a “man’s world”. They are not trying to live in a man’s world; they just want to co-exist be equals, not dominant, like men feel they need to.” Sanbonmatsu, K.