Multimedia and Discussion Questions

Chapter 12: The Architecture of Inequality: Sex and Gender

• Video Links
  • Gender as a Spectrum, Not a Divide
    This short clip describes the four categories of gender in the Navajo culture and contrasts this with the dichotomous understandings of gender and the mandate that one’s gender must necessarily correspond to one’s biological sex.

Discussion Questions:
1. How many genders are there in the Navajo culture? Are these related to biological sex?

2. What does it mean to be a “two spirit”?

3. At the end of the segment, a tradition of “swapping” clothing is described. Do you think that most people in the U.S. would be comfortable participating in this? Who do you think would be most reluctant to participate in the “swap”: males or females?

• College Rape Victims Speak Out
  College students who have been raped speak about the experience.

Discussion questions:
1. In the taped segments, what do the women say has been taken from them? In other words, what was lost as result of the rape?

2. What role did Facebook play in the contact the women had with the perpetrators after being raped?

3. Katelyn said that she had known the man who raped her and had even considered him a good friend. Did you find it peculiar that the interviewer then asked Katelyn to offer an explanation for why he would have done this? How did Katelyn answer the question?

• Profile of Malala Yousafzai Pakistani Girl Shot by the Taliban
  This 2009 New York Times documentary profiles Malala Yousafzai, a young girl living in an area of Pakistan that has come under Taliban control. When her school was going to be shut down, she decided to speak up for the right of girls to receive an education.  This documentary was filmed before she was shot in 2012.

Discussion Questions:
1. Is Malala conforming to or breaking gender norms? Explain your answer.

2. What role does Malala’s family play in this story?

3. Use the three major sociological perspectives—functionalist, interactions, conflict—to analyze the central issues (problems) presented in the documentary.

• Malala Yousafzai UN Speech
  In 2012 Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani girl who’d become an international symbol of the suffering of girls in Pakistan and who’d been an outspoken advocate for the right of girls to receive education, was shot by members of the Taliban while she and her friends were on the way to school. Though shot and the head and sustaining sever and life threatening injuries, she survived. In this video she addresses the United Nations and talk about her hopes for girls in Pakistan and around the world.

Discussion Questions:
1. How does Malala connect her situation to larger social structures and forces?

2. Malala seems to have grasped the basics of Mills’s “sociological imagination” at a young age. In what places in her speech can you see this?

3. Many girls and women are subject to oppression and are the victims of violence. Why do you think Malala has captured global attention?

• Audio Links
  • This American Life 15: Dawn
    In this program a writer goes on a search for a mysterious neighbor from his childhood in Charleston, South Carolina, and stumbles onto an epic story of the Old South, the New South, gender confusion, Chihuahuas, and changing values in American journalism.
    This program documents his quest to find out the truth about the man who lived down the street from him 30 years ago in South Carolina: Gordon Langley Hall, a.k.a. Dawn Langley Hall Simmons. Gordon was rumored to have had one of the first sex change operations in America, then to have married a black man, then to have borne the black man's child. It was said he had a full coming-out party for his Chihuahua. It was said he had voodoo powers. The reporter sets out to find what was true and what was rumor about Gordon Langley Hall, and stumbles onto a sprawling story about changing culture morés in America.

Discussion Questions:
1. Was Gordon/Dawn objectified? If so, explain how.

2. Explain this story in terms of institutional sexism.

• This American Life 204: 81 Words
  This story is about how the American Psychiatric Association decided in 1973 that homosexuality was no longer a mental illness.  In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) declared that homosexuality was not a disease simply by changing the 81-word definition of sexual deviance in its own reference manual. It was a change that attracted a lot of attention at the time, but the story of what led up to that change is one that we hear today, from reporter Alix Spiegel. Part one of Alix's story details the activities of a closeted group of gay psychiatrists within the APA who met in secret and called themselves the GAYPA ... and another, even more secret group of gay psychiatrists among the political echelons of the APA. Alix's own grandfather was among these psychiatrists, and the president-elect of the APA at the time of the change.

Discussion Questions:
1. What role did the APA play in socially redefining homosexuality in 1973? 

2. Prior to 1973, how did classifying homosexuality as a mental disorder contribute to prejudice and discrimination against gay and lesbian persons?

3. What does it mean on a social level to no longer define something as deviant that has been defined as such for a long period of time? 

• Myths That Make It Hard to Stop Campus Rape
  
  In this segment, a researcher, psychologist and legal expert discuss the problem of rape on college campuses. 

Discussion Questions:
1. According to those interviewed, what role does alcohol play in sexual assault?

2. How do most schools address incidences of sexual assault? Why might this contribute to rape as a problem on campus?

• What is a College Major Really Worth?
  In this segment, host Michel Martin discusses a report recently released by the U.S. Census. The report describes the relationship between college major and graduates’ earnings. One of the key findings is that those who have majored in conventionally “masculine” areas (maths, sciences) earn more than those who major in conventionally “feminine” disciplines (education, humanities).

Discussion Questions:
1. Were you surprised by the earnings gaps between different majors? Explain your answer.

2. Why are many concerned about the earnings gaps between different fields of study?

3. How is gender related to college major?

4. What is a “soft” major?

• Web Resources
  Professional Resources
  • This area is covered by the American Sociological Association (ASA)
    Section on Sex and Gender
    Sexualities
  
  
  • Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS)
    Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS) is an international organization of social scientists—students, faculty, practitioners, and researchers—working together to improve the position of women within sociology and within society in general.
  
  
  • Gender & Society
    Consistently ranked as a top journal in both Women's Studies and Sociology by the Thomson Scientific Journal Citation Reports, Gender & Society focuses on the social and structural study of gender as a basic principle of the social order and as a primary social category.  Emphasizing theory and research from micro- and macrostructual perspectives, Gender & Society features original research, reviews, international perspectives, and book reviews from diverse social science disciplines, including anthropology, economics, history, political science, sociology and social psychology.  [self-characterization].
  
  
  • Signs
    Another prominent journal for research on gender is Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.

Data Resources

• The Institute for Women’s Policy Research
  The Institute for Women’s Policy Research includes a variety of topics such as work, health, poverty, and welfare. The institute has great publications on women, employment, earnings, and economic change. You can get added to an e-mail list that announces press releases and Capitol Hill briefings.


• The United States Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau
  The United States Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau has its own Web site.


• American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations
  The labor union organization American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) tracks issues related to gender and pay-equity in the workplace.


• Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
  The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission maintains a Web site on sexual harassment.


• U.S. Department of Justice Violence Against Women
  The U.S. Department of Justice Violence Against Women Office Web site provides information about this issue. Other Resources


• National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
  The mission of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is to build the grassroots power of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. We do this by training activists, equipping state and local organizations with the skills needed to organize broad-based campaigns to defeat anti-LGBT referenda and advance pro-LGBT legislation, and building the organizational capacity of our movement. Our Policy Institute, the movement’s premier think tank, provides research and policy analysis to support the struggle for complete equality and to counter right-wing lies. As part of a broader social justice movement, we work to create a nation that respects the diversity of human expression and identity and creates opportunity for all [self-characterization].


• Gender and Society
  Michael Kearl’s Sociological Tour Through Cyberspace: Gender and Society.


• Humanities-oriented
  Humanities-oriented (though not exclusively humanities-oriented) women’s studies, gender studies, and queer theory sources are available from The Voice of the Shuttle.


• Professional Women of Color, Inc
  Professional Women of Color, Inc is an organization focused on facilitating social and professional connections and resource sharing between women of color.


• Feminists for Life
  For an alternative perspective on gender and reproductive rights—”Pro Woman, Pro Life”—see Feminists for Life.


• Screening Gender
  Screening Gender is a training tool kit for innovation in program production to promote new approaches to the portrayal of women and men in television.


• The American Association of University Women
  The American Association of University Women (AAUW) has dedicated more than 120 years to the advancement of education. To this day, AAUW continues to break through barriers to improve educational opportunities for women and girls. Learn how AAUW makes a difference through research, publications, leadership programs, and as one of the world’s largest sources of funding to ensure that women and girls have access to higher education and the opportunity to achieve excellence in professions of their choice.


• Gender Justice
  Gender Justice, an action group, describes its mission as follows: “Gender Justice addresses the causes and consequences of gender inequality, both locally and nationally. We pursue this mission through three interconnected program areas:
  • impact litigation
  • policy work
  • public education and training
    In each program area, we seek to highlight the central role of cognitive bias - the subtle but pervasive ways that stereotypes affect our perceptions, decision, and preferences - as a cause of inequality. Likewise, in each program area, we seek to counteract the most harmful consequences of inequality, by working to dismantle the gender-based barriers that keep people from full participation in our economy and our society. While we believe gender inequality is detrimental for everyone, we focus particularly on the needs of those individuals - such as low-income and immigrant workers - who have traditionally had difficulty accessing justice.”