Gender Analysis

Gender Analysis

The concept of gender comprises of beliefs, expectations, behaviors, and roles that are socially constructed and defines masculine and feminine attributes. Candace West and Don Zimmerman says we should move beyond the ideal that gender is socially constructed because gender has become in a sense a routine event embedded in everyday interaction and define a concept called doing gender. The concept doing gender simply put involves making use of discrete yet well defined behavior in situations comprised of interaction to recognize enactments of masculinity and femininity. Doing gender also consists of being gender appropriate and is seeable in context. For example, the man does gender by opening the car door to let the woman inside, and she does gender by allowing him to open the door and not initiating the behavior with a man.

In my everyday life I do gender in a number of ways. When I get dressed in the morning and put on a dress, heels, and makeup I’m doing gender in a sense that I’m showing my femininity and showing the norm of women to be desirable in nature. When I get in from work and school at night I prepare dinner for my finance which complies with gender norms because I’m agreeing with the notion that women clean and cook and do the housework. By me going to work, I’m in a sense resisting gender norms that men should be the sole providers of the household. The ideal that gender is this embedded routine and that those who deviate from the norms of gender are to seem to others as doing wrong, is appropriate when analyzing my finances response about my behavior. My finance totally agrees with the norms of gender and lets me know that by almost demanding that I cook and clean and that I do not go to work each day in fear of feeling less than a man and less masculine by not being the sole provider of our household.

Readings, magazines, and videos we viewed in class illustrated how institutions are guilty of being oppressive...