30 November 2011 

Seminar: What Causes Gender Inequality?

SOC-UA 937

Fall 2011

http://www.nyu.edu/classes/jackson/causes.of.gender.inequality


Robert Max Jackson

- a working syllabus -

Description:

     In this course we will investigate what causes gender inequality.  This question is of great theoretical and social importance.  It is a very general question that immediately implies a variety of more specific questions.  Why has gender inequality seemingly existed in almost all if not all known societies?  Why did gender inequality arise originally?  Why did gender inequality persist even as technological and cultural evolution overwhelmingly transformed social, economic, and political organization?  What is it that people do that sustains gender inequality across generations?  What induces people to conform to the expectations or requirements of gender inequality?  Why is gender inequality more severe in some circumstances than in others?  The closer and more critically we examine the issues, the more questions about causation we confront.

    In general, this course will concentrate on explaining inequality between women and men: how does it arise, why does it take different forms, why does it vary in degree across societies, what are the components that add up to gender inequality, how do various institutions and practices contribute to it, and how does it change?  The course will emphasize the history of gender inequality in the United States.

    While we focus on gender inequality, we will also seek to understand social causation more generally.  We will explore the diverse ways social causation works and how we can identify the causes behind important social phenomena. 


Readings & Books for the Class:

    Most of our readings will be articles available for download.  The links will appear in the  on-line version of the course syllabus.  Excerpts from Down So Long ...: The Puzzling Persistence of Gender Inequality (book manuscript by RMJ not yet published) will similarly be available by download from the class web site.  We will read selections from Jackson's book Destined for Equality (Harvard U Press) throughout the course, so it could be wise to buy it or borrow it.  Any student who does not have any background in gender studies, particularly sociological, is likely to benefit from reading through a standard textbook in the area--I recommend Michael Kimmel's Gendered Society (which I use in my general undergraduate class on gender).
    Most sections of the syllabus include--beside the common readings--subsections for an analytical task, recommended readings, and related readings.  The common readings are the readings we all do and discuss.  The analytical task is the writing assignment for the week.  In each of these brief papers, students will try out causal ideas related to the week's topic.  Recommended and related readings are optional materials useful for students who want to dig deeper into a topic.  To simplify navigating through the syllabus, the items in these subsections are hidden until the viewer clicks on the subsection heading, then they will appear.
    Students should try to read each others' papers before class each week.  Students will prepare comments on two other papers each week.  Click here for discussant assignments.

Course Outline and Readings 

I. Introduction.  What do we mean by gender inequality?

    How can we conceive of and talk about gender inequality in ways that are general enough to apply across the range of relevant phenomena, consistent enough to minimize conceptual ambiguities, and precise enough to be analytically effective?  Gender inequality has been extraordinarily diverse and wide spread.  Women and men are unequal in every conceivable way in endless circumstances, both immediate and enduring, by both objective criteria and subjective experience.  So, what counts as gender inequality? Can we characterize it in ways that let us confidently and impartially assess when there is more or less of it?

II. Causality - What are causes, mechanisms, and the like?

    We casually refer to causes and effects in normal interactions all the time.  We all conduct our lives--choosing actions, making decisions, trying to influence others--based on theories about why and how things happen in the world.  From early stages of child development we attribute causes, building a vision of the social (and physical) world that makes it understandable.  Analytical and scientific reasoning requires that we approach causation more systematically and self-consciously.  

III. How is gender inequality symbolized and reproduced in everyday life?

    Let us begin with individuals, how they experience and act out a system of gender inequality.  Why and when do people act differently because of their own gender; why and when do people respond differently to others because of the others' genders?  How does the way that people act as individuals have an aggregate effect on gender inequality?

IV. Why have women apparently occupied a subordinate position in all societies?

V.   What determines men's and women's roles and positions within families?

    Family and kinship are potentially relevant to gender inequality in varied ways and a lot of work had pursued such issues.  Probably the two most important general issues involve the ways that women and men are unequal within families and the ways that family organization both contributes to and is influenced by gender inequality beyond the family institution.  We will just touch the surface of these issues this week.

VI.  What is the role of sexuality?

    Sexuality has been evoked in multiple ways in the study of gender inequality.  It may be considered as a possible motivating cause for inequality, examined for the ways it reflects or is effected by gender inequality, or incorporated as a peculiar tension between women and men that mediates both the causes and effects of gender inequality.  Essentially everyone recognizes sexuality as critically important to gender inequality, but it eludes comprehensive analysis.

VII. What is the role of sex differences in the functioning and perpetuation of gender inequality?

    Attempts to explain gender inequality at all levels are haunted by essentialism.  Even as they expressly reject the possibility of consequential inherent differences between women and men, theoretical analyses of gender inequality habitually build on gender differences.  For some, essentialism always means a difference based in biology or genetics; for others it includes cultural differences that are embodied in women and men.

VIII. What is the role of violence and intimidation in the relationships between men and women? 

    Most theoretical approaches to gender inequality suggest that violence between women and men plays a role in sustaining inequality; some also point toward violence as an initial cause.  A recurring issue concerns the degree to which violence is an expression or result of gender inequality or, alternatively, is a cause of inequality.  The separate roles of rape, harassment, and domestic violence, and their relationships to each other are another critical question.  Much research and argument has also been focused on the question of women's aggressive impulses and actions. 

IX. What role does ideology play in determining the relations between men and women?

     Ideology is near the center of almost all efforts to explain gender inequalities.  People's conceptions of masculinity and femininity, ideas concerning the fairness of differential treatment  or expectations of women and men, internalized schema that evoke different judgments of women's and men's actions, rules about proper male and female behavior applied to children--all these and more concern the influence of ideology on gender identities, differential treatment of women and men, and the organization and persistence of gender inequality.  Conversely, each ideological belief that symbolizes, legitimates, invokes, guides, induces, or helps sustain gender inequality is itself a product of gender inequality.  To untangle these complex causal interdependencies, we must always attend carefully to two kinds of distinctions.  First, we must consistently recognize differences in levels of social organization, including, among others, societal structures and culture, organizations, social networks, social processes, and individual actors.  While it is tempting to treat ideological beliefs as diffuse entities unconnected to identifiable people, organizations, or structures, the analytical results are poor.  Second, we must consistently distinguish between contemporaneous causes (e.g., the ways that internalized schema can influence interactions) and asynchronous or historical causes (e.g., the ways that changes in domestic production  induce different ideas about women's place).  Causal arguments about ideology consider it as both an effect of gender inequality and a cause of gender inequality, although it is ideology's potential role as a contributing cause that stands out as more theoretically important.

X. How has the economy influenced men and women's positions in society?

    Analyses of gender inequality attribute great importance to the economy.  Gender inequality appears everywhere embedded in economic inequality, in the sense that a critical aspect of gender inequality involves unequal access to economic resources and positions.  This relationship becomes clearer in more "advanced" societies where economic organization has become institutionally differentiated from kinship and political organization.  Sometimes this unequal economic access is understood as an expression of gender inequality, sometimes a cause of gender inequality, sometimes a result. Many analyses consider it all three.

XI.  How have women's and men's actions obstructed or furthered change, taking into account the changing institutional context?

    Both women and men have acted in every possible way towards gender inequality.  What we want to understand are the circumstances in which they predictably act in ways that either reinforce or erode inequality.  People's actions are complex results of their interests, ideologies, circumstances, opportunities, and constraints.  While theories of gender inequality invoke all kinds of abstract causal processes, in real life inequality is sustained and changed by the actions of women and men.  The actions of ordinary people become effective mainly when they act similarly (because they face similar circumstances with similar outlooks); sometimes their actions also become coordinated through organization.  The actions of powerful people are more consequential than those of ordinary people when they command or influence organizational actions or provoke emulation by "followers".  Even unique political actions may have great effect by altering laws, policies, or the balance of power, although even in these cases the institutionalization of changes generally depends on dispersed acceptance; in the economic realm, even organizational actions typically become effective only when multiple organizations pursue parallel policies (governmental controls over an economy would be an exception).