This article explores “determining gender,” the umbrella term for social practices of placing others in gender categories. We draw on three case studies showcasing moments of conflict over who counts as a man and who counts as a woman: public debates over the expansion of transgender employment rights, policies determining eligibility of transgender people for competitive sports, and proposals to remove the genital surgery requirement for a change of sex marker on birth certificates. We show that criteria for determining gender (...) differ across social spaces. Gender-integrated spaces are more likely to use identity-based criteria, while gender-segregated spaces, like the sexual spaces we have previously examined, are more likely to use biology-based criteria. In addition, because of beliefs that women are inherently vulnerable and men are dangerous, “men’s” and “women’s” spaces are not policed equally—making access to women’s spaces central to debates over transgender rights. (shrink)

Murga porteña, the satirical street theatre tradition associated with Carnival in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is historically a strongly patriarchal institution. Prominent roles such as reciting poetry, singing, and playing percussion instruments have been reserved exclusively for men. As the feminist movement in Argentina has grown in visibility and importance in recent years, feminist murga participants disrupted these patriarchal patterns. Women murga performers have begun to use murga as a space for feminist practice, both by creating women-only organizations to learn murga (...) skills and by bringing feminist perspectives into mixed-gender murgas. Murgueras are engaged in a multifaceted feminist project that disrupts gendered patterns by building women-only spaces to develop competence in the performance of historically masculine skills such as percussion. Drawing on ethnographic participant-observation of murga events as well as in-depth interviews with key organizers at the confluence of murga and feminism, we explore the ways in which murga has provided the spaces and strategies for collective feminist engagement. Murgas have become important social institutions in which women are “undoing gender” and disseminating feminist perspectives, even as most members join them not as explicitly feminist institutions. (shrink)

This article advances a critical gender lens on the sociology of religion by arguing that “doing gender” and “doing religion” function as intertwined systems of accountability. To demonstrate the inextricability of these two systems, this study analyzes open-ended survey data from 576 Jewish women who wear kippot. These women’s responses reveal that this religious practice is fraught with social sanctions on the basis of the women’s simultaneous gender deviance and religious deviance. These women are not read as simply “doing Jewish” (...) when they wear kippot; rather, they are read as doing something that is implicitly gendered, such as “doing religious feminism.” It appears that when Jewish women “un/re/do religion,” they simultaneously “un/re/do gender” and vice versa: gender scripts and religious scripts are inextricably intertwined. (shrink)

Efforts to promote gender equality often encourage changes to interpersonal interactions as a way of undermining gender hierarchy. Such programs are premised on the idea that the gender system can be “undone” when individuals behave in ways that challenge prevailing gender norms. However, scholars know little about whether and under what conditions real changes to the gender system can result from changed behaviors. We use the context of a gender sensitization program in the Democratic Republic of Congo to examine prospects (...) for transformative change at the interactional level of the gender system. Over nine months, we observed significant changes in men’s quotidian practices. Further, we identified a new commitment among many men to a more equal division of household labor. However, participants consistently undermined the transformative potential of these behavioral changes through their dedication to maintaining control over the objective, process, and meaning of change, resisting conceptions of equality that challenged the gender system. Because quotidian changes left gender hierarchy intact, they appear unlikely to destabilize the logics that legitimate women’s subordination. (shrink)

Changing Generations, a study of intergenerational relations in Ireland undertaken between 2011 and 2013 by the Social Policy and Ageing Research Centre, Trinity College, Dublin, and the Irish Centre for Social Gerontology, NUI Galway, used the Constructivist Grounded Theory method to interrogate support and care provision between generations. This article draws on interviews with 52 women ages 18 to 102, allowing for simultaneous analysis of older and younger women’s perspectives. The intersectionality of gender and class emerged as central to the (...) analysis. Socioeconomic positions shape contrasting forms of interdependency among family generations, ranging from “enmeshed” lives among lower socioeconomic groups to “freed” lives among higher socioeconomic groups. Women are initiating changes in how care and support flow across generations. Older women in higher socioeconomic groups are attuned to how emotional capital women expend across family generations can constrain women’s lives. In an expression of solidarity, older women are renegotiating the place of care labor in their own lives and in the lives of younger women. A new reciprocity emerges that amounts to women “undoing gender.” This process is, however, deeply classed as it is women in higher socioeconomic groups whose resources best place them to renegotiate care. (shrink)

I examine experiences of married couples to better understand whether economic shifts that push couples into gender-atypical work/family arrangements influence gender inequality. I draw on in-depth interviews conducted in 2008 with stay-at-home husbands and their wives in 21 married-couple families with children. I find that the decision to have a father stay home is heavily influenced by economic conditions, suggesting that men’s increased job instability and shifts in the relative employment conditions of husbands and wives push some men into at-home (...) fatherhood. However, this shift in family arrangements can promote change toward greater gender equality even in couples that initially hold entrenched, gendered beliefs. The data indicate that at-home fathers come to value their increased involvement in children’s care in ways that reduce gender differences in parenting and that have the potential to translate into institutional change, particularly when they reenter the labor force. Furthermore, at-home father arrangements generally appear to provide increased support for women’s employment and promote changes in women’s work behavior that may reduce inequities that stem from traditionally gendered divisions in work/family responsibilities. (shrink)

Gender is perhaps the most pervasive, fundamental, and universally accepted way we separate and categorize human beings. Yet in recent years, U.S. courts and administrative state agencies have confronted a growing challenge from individuals demanding to have their gender reclassified. Transgender people create a profound category crisis for social institutions built on the idea that biological sex is both immutable and dichotomous. During the past four decades, the central legal question shifted from how to allocate specific individuals to categories to (...) the permeability of gender categories themselves. This analysis of 38 judicial gender determinations provides a glimpse of the literal construction of the gender order and of the ways institutions gender individuals. It also provides powerful evidence that cultural anxieties about reproduction and the heterosexual, conjugal family underscore institutional efforts to manage the uncertainty of postmodern gender identities. (shrink)

This article draws on interviews with “foodies”—people with a passion for eating and learning about food—to explore questions of gender and foodie culture. The analysis suggests that while this culture is by no means gender-neutral, foodies are enacting gender in ways that warrant closer inspection. This article puts forward new empirical findings about gender and food and employs the concept of “doing gender” to explore how masculinities and femininities are negotiated in foodie culture. Our focus on doing gender generates two (...) insights into gender and food work. First, we find that doing gender has different implications for men and women within foodie culture. Alongside evidence that foodies are contesting particular gendered relations within the food world, we explore how broader gender inequities persist. Second, we contend that opportunities for doing gender in foodie culture cannot be considered apart from class privilege. (shrink)

Drawing from the perspectives of transgender individuals, this article offers an empirical investigation of recent critiques of West and Zimmerman’s “doing gender” theory. This analysis uses 19 in-depth interviews with transpeople about their negotiation and management of gendered interactions at work to explore how their experiences potentially contribute to the doing, undoing, or redoing of gender in the workplace. I find that transpeople face unique challenges in making interactional sense of their sex, gender, and sex category and simultaneously engage in (...) doing, undoing, and redoing gender in the process of managing these challenges. Consequently, I argue that their interactional gender accomplishments are not adequately captured under the rubric of “doing gender” and suggest instead that they be understood as “doing transgender.” This article outlines the process of and consequences of “doing transgender” and its potential implications for the experience of and transformation of gender inequality at work. (shrink)

“Doing Gender,” Candance West and Don Zimmerman’s famous 1987 article, has become a folk concept—a trope or commonsense resource within the sociology of gender. Yet at the same time, most gender scholars overlook its ethnomethodological premise, visible in both poststructuralist misunderstandings of its argument outside the discipline of sociology and what I term a realist misunderstanding of it in the study of structures and identities within the discipline. Reading West and Zimmerman queerly while clarifying ethnomethodology’s ontology, I refocus attention for (...) critical scholarship on ethnomethodology’s analytic sensibilities for research on gender, race, and sexuality, among other embodiments. Specifically, ethnomethodology reframes a vision of actors as relational, practical actors; repositions gender as accountable, jointly produced social relations, not individual identity; and foregrounds resistance in addition to conformity. Hence, my gender is not mine; it is ours. Ethnomethodology’s ontological shift in temporality to reality-in-production enables interpretive-materialism: a queer, anti-racist, intersectional sociology that is future-facing and in motion. (shrink)

Research on gender inequality within different-sex marriages shows that women do more unpaid labor than men, and that the perception of inequality influences perceptions of marital quality. Yet research on same-sex couples suggests the importance of considering how gender is relational. Past studies show that same-sex partners share unpaid labor more equally and perceive greater equity than do different-sex partners, and that lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are less gender conforming than heterosexuals. However, studies have not considered how gender conformity (...) might shape inequalities and marital quality within same- and different-sex unions. In this study, we analyze dyadic data from both spouses in same- and different-sex marriages to explore how sex of spouse and gender conformity influence perceptions of shared power within the relationship, which, in turn, influences marital quality. Results show that greater gender conformity is related to stronger perceptions of shared power in different-sex and male same-sex couples but not in female same-sex couples. Perceptions of shared power are positively associated with marital quality in all union types. Our findings suggest that maintaining hegemonic masculinity and power inequalities may be salient to marriages with men. In female same-sex couples, gender and its relation to power inequalities may carry less meaning. (shrink)

This study explores whether gender stereotypes about math ability shape high school teachers’ assessments of the students with whom they interact daily, resulting in the presence of conditional bias. It builds on theories of intersectionality by exploring teachers’ perceptions of students in different gender and racial/ethnic subgroups and advances the literature on the salience of gender across contexts by considering variation across levels of math course-taking in the academic hierarchy. Analyses of nationally representative data from the Education Longitudinal Study of (...) 2002 reveal that disparities in teachers’ perceptions of ability that favored white males over minority students of both genders are explained away by student achievement in the form of test scores and grades. However, we find evidence of a consistent bias against white females, which although relatively small in magnitude, suggests that teachers hold the belief that math is just easier for white males than it is for white females. In addition, we find some evidence of variation across course level contexts with regard to bias. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for research on the construction of gender inequality. (shrink)

Transgender legal protections have long been contentious issues, with courts often pathologizing or refusing recognition of transgender identities. Recently, however, courts adjudicating asylum claims have recognized “transgender” as a legitimate category of protection. I take this legal development as an opportunity to ask how courts determine if individuals are transgender. While previous work has shown how courts maintain the gender binary, asylum law offers the first chance to analyze how recognizing a distinct transgender category affects the legal gender order and (...) the classification of trans claimants. Drawing on court decisions, ethnographic observations, and interviews, I argue that the recognition of transgender as a category implicitly acknowledges the malleability of gender. Yet, the adjudication of transgender asylum cases continues to uphold a fixed and binary conception of gender by assuming a “born into the wrong body” narrative and that claimants should always already know their gender identities. Courts thus enforce a cis–trans binary wherein only certain claimants are found “trans enough.”. (shrink)

Sociologists studying gender have debated West and Zimmerman’s premise that “doing gender is unavoidable,” seeking to ascertain whether people can “undo” or only “redo” gender. While sociologists have been correct to focus on the interactional accomplishment of gender, they have neglected one of Garfinkel’s key insights about interaction: that people hold each other accountable to particular narratives. Neglecting the narrative aspect of doing—and undoing—gender impedes our ability to recognize processes of social change. Based on a qualitative study, we show how (...) the movement for LGBTQI acceptance within U.S. conservative Protestant churches works to make gender not “omnirelevant” by challenging conservative “complementarity” narratives that posit two complementary, opposite sexes as a commandment preceding the Ten Commandments in time and importance. We explore this movement’s ambivalent relationship with homonormativity, highlight three ways this movement resists projecting binary gender narratives into scripture, and examine how some in this movement see the pursuit of social justice as a Christian mandate. The efforts of LGBTQI conservative Christians exemplify how reshaping sex/gender/sexual narratives can create possibilities for undoing gender. (shrink)

In the 21st century, talent is dynamic, with workplaces being defined by diverse sexual orientations. In this context, a quantitative approach through the lens of a bibliometric technique of citation and co‐citation analyses was applied to study 456 publications on the topic of the transgender workforce from 1988 to 2022, and a co‐word analysis was used to showcase a visual representation of the concept. This research unravels significant lines of output; for instance, it assessed the publication efficiency of authors, journals, (...) institutions, and nations. We obtained three clusters, which are: multilayered workplace discrimination against transgender employees, policies and practices to support transgender employees in the workplace, and the multi‐level impact of negative workplace experiences on transgender employees. Given the volume of literature, it is difficult for bibliometric analyses to unearth the entire knowledge structure of the concept. Therefore, this study attempts to understand the knowledge structure of the transgender workforce from a quantitative perspective. In addition, this study draws from and integrates disciplines like sociology, management, and psychology. Lastly, this research discusses how the concept has evolved over the decade. (shrink)

Although accountability lies at the heart of the “doing gender” perspective, it has received surprisingly little attention from gender scholars. In this article, I analyze the different ways that scholars have conceptualized accountability. I propose a synthesis of these various understandings, and demonstrate the utility of this conceptualization with examples from my research on feminist self-defense training. This analysis sheds light on both the workings of accountability and the process of change in gender expectations and practices. I conclude by considering (...) the implications of this reconceptualization of accountability. (shrink)

The college hookup scene is a profoundly gendered and heteronormative sexual field. Yet the party and bar scene that gives rise to hookups also fosters the practice of women kissing other women in public, generally to the enjoyment of male onlookers, and sometimes facilitates threesomes involving same-sex sexual behavior between women. In this article, we argue that the hookup scene serves as an opportunity structure to explore same-sex attractions and, at least for some women, to later verify bisexual, lesbian, or (...) queer sexual identities. Based on quantitative and qualitative data and combining queer theory and identity theory, we offer a new interpretation of women’s same-sex practices in the hookup culture. Our analysis contributes to gender theory by demonstrating the utility of identity theory for understanding how non-normative gender and sexual identities are negotiated within heteronormatively structured fields. (shrink)

Scholars see the gendered division of household labor as a stronghold of gender inequality. We explore changes in household labor and gender relations when conservative, working-class families experience employment disruptions. Using data from 49 qualitative interviews conducted with men and women following the forced unemployment of breadwinning husbands, we observe some change in gendered household labor but conclude that a significant degendering of housework is thwarted by institutional-, interactive-, and individual-level processes. At the institutional level, the lack of well-paying jobs (...) and the persistent gendering of household tasks discourage change. At the individual level, challenges to gendered identities encourage a reinforcement of traditional gender ideologies. At the interactional level, women’s responsibility for care work and the meaning of paid work for unemployed husbands forestall the adjustment of tasks. (shrink)

This article problematizes claims of women’s empowerment in “masculine” sports through an exploration of women’s participation in mixed martial arts —a combat sport colloquially referred to as “cage fighting.” MMA, perhaps more than any other sport, allows women athletes to challenge patriarchal beliefs about gender by demonstrating women’s capacity for physical violence and domination. But whereas investigations into MMA have produced important findings for studies of men and masculinities, there has been surprisingly little attention paid to women’s participation in this (...) hypermasculine world. This article begins to fill this gap through an ethnographic account of this growing sport. Drawing from more than four years of ethnographic fieldwork and 40 semi-structured interviews with professional women’s MMA athletes, I show how the neoliberal–postfeminist culture of MMA undermines its empowerment potential by shaping gendered subjecthood in ways that are conducive to the maintenance of gender inequality. I conclude by discussing the implications of my findings for women’s empowerment in sport. (shrink)

This paper seeks to explore the limits of individualizing parenthood in Serbia, gleaned from the example of gender socialization of children. The main thesis is that the noted limits to individualization of parenthood in contemporary society have a particular Serbian manifestation due to the country’s familism. The study traces the ideology of familism through normative aspects of gender structures within contemporary Serbian society, that is, by analyzing the presence and forms of expression of the patriarchal matrix in upbringing practices of (...) parents, the most significant element of which is the ethics of good parenthood. The analysis shows that individualization of parenthood and more egalitarian patterns of gender socialization occur above all due to the dynamic within the marital relationship, one which abandons the concept of sacrificial parenthood. The analysis presented here is based on data collected in empirical research of upbringing practices in contemporary Serbia. (shrink)

Alternative food networks are exemplified by organic, fair trade and local foods, and promote forms of food provisioning that are ‘corrective’ to conventional agriculture and food systems. Despite enthusiasm for AFNs, scholars have increasingly interrogated whether inequalities are perpetuated by AFNs. Reproduction of gender inequality in AFNs, particularly at the level of consumption, has often been left empirically unexamined, however. This is problematic given that women continue to be predominantly responsible for food provisioning in the US, and that this responsibility (...) can lead to negative physical, psychological and social outcomes. Using quantitative methods and data from the 2012 Ohio Survey of Food, Agriculture, and Environmental Issues, this paper examines the extent to which gender inequality in the division of labor is reproduced in AFNs by focusing on the potential persistence of gender inequality in food provisioning among AFN participants. Findings suggest that among AFN participants, particularly those utilizing local food systems, women, compared to men, remain predominantly responsible for food provisioning, spend more time in food provisioning, and engage in more food provisioning from scratch. This research confirms that food provisioning remains a gendered act amongst AFN participants, calling attention to the persistence of gender inequality in AFNs. The paper concludes by suggesting that AFNs are positioned as a place to create change, albeit small scale, in the gendered division of household labor in the US, and provides some practical suggestions for how this might occur. (shrink)

The study focuses on the links between gender and national security in the legislative arena in Israel, considering whether men and women legislators prioritize security differently, alongside other thematic policy areas. The centrality of national security issues in Israeli politics makes it a good case study for these questions, as it enhances existing gendered stereotypes. The article examines two competing hypotheses. The first suggests that Israeli female legislators will mostly refrain from addressing national security policy issues, focusing instead on softer (...) policy issues, such as gender equality, education, health, and welfare. The second suggests the opposite, claiming that women legislators in Israel will align themselves with their male counterparts’ set of priorities, focusing heavily on issues related to national security. The study finds support mostly for the former: Israeli female legislators are especially active in policy areas relating to women’s issues and children/family and are less active in regard to national security, a policy area heavily dominated by male legislators. (shrink)

The primary goal of this study is to identify patterns in the ways mothers adhere to, reject, and combine intensive mothering attitudes and behaviors. Mothers often face immense pressure to devote significant physical and mental effort toward childrearing, referred to as intensive mothering. At the same time, many mothers do not follow the actions or beliefs that gender norms suggest they should. It remains unclear how mothers holistically approach intensive parenting across many different facets. Using the 2014 Child Development Supplement (...) from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I examined how a sample of mothers fell into intensive mothering profiles, or latent classes, and how class membership varied by demographic characteristics. Results showed four underlying latent classes of intensive motherhood: Relaxed Mothers, High Investors, Essentialist Mothers, and Strained Mothers. No group was intensive across all measures, contrary to common narratives in previous research and theory. Class membership varied by several characteristics, including education, age, income, race, single parenthood, and employment. By revealing how mothers are selectively intensive, this study expands on the ways mothers simultaneously “do” and “undo” gender norms in their parenting, as well as the sociodemographics that may predict these patterns. (shrink)

One of the explicit goals of the 1996 welfare reform in the United States was to create conditions that would encourage marriage as a means of reducing poverty and welfare “dependency.” With the exception of a few notable studies that examine reliance on abusive partners and former partners, relatively little scholarly attention has been given to the contours of partnering after welfare reform. Using a feminist lens on data from two qualitative studies, the author examines the partnership experiences of a (...) sample of mostly white women three to four years after they had left welfare. An exploration of women’s views of their transitions into and their experiences with partnering reveals that women align with a logic of heterosexual partnering that holds the potential to complicate their lives. The analysis sounds a precautionary note and provides empirical evidence that partnering in the context of the reduced options of welfare reform can diminish women’s long-term stability and that encouraging partnering is, ultimately, an unsustainable policy direction for the support of lone mothers. (shrink)

In 2002, the United States federal government created the Healthy Marriage Initiative, a policy that has distributed almost $1 billion in welfare money to marriage education programs. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in classes for a purposive sample of 20 government-approved marriage education programs and textual analysis of more than 3,000 pages of curricular materials, I analyze how U.S. healthy marriage policy addresses issues of gendered communication and power. This case reveals the limitations of what I call ‘‘interpersonal gender interventions,’’ which (...) obscure how gendered ideologies and inequalities are often maintained through institutionalized practices and state action. Specifically, I argue that by focusing on negotiation, communication, and conflict-resolution strategies—or what marriage educators call “relationship skills”—at the interactional level, state-sponsored marriage education masks persistent institutionalized gender inequalities, namely, latent and hidden forms of marital power. More broadly, I use this case to reveal how interpersonal gender interventions will likely have limited utility if individuals learn to develop more gender-egalitarian beliefs in the absence of institutional changes that enable them to act on these values. (shrink)