Gender

Sociology of Gender (920/988:324)

Guidelines for Preparing the Gender Paper

Kessler and McKenna in Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach explain that people always attribute gender and a wide range of information is filtered through this initial attribution. In order to attribute gender successfully, people must give convincing gender performances. All people display their gender in every interaction, which Kessler and McKenna argue “. . . is the same as saying everyone must pass or everyone must insure that the ‘correct’ gender attribution is made of them” (126). Similarly West and Zimmerman discuss the idea that gender is not simply an individual characteristic or trait, but produced in social interactions. Gender is an accomplishment, achieved through interaction, a property of social structures and processes. People produce gender in everyday, routine activities. Because we always attribute gender, its display and enactment are never optional.

The purpose of this paper is for you to observe how people do gender in a social setting, which before you entered this class, you would not have thought was gendered. In other words, think of a social situation or interaction where people produce gender that you've noticed since beginning this class. After you have chosen a setting, you should carefully and unobtrusively observe how people actually enact or produce gender relations. For example, if you observe how nurses do gender in a hospital, you might watch their interactions with physicians, with patients and with other staff. When they are working, how do nurses do gender? Do they produce gender differently when they are with patients than when they interact among themselves? Do they perform deference or authority while doing gender, and if so, how? Do male nurses do gender differently than female nurses?

You need to make repeated observations of how people do gender in the setting you've selected. You should take field notes either during...