| dc.description.abstract | During the past three decades, feminist scholars have successfully demonstrated the ubiquity
and omnirelevance of gender as a sociocultural construction in virtually all human
collectivities, past and present. Intrapsychic, interactional, and collective social processes
are gendered, as are micro, meso, and macro social structures. Gender shapes, and is
shaped, in all arenas of social life, from the most mundane practices of everyday life to
those of the most powerful corporate actors. Contemporary understandings of gender
emanate from a large community of primarily feminist scholars that spans the gamut of
learned disciplines and also includes non-academic activist thinkers. However, while incorporating
some cross-disciplinary material, this volume focuses specifically on sociological
theories and research concerning gender, which are discussed across the full array
of social processes, structures, and institutions.
As editor, I have explicitly tried to shape the contributions to this volume along
several lines that reflect my long-standing views about sociology in general, and gender
sociology in particular. First, I asked authors to include cross-national and historical
material as much as possible. This request reflects my belief that understanding and
evaluating the here-and-now and working realistically for a better future can only be
accomplished from a comparative perspective. Too often, American sociology has been
both tempero- and ethnocentric. Second, I have asked authors to be sensitive to
within-gender differences along class, racial/ethnic, sexual preference, and age cohort
lines. This request reflects the growing sensitivity of feminist scholars to the white, middleclass,
and heterosexist biases implicit in much of our past work, which has effectively
glossed over differences among women (especially) and consigned many categories of
women to invisibility. Third, I have intentionally omitted a chapter on men and masculinity
and asked authors to take seriously the fact that there are two genders that require
examination and comparison. Too often, works in gender sociology are about women
only or, less frequently, men only. Just as one cannot understand the experiences, constraints,
and consciousness of an ethnic or racial minority without understanding its relationship
to the dominant group, one cannot understand those of women apart from their
relationship to men, culturally defined masculinity and male-dominated institutions. Indeed,
one cannot adequately understand dominant groups without simultaneously examining
their relationships to subordinate groups. Happily, the chapter authors have taken my various suggestions seriously, to the extent that available research and space in this
volume permit. | en_US |
