In the beginning, there was sex and there was gender. Those of
us who
taught courses in the area in the late 1960s and early 1970s
were careful to
distinguish one from the other. Sex, we told students, was what
was
ascribed by biology: anatomy, hormones, and physiology. Gender,
we
said, was an achieved status: that which is constructed through
psychological, cultural, and social means. To introduce the
difference
between the two, we drew on singular case studies of hennaphrodites
(Money 1968, 1974; Money and Ehrhardt 1972) and anthropological
investigations of “strange and exotic tribes” (Mead 1963, 1968).
Inevitably (and understandably), in the ensuing weeks of each
term, our
students became confused. Sex hardly seemed a “given” in the
context of
research that illustrated the sometimes ambiguous and often
conflicting
criteria for its ascription. And gender seemed much less an
“achievement”
in the context of the anthropological, psychological, and social
imperatives we studied—the division of labor, the formation
of gender
identities, and the social subordination of women by men. Moreover,
the
received doctrine of gender socialization theories conveyed
the strong
message that while gender may be “achieved,” by about age five
it was
certainly fixed, unvarying, and static—much like sex.
Since about 1975, the confusion has intensified and spread far
beyond our
individual classrooms. For one thing, we learned that the relationship
between biological and cultural processes was far more complex—and
reflexive—than we previously had supposed (Rossi 1984, especially
pp.
10-14). For another, we discovered that certain structural arrangements,
for
example, between work and family, actually produce or enable
some
capacities, such as to mother, that we formerly associated with
biology
(Chodorow 1978 versus Firestone 1970). In the midst of all this,
the
notion of gender as a recurring achievement somehow fell by
the wayside.
Our purpose in this chapter is to propose an ethnomethodologically
informed, and therefore distinctively sociological, understanding
of gender
as a routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishment. We contend
that
the “doing” of gender is undertaken by women and men whose competence
as members of society is hostage to its production.
Doing gender involves a complex of socially guided perceptual,
interactional, and micropolitical activities that cast particular
pursuits as
expressions of masculine and feminine “natures.”
When we view gender as an accomplishment, an achieved property
of
situated conduct, our attention shifts from matters internal
to the
individual and focuses on interactional and, ultimately, institutional
arenas. In one sense, of course, it is individuals who “do”
gender. But it
is a situated doing, carried out in the virtual or real presence
of others who
are presumed to be oriented to its production. Rather than as
a property of
individuals, we conceive of gender as an emergent feature of
social
situations: as both an outcome of and a rationale for various
social
arrangements and as a means of legitimating one of the most
fundamental
divisions of society.
To advance our argument, we undertake a critical examination
of what
sociologists have meant by gender, including its treatment as
a role
enactment in the conventional sense and as a “display” in Goffman’s
(1976) terminology. Both gender role and gender display focus
on
behavioral aspects of being a woman or a man (as opposed, for
example,
to biological differences between the two). However, we contend
that the
notion of gender as a role obscures the work that is involved
in producing
gender in everyday activities, whereas the notion of gender
as a display
relegates it to the periphery of interaction. We argue instead
that
participants in interactions organize their various and manifold
activities
to reflect or express gender, and they are disposed to perceive
the behavior
of others in a similar light.
To elaborate our proposal, we suggest at the outset that important
but
often overlooked distinctions should be observed among sex,
sex
category, and gender. Sex is a determination made through the
application of socially agreed upon biological criteria for
classifying
persons as females or males.’ The criteria for classification
can be genitalia
at birth or chromosomal typing before birth, and they do not
necessarily
agree with one another. Placement in a sex category is achieved
through
application of the sex criteria, but in everyday life, categorization
is
established and sustained by the socially required identificatory
displays
that proclaim one’s membership in one or the other category.
In this
sense, one’s sex category presumes one’s sex and stands as proxy
for it in
many situations, but sex and sex category can vary independently;
that is,
it is possible to claim membership in a sex category even when
the sex
criteria are lacking. Gender, in contrast, is the activity of
managing
situated conduct in light of normative conceptions of attitudes
and
activities appropriate for one’s sex category. Gender
activities emerge from and bolster claims to membership in a sex
category.
We contend that recognition of the analytical independence of
sex, sex
category, and gender is essential for understanding the relationships
among these elements and the interactional work involved in
“being” a
gendered person in society. While our primary aim is theoretical,
there
will be occasion to discuss fruitful directions for empirical
research that
follow from the formulation of gender we propose.
We begin with an assessment of the received meaning of gender,
particularly in relation to the roots of this notion in presumed
biological
differences between women and men.
In Western societies, the accepted cultural perspective on
gender views
women and men as naturally and unequivocally defined categories
of
being (Garfinkel 1967, pp. 116-8) with distinctive psychological
and
behavioral propensities that can be predicted from their reproductive
functions. Competent adult members of these societies see differences
between the two as fundamental and enduring, and these differences
are
seemingly supported by the division of labor into women’s and
men’s
work and an often elaborate differentiation of feminine and
masculine
attitudes and behaviors that are prominent features of social
organization.
Things are the way they are by virtue of the fact that men are
men and
women are women—a division perceived to be natural and rooted
in
biology, producing in turn profound psychological, behavioral,
and social
consequences. The structural arrangements of a society are presumed
to be
responsive to these differences.
Analyses of sex and gender in the social sciences, although less
likely to
accept uncritically the naive biological determinism of the
view just
presented, often retain a conception of sex-linked behaviors
and traits as
essential properties of individuals (for good reviews, see Hochschild
1973;
Thorne 1980; Tresemer 1975; Henley 1985). The “sex differences
approach” (Thorne 1980) is more commonly attributed to psychologists
than to sociologists, but the survey researcher who determines
the gender
of respondents on the basis of the sound of their voices over
the telephone
is also making trait-oriented assumptions. Reducing gender to
a fixed set
of psychological traits or to a unitary “variable” precludes
serious
consideration of the ways it is used to structure distinct domains
of social
experience (Stacey and Thorne 1985, pp. 307-8).
Taking a different tack, role theory has attended to the social
construction
of gender categories, called “sex roles” or, more recently,
“gender roles” and has analyzed how these are learned and enacted.
Beginning with Linton (1936) and continuing through the works
of
Parsons (Parsons 1951; Parsons and Bales 1955) and Komarovsky
(1946, 1950), role theory has emphasized the social and dynamic
aspect
of role construction and enactment (Connell 1983; Thorne 1980).
But at
the level of face-to-face interaction, the application of role
theory to gender
poses problems of its own (for good reviews and critiques, see
Connell
1983, 1985; Kessler, Ashendon, Connell, and Dowsett 1985; Lopata
and
Thorne, 1978; Stacey and Thorne, 1985; Thorne 1980). Roles are
situated identities—assumed and relinquished as the situation
demands—rather than master identities (Hughes 1945), such as
sex
category, that cut across situations. Unlike most roles, such
as “nurse,”
“doctor”, and “patient” or “professor” and “student”, gender
has no specific
site or organizational context. Moreover, many roles are already
gender
marked, so that special qualifiers—such as “female doctor” or
“male
nurse”—must be added to exceptions to the rule. Thorne (1980)
observes
that conceptualizing gender as a role makes it difficult to
assess its
influence on other roles and reduces its explanatory usefulness
in
discussions of power and inequality. Drawing on Rubin (1975),
Thorne
calls for a reconceptualization of women and men as distinct
social
groups, constituted in “concrete, historically changing— and
generally
unequal—social relationships” (Thorne 1980, p. 11).
We argue that gender is not a set of traits, nor a variable,
nor a role, but
the product of social doings of some sort. What then is the
social doing of
gender? It is more than the continuous creation of the meaning
of gender
through human actions (Gerson and Peiss 1985). We claim that
gender
itself is constituted through interaction.2 To develop the implications
of
our claim, we turn to Goffman’s (1976) account of “gender display.”
Our
object here is to explore how gender might be exhibited or portrayed
through interaction, and thus be seen as “natural,” while it
is being
produced as a socially organized achievement.
Goffman contends that when human beings interact with others
in their
environment, they assume that each possesses an “essential nature”—a
nature that can be discerned through the “natural signs given
off or
expressed by them” (1976, p. 75). Femininity and masculinity
are
regarded as “prototypes of essential expression—something that
can be
conveyed fleetingly in any social situation and yet something
that strikes
at the most basic characterization of the individual” (1976,
p. 75). The
means through which we provide such expressions are “perfunctory,
conventionalized acts” (1976, p. 69), which convey to others
our regard for them, indicate our alignment in an encounter,
and
tentatively establish the terms of contact for that social situation.
But they
are also regarded as expressive behavior, testimony to our “essential
natures.”
Goffman (1976, pp. 69-70) sees displays as highly conventionalized
behaviors structured as two-part exchanges of the statement-reply
type, in
which the presence or absence of symmetry can establish deference
or
dominance. These rituals are viewed as distinct from but articulated
with
more consequential activities, such as performing tasks or engaging
in
discourse. Hence, we have what he terms the “scheduling” of
displays at
junctures in activities, such as the beginning or end, to avoid
interfering
with the activities themselves. Goffman (1976, p. 69) formulates
gender
display as follows:
If gender be defined as the culturally established correlates
of sex (whether
in consequence of biology or learning), then gender display
refers to
conventionalized portrayals of these correlates.
These gendered expressions might reveal clues to the underlying,
fundamental dimensions of the female and male, but they are,
in
Goffman’s view, optional performances. Masculine courtesies
may or may
not be offered and, if offered, may or may not be declined (1976,
p. 71).
Moreover, human beings “themselves employ the term ‘expression’,
and
conduct themselves to fit their own notions of expressivity”
(1976, p.
75). Gender depictions are less a consequence of our “essential
sexual
natures” than interactional portrayals of what we would like
to convey
about sexual natures, using conventionalized gestures. Our human
nature
gives us the ability to learn to produce and recognize masculine
and
feminine gender displays, “a capacity [we] have by virtue of
being
persons, not males and females” (1976, p. 76).
Upon first inspection, it would appear that Goffman’s formulation
offers
an engaging sociological corrective to existing formulations
of gender. In
his view, gender is a socially scripted dramatization of the
culture’s
idealization of feminine and masculine natures, played for an
audience that
is well schooled in the presentational idiom. To continue the
metaphor,
there are scheduled performances presented in special locations,
and like
plays, they constitute introductions to or time out from more
serious
activities.
There are fundamental equivocations in this perspective. By segregating
gender display from the serious business of interaction, Goffman
obscures
the effects of gender on a wide range of human activities. Gender
is not merely something that happens in the nooks and crannies of
interaction, fitted in here and there and not interfering with
the serious
business of life. Although it is plausible to contend that gender
displays—cons trued as conventionalized expressions—are optional,
it
does not seem plausible to say that we have the option of being
seen by
others as female or male.
It is necessary to move beyond the notion of gender display to
consider
what is involved in doing gender as an ongoing activity embedded
in
everyday interaction. Toward this end, we return to the distinctions
among
sex, sex category, and gender introduced earlier.
Garfinkel’s (1967, pp. 118-40) case study of Agnes, a transsexual
raised as
a boy who adopted a female identity at age 17 and underwent
a sex
reassignment operation several years later, demonstrates how
gender is
created through interaction and at the same time structures
interaction.
Agnes, whom Garfinkel characterized as a “practical methodologist,”
developed a number of procedures for passing as a “normal, natural
female” both prior to and after her surgery. She had the practical
task of
managing the facts that she possessed male genitalia and that
she lacked
the social resources a girl’s biography would presumably provide
in
everyday interaction. In short, she needed to display herself
as a woman,
simultaneously learning what it was to be a woman. Of necessity,
this
full-time pursuit took place at a time in her life when most
people’s
gender would be well-accredited and routinized. Agnes had to
consciously
contrive what the vast majority of women do without thinking.
She was
not faking what real women do naturally. She was obliged to
analyze and
figure out how to act within socially structured circumstances
and
conceptions of femininity that women born with appropriate biological
credentials take for granted early on. As in the case of others
who must
“pass,” such as tranvestites, Kabuki actors, or Dustin Hoffman’s
“Tootsie,” Agnes’s case makes visible what culture has made
invisible—the accomplishment of gender.
Garfinkel’s (1967) discussion of Agnes does not explicitly separate
three
analytically distinct, although empirically overlapping, concepts—
sex,
sex category, and gender.
More central to our argument is Kessler and McKenna’s (1978,
pp. 1-6)
point that genitalia are conventionally hidden from public inspection
in
everyday life; yet we continue through our social rounds to
“observe” a
world of two naturally, normally sexed persons. It is the presumption
that essential criteria exist, and would or should be there
if looked for,
that provides the basis for sex categorization. Drawing on Garfinkel,
Kessler and McKenna argued that “female” and “male” are cultural
events—products of what they term the “gender attribution
process”—rather than some collection of traits, behaviors, or
even physical
attributes. Illustratively, they cite the child who, viewing
a picture of
someone clad in a suit and a tie, contends, “It’s a man, because
he has a
pee-pee” (Kessler and McKenna 1978, p. 154). Translation:
“He must have a pee-pee [an essential characteristic] because
I see the
insignia of a suit and tie.” Neither initial sex assignment
(pronouncement at birth as a female or male) nor the actual
existence of
essential criteria for that assignment (possession of a clitoris
and vagina or
penis and testicles) has much—if anything—to do with the identification
of sex category in everyday life. There, Kessler and McKenna
note, we
operate with a moral certainty of a world of two sexes. We do
not think,
“Most persons with penises are men, but some may not be” or
“Most
persons who dress as men have penises.” Rather, we take it for
granted
that sex and sex category are congruent—that knowing the latter,
we can
deduce the rest.
The categorization of members of society into indigenous categories,
such
as girl or boy, or woman or man, operates in a distinctively
social way.
The act of categorization does not involve a positive test,
in the sense of a
well-defined set of criteria that must be explicitly satisfied
prior to
making an identification. Rather, the application of membership
categories relies on an “if-can” test in everyday interaction
(Sacks 1972,
pp. 332-35). This test stipulates that if people can be seen
as members
of relevant categories, then categorize them that way. That
is, use the
category that seems appropriate, except in the presence of discrepant
information or obvious features that would rule out its use.
This
procedure is quite in keeping with the attitude of everyday
life, in which
we take appearances at face value unless we have special reason
to doubt
them (Bernstein 1986; Garfinkel 1967, pp. 272-7; Schutz 1943).
It should
be added that it is precisely when we have special reason to
doubt
appearances that the issue of applying rigorous criteria arises,
but it is
rare, outside legal or bureaucratic contexts, to encounter insistence
on
positive tests (Garfinkel 1967, pp. 262-83; Wilson 1970).
Agnes’s initial resource was the predisposition of those she
encountered to
take her appearance (her figure, clothing, hair style, and so
on) as the
undoubted appearance of a normal female. Her further resource
was our
cultural perspective on the properties of “natural, normally
sexed persons.”
Garfinkel (1967, pp. 122-8) notes that in everyday life, we
live in a world
of two—and only two—sexes. This arrangement has a moral status
in that
we include ourselves and others in it as “essentially, originally,
in the
first place, always have been, always will be once and for all,
in the final
analysis, either ‘male’ or ‘female’ “ (Garfinkel 1967, p. 122).
Consider the following case:
This issue reminds me of a visit I made to a computer store a
couple of
years ago. The person who answered my questions was truly a
salesperson. I could not categorize him/her as a woman or a
man. What
did I look for? (1) Facial hair: She/he was smooth skinned,
but some men
have little or no facial hair. (This varies by race, Native
Americans and
Blacks often have none.) (2) Breasts: She/he was wearing a loose
shirt
that hung from his/her shoulders. And, as many women who
suffered through a 1950s’ adolescence
know to their shame, women are often flat-chested. (3) Shoulders:
His/hers were small and round for a man, broad for a woman.
(4) Hands:
Long and slender fingers, knuckles a bit large for a woman,
small for a man.
(5) Voice: Middle range, unexpressive for a woman, not at all
the
exaggerated tones some gay males affect. (6) His/her treatment
of me: Gave off
no signs that would let me know if I were of the same or different
sex as this
person. There were not even any signs that he/she knew his/her
sex would be
difficult to categorize and I wondered about that even as I
did my best to hide
these questions so I would not embarrass him/her while we talked
of computer
paper. I left still not knowing the sex of my salesperson, and
was disturbed by
that unanswered question (child of my culture that I am). (Margolis
1985)
What can this case tell us about situations such as Agnes’s (cf.
Morris 1974;
Richards 1983) or the process of sex categorization in general?
First, we infer
from this description that the computer salesclerk’s identificatory
display was
ambiguous, since she or he was not dressed or adorned in an
unequivocally
female or male fashion. It is when such a display fails to provide
grounds for
categorization that factors such as facial hair or tone of voice
are assessed to
determine membership in a sex category. Second, beyond the fact
that this
incident could be recalled after “a couple of years,” the customer
was not only
“disturbed” by the ambiguity of the salesclerk’s category but
also assumed
that to acknowledge this ambiguity would be embarrassing to
the salesclerk.
Not only do we want to know the sex category of those around
us (to see it at a
glance, perhaps), but we presume that others are displaying
it for us in as
decisive a fashion as they can.
Agnes attempted to be “120 percent female” (Garfinkel 1967,
p. 129), that
is, unquestionably in all ways and at all times feminine. She
thought she
could protect herself from disclosure before and after surgical
intervention
by comporting herself in a feminine manner, but she also could
have
given herself away by overdoing her performance. Sex categorization
and
the accomplishment of gender are not the same. Agnes’s categorization
could be secure or suspect, but did not depend on whether or
not she lived
up to some ideal conception of femininity. Women can be seen
as
unfeminine, but that does not make them “unfemale.” Agnes faced
an
ongoing task of being a woman—something beyond style of dress
(an
identificatory display) or allowing men to light her cigarette
(a gender
display). Her problem was to produce gender behavior.
Agnes’s strategy of “secret apprenticeship,” through which she
learned
expected feminine decorum by carefully attending to her fiancé’s
criticisms of other women, was one means of masking incompetencies
and simultaneously acquiring the needed skills (Garfinkel 1967,
pp.
146-7). It was through her fiancé that Agnes learned
that sunbathing on
the lawn in front of her apartment was “offensive” (because
it put her on
display to other men). She also learned from his critiques of
other women
that she should not insist on having things her way and that
she should
not offer her opinions or claim equality with men (Garfinkel
1967, pp.
147-8). (Like other women in our society Agnes learned something
about
power in the course of her “education.”)
Popular culture abounds with books and magazines that compile
idealized
depictions of relations between women and men. Those focused
on the
etiquette of dating or prevailing standards of feminine comportment
are
meant to be of practical help in these matters. However, the
use of any
such source as a manual of procedure requires the assumption
that doing
gender merely involves making use of discrete, well-defined
bundles of
behavior that can simply be plugged into interactional situations
to
produce recognizable enactments of masculinity and femininity.
The man
“does” being masculine by, for example, taking the woman’s arm
to guide
her across a street, and she “does” being feminine by consenting
to be
guided and not initiating such behavior with a man.
Agnes could perhaps have used such sources as manuals, but, we
contend,
doing gender is not so easily regimented (Mithers 1982; Morris
1974).
Such sources may list and describe the sorts of behaviors that
mark or
display gender, but they are necessarily incomplete (Garfinkel
1967, pp.
66-75; Wieder 1974, pp. 183-214; Zimmerman and Wieder 1970,
pp.
285-98). To be successful, marking or displaying gender must
be finely
fitted to situations and modified or transformed as the occasion
demands.
Doing gender consists of managing such occasions so that, whatever
the
particulars, the outcome is seen and seeable in context as
gender-appropriate or purposefully genderinappropriate, that
is,
accountable.
As Heritage (1984, pp. 136-7) notes, members of society regularly
engage
in “descriptive accountings of states of affairs to one another,”
and such
accounts are both serious and consequential. These descriptions
name, characterize, formulate, explain, excuse, excoriate, or
merely take notice of some circumstance or activity and thus
place it
within some social framework (locating it relative to other
activities, like
and unlike).
Such descriptions are themselves accountable, and societal members
orient
to the fact that their activities are subject to comment. Actions
are often
designed with an eye to their accountability, that is, how they
might look
and how they might be characterized. The notion of accountability
also
encompasses those actions undertaken so that they are specifically
unremarkable and thus not worthy of more than a passing remark,
because
they are seen to be in accord with culturally approved standards.
Heritage (1984, p. 179) observes that the process of rendering
something
accountable is interactional in character:
[This] permits actors to design their actions in relation to their
circumstances so as to permit others, by methodically taking account of
circumstances, to recognize the action for what it is.The key word here is circumstances. One circumstance that attends
virtually all actions is the sex category of the actor. As Garfinkel (1967,
p. 118) comments:[T]he work and socially structured occasions of sexual passing were
obstinately unyielding to [Agnes’s] attempts to routinize the grounds of
daily activities. This obstinacy points to the omnirelevance of sexual
status to affairs of daily life as an invariant but unnoticed background in
the texture of relevances that compose the changing actual scenes of
everyday life. (emphasis added)
If sex category is omnirelevant (or even approaches being
so), then a
person engaged in virtually any activity may be held accountable
for
performance of that activity as a woman or a man, and their
incumbency
in one or the other sex category can be used to legitimate or
discredit their
other activities (Berger, Cohen, and Zelditch 1972; Berger,
Conner, and
Fisek 1974; Berger, Fisek, Norman, and Zelditch 1977; Humphreys
and
Berger 1981). Accordingly, virtually any activity can be assessed
as to its
womanly or manly nature. And note, to “do” gender is not always
to live
up to normative conceptions of femininity or masculinity; it
is to engage
in behavior at the risk of gender assessment. Although it is
individuals
who do gender, the enterprise is fundamentally interactional
and
institutional in character, because accountability s a
feature of social relationships and its idiom is drawn from the
institutional arena in which those relationships are enacted.
If this is the
case, can we ever not do gender? Insofar as a society is partitioned
by
“essential” differences between women and men and placement
in a sex
category is both relevant and enforced, doing gender is unavoidable.
Doing gender means creating differences between girls and
boys and
women and men, differences that are not natural, essential,
or biological.
Once the differences have been constructed, they are used to
reinforce the
“essentialness” of gender. In a delightful account of the “arrangement
between the sexes,” Goffman (1977) observes the creation of
a variety of
institutionalized frameworks through which our “natural, normal
sexedness” can be enacted. The physical features of social settings
provide
one obvious resource for the expression of our “essential” differences.
For
example, the sex segregation of North American public bathrooms
distinguishes “ladies” from “gentlemen” in matters held to be
fundamentally biological, even though both “are somewhat similar
in the
question of waste products and their elimination” (Goffman 1977,
p.
315). These settings are furnished with dimorphic equipment
(such as
urinals for men or elaborate grooming facilities for women),
even though
both sexes may achieve the same ends through the same means
(and
apparently do so in the privacy of their own homes). To be stressed
here is
the fact that:
The functioning of sex-differentiated organs is involved, but
there is
nothing in this functioning that biologically recommends segregation;
that arrangement is a totally cultural matter. . . toilet segregation
is
presented as a natural consequence of the difference between
the sex-classes
when in fact it is a means of honoring, if not producing, this
difference.
(Goffman
1977, p. 316)
Standardized social occasions also provide stages for evocations
of the
“essential female and male natures.” Goffman cites organized
sports as one
such institutionalized framework for the expression of manliness.
There,
those qualities that ought “properly” to be associated with
masculinity,
such as endurance, strength, and competitive spirit, are celebrated
by all
parties concerned—participants, who may be seen to demonstrate
such
traits, and spectators, who applaud their demonstrations from
the safety of
the sidelines (1977, p. 322).
Assortative mating practices among heterosexual couples afford still
further means to create and maintain differences between women
and men.
For example, even though size, strength, and age tend to be
normally
distributed among females and males (with considerable overlap
between
them), selective pairing ensures couples in which boys and men
are
visibly bigger, stronger, and older (if not “wiser”) than the
girls and
women with whom they are paired. So, should situations emerge
in which
greater size, strength, or experience is called for, boys and
men will be
ever ready to display it and girls and women to appreciate its
display
(Goffman 1977, p. 321; West and Iritani 1985).
Gender may be routinely fashioned in a variety of situations
that seem
conventionally expressive to begin with, such as those that
present
“helpless” women next to heavy objects or flat tires. But, as
Goffman
notes, heavy, messy, and precarious concerns can be constructed
from any
social situation, “even though by standards set in other settings,
this may
involve something that is light, clean, and safe” (Goffman 1977,
p. 324).
Given these resources, it is clear that any interactional situation
sets the
stage for depictions of “essential” sexual natures. In sum,
these situations
“do not so much allow for the expression of natural differences
as for the
production of that difference itself” (Goffman 1977, p. 324).
Many situations are not clearly sex categorized, nor is what
transpires in
them obviously gender relevant. Yet any social encounter can
be pressed
into service in the interests of doing gender. Thus, Fishman’s
(1978)
research on casual conversations found an asymmetrical “division
of labor”
in talk between heterosexual intimates. Women had to ask more
questions, fill more silences, and use more attention-getting
beginnings in
order to be heard. Her conclusions are particularly pertinent
here:
Since interactional work is related to what constitutes being
a woman,
with what a woman is, the idea that it is work is obscured.
The work is
not seen as what women do, but as part of what they are. (Fishman
1978,
p. 405)
We would argue that it is precisely such labor that helps to
constitute the
essential nature of women as women in interactional contexts
(West and
Zimmerman 1983, pp. 109-11; but see also Kollock, Blumstein,
and
Schwartz 1985).
Individuals have many social identities that may be donned or
shed,
muted, or made more salient, depending on the situation. One
may be a
friend, professional, citizen, and many other things to many
different
people or to the same person at different times. But we are
always women or men—unless we shift into another sex category. What
this
means is that our identificatory displays will provide an ever-
available
resource for doing gender under an infinitely diverse set of
circumstances.
Some occasions are organized to routinely display and celebrate
behaviors
that are conventionally linked to one or the other sex category.
On such
occasions, everyone knows his or her place in the interactional
scheme of
things. If an individual identified as a member of one sex category
engages in behavior usually associated with the other category,
this
routinization is challenged. Hughes (1945, p. 356) provides
an illustration
of such a dilemma:
[A] young woman . . . became part of that virile profession, engineering.The designer of an airplane is expected to go up on the maiden flight of
the first plane built according to the design. He [sic] then gives a dinner to
the engineers and workmen who worked on the new plane. The dinner is
naturally a stag party. The young woman in question designed a plane.
Her co-workers urged her not to take the risk—for which, presumably,
men only are fit—of the maiden voyage. They were, in effect, asking her
to be a lady instead of an engineer. She chose to be an engineer. She then
gave the party and paid for it like a man. After food and the first round of
toasts, she left like a lady.
On this occasion, the parties reached an accommodation that
allowed a
woman to engage in presumptively masculine behaviors. However,
in the
end, this compromise permitted demonstration of her “essential”
femininity, through accountably “ladylike” behavior.
Hughes (1945, p. 357) suggests that such contradictions may be
countered by managing interactions on a very narrow basis, for
example,
by “keeping the reiationship formal and specific.” But the heart
of the
matter is that even—perhaps, especially—if the relationship
is a formal
one, gender is still something one is accountable for. Thus,
a woman
physician (notice the special qualifier in her case) may be
accorded respect
for her skill and even addressed by an appropriate title. Nonetheless,
she is
subject to evaluation in terms of normative conceptions of appropriate
attitudes and activities for her sex category and under pressure
to prove
that she is an “essentially” feminine being, despite appearances
to the
contrary (West 1984, pp. 97-101). Her sex category is used to
discredit her
participation in important clinical activities (Lorber 1984,
pp. 52-4), while
her involvement in medicine is used to discredit her commitment
to her
responsibilities as a wife and mother (Bourne and Wikier 1978,
pp.
435-7). Simultaneously, her exclusion from the physician
colleague community is maintained and her
accountability as a woman is ensured.
In this context, “role conflict” can be viewed as a dynamic aspect
of our
current “arrangement between the sexes” (Goffman 1977), an arrangement
that provides for occasions on which persons of a particular
sex category
can “see” quite clearly that they are out of place and that
if they were not
there, their current troubles would not exist. From the standpoint
of
interaction, what is at stake is the management of our “essential”
natures
and, from the standpoint of the individual, the continuing
accomplishment of gender. If, as we have argued, sex category
is
omnirelevant, then any occasion, conflicted or not, offers the
resources for
doing gender.
We have sought to show that sex category and gender are managed
properties of conduct that are contrived with respect to the
fact that others
will judge and respond to us in particular ways. We have claimed
that a
person’s gender is not simply an aspect of what one is, but,
more
fundamentally, it is something that one does, and does recurrently,
in
interaction with others.
What are the consequences of this theoretical formulation? If,
for example,
individuals strive to achieve gender in encounters with others,
how does a
culture instill the need to achieve it? What is the relationship
between the
production of gender at the level of interaction and such institutional
arrangements as the division of labor in society? And, perhaps
most
important, how does doing gender contribute to the subordination
of
women by men?
To bring the social production of gender under empirical
scrutiny, we
might begin at the beginning, with a reconsideration of the
process
through which societal members acquire the requisite categorical
apparatus
and other skills to become gendered human beings.
The conventional approach to the process of becoming girls
and boys has
been sex-role socialization. In recent years, recurring problems
arising
from this approach have been linked to inadequacies inherent
in role
theory per Se: its emphasis on “consensus, stability and continuity”
(Stacey and Thorne 1985, p. 307), its ahistorical and depoliticizing
focus
(Stacey and Thorne 1985, p. 307; Thorne 1980, p. 9), and the
fact that its “social” dimension relies on “a general assumption
that people choose
to maintain existing customs” (Connell 1985, p. 263).
In contrast, Cahill (1982, 1986a, 1986b) analyzes the experiences
of preschool
children using a social model of recruitment into normally gendered
identities. Cahill argues that categorization practices are
fundamental to
learning and displaying feminine and masculine behavior. Initially,
he
observes, children are primarily concerned with distinguishing
between
themselves and others on the basis of social competence. Categorically,
their
concern resolves itself into the opposition of “girl/boy” versus
“baby”
classification (the latter designating children whose social
behavior is
problematic and who must be closely supervised). It is children’s
concern with
being seen as socially competent that evokes their initial claims
to gender
identities:
During the exploratory stage of children’s socialization. . .
they learn that only
two social identities are routinely available to them, the identity
of “baby,” or,
depending on the configuration of their external genitalia,
either “big boy” or
“big girl.” Moreover, others subtly inform them that the identity
of “baby” is a
discrediting one. When, for example, children engage in disapproved
behavior, they are often told “You’re a baby” or “Be a big boy.”
In effect, these
typical verbal responses to young children’s behavior convey
to them that
they must behaviorally choose between the discrediting identity
of “baby”
and their anatomically determined sex identity. (Cahill l986a,
p. 175)
Subsequently, little boys appropriate the gender ideal of “efficaciousness,”
that is, being able to affect the physical and social environment
through the
exercise of physical strength or appropriate skills. In contrast,
little girls learn
to value “appearance,” that is, managing themselves as ornamental
objects.
Both classes of children learn that the recognition and use
of sex
categorization in interaction are not optional, but mandatory
(see also Bem
1983).
Being a “girl” or a “boy,” then, is not only being more competent
than a
“baby,” but also being competently female or male, that is,
learning to produce
behavioral displays of one’s “essential” female or male identity.
In this
respect, the task of four- to five-year-old children is very
similar to Agnes’s:
For example, the following interaction occurred on a preschool
playground. A
55-month-old boy (D) was attempting to unfasten the clasp of
a necklace when
a preschool aide walked over to him.
A: Do you want to put that on?
D: No. It’s for girls.
A: You don’t have to be a girl to wear things around your neck. Kings wear things around their necks. You could pretend you’re a king.
D: I’m not a king. I’m a boy. (Cahill 1986a, p. 176)
As Cahill notes of this example, although D may have been
unclear as to the
sex status of a king’s identity, he was obviously aware that
necklaces are
used to announce the identity “girl.” Having claimed the identity
“boy” and
having developed a behavioral commitment to it, he was leery
of any
display that might furnish grounds for questioning his claim.
In this way, new members of society come to be involved in a
self-regulating process as they begin to monitor their own and
others’
conduct with regard to its gender implications. The recruitment
process
involves not only the appropriation of gender ideals (by the
valuation of
those ideals as proper ways of being and behaving) but also
gender
identities that are important to individuals and that they strive
to maintain.
Thus gender differences, or the sociocultural shaping of “essential
female and
male natures,” achieve the status of objective facts. They are
rendered
normal, natural features of persons and provide the tacit rationale
for
differing fates of women and men within the social order.
Additional studies of children’s play activities as routine occasions
for the
expression of gender-appropriate behavior can yield new insights
into how
our “essential natures” are constructed. In particular, the
transition from what
Cahill (1986a) terms “apprentice participation” in the sex-segregated
world,
which is common among elementary school children, to “bona fide
participation” in the heterosocial world, which is so frightening
to
adolescents, is likely to be a keystone in our understanding
of the
recruitment process (Thorne 1986; Thorne and Luria 1986).
Whenever people face issues of allocation—who is to do what,
get what,
plan or execute action, direct or be directed, incumbency in
significant social
categories such as “female” and “male” seems to become pointedly
relevant.
How such issues are resolved conditions the exhibition, dramatization,
or
celebration of one’s ~‘essential nature” as a woman or man.
Fenstermarker Berk (1985) offers an elegant demonstration of
this point in
her investigation of the allocation of household labor and the
attitudes of
married couples toward the division of household tasks.
Berk found little variation in either the actual distribution of tasks
or
perceptions of equity in regard to that distribution. Wives,
even when
employed outside the home, do the vast majority of household
and
child-care tasks. Moreover, both wives and husbands tend to
perceive this
as a “fair” arrangement. Noting the failure of conventional
sociological and
economic theories to explain this seeming contradiction, Berk
contends
that something more complex than rational arrangements for the
production of household goods and services is involved:
Hardly a question simply of who has more time, or whose time
is worth
more, who has more skill or more power, it is clear that a complicated
relationship between the structure of work imperative and the
structure of
normative expectations attached to work as gendered determines
the
ultimate allocation of members’ time to work and home. (Berk
1985, pp.
195-6)
She notes, for example, that the most important factor influencing
wives’
contribution of labor is the total amount of work demanded or
expected by
the household; such demands had no bearing on husbands’ contributions.
Wives reported various rationales (their own and their husbands’)
that
justified their level of contribution and, as a general matter,
underscored
the presumption that wives are essentially responsible for household
production.
Fenstermarker Berk (1985, p. 201) contends that it is difficult
to see how
people “could rationally establish the arrangements that they
do solely for
the production of household goods and services”—much less how
people
could consider them “fair.” She argues that our current arrangements
for
the domestic division of labor support two production processes:
household goods and services (meals, clean children, and so
on) and, at
the same time, gender. As she puts it:
Simultaneously, members “do” gender, as they “do” housework and
child
care, and what [has] been called the division of labor provides
for the joint
production of household labor and gender; it is the mechanism
by which
both the material and symbolic products of the household are
realized.
(1985, p. 201)
It is not simply that household labor is designated as “women’s
work,”
but that for a woman to engage in it and a man not to engage
in it is to
draw on and exhibit the “essential nature” of each. What is
produced and
reproduced is not merely the activity and artifact of domestic
life, but the
material embodiment of wifely and husbandly roles and, denyatively,
of
womanly and manly conduct (see Beer 1983, pp. 70-89). What are
also frequently produced and reproduced are the dominant and
subordinate statuses of the sex categories.
How does gender get done in work settings outside the home,
where
dominance and subordination are themes of overarching importance?
Hochschild’s (1983) analysis of the work of flight attendants
offers some
promising insights. She found that the occupation of flight
attendant
consisted of something altogether different for women than for
men:
As the company’s main shock absorbers against “mishandled” passengers,
their own feelings are more frequently subjected to rough treatment.
In
addition, a day’s exposure to people who resist authority in
a woman is a
different experience than it is for a man. . . . In this respect,
it is a disadvantage
to be a woman. And in this case, they are not simply women in
the biological
sense. They are also a highly visible distillation of middle-class
American
notions of femininity. They symbolize Woman. Insofar as the
category
“female” is mentally associated with having less status and
authority, female
flight attendants are more readily classified as “really” females
than other
females are. (Hochschild 1983, p. 175)
In performing what Hochschild terms the “emotional labor” necessary
to
maintain airline profits, women flight attendants simultaneously
produce
enactments of their “essential” femininity.
What is the relationship between doing gender and a culture’s
prescription of
“obligatory heterosexuality” (Rich 1980; Rubin 1975)? As Frye
(1983, p.
22) observes, the monitoring of sexual feelings in relation
to other
appropriately sexed persons requires the ready recognition of
such persons
“before one can allow one’s heart to beat or one’s blood to
flow in erotic
enjoyment of that person.” The appearance of heterosexuality
is produced
through emphatic and unambiguous indicators of one’s sex, layered
on in ever
more conclusive fashion (Frye 1983, p. 24). Thus, lesbians and
gay men
concerned with passing as heterosexuals can rely on these indicators
for
camouflage; in contrast, those who would avoid the assumption
of
heterosexuality may foster ambiguous indicators of their categorical
status
through their dress, behaviors, and style. But “ambiguous” sex
indicators are
sex indicators nonetheless. If one wishes to be recognized as
a lesbian (or
heterosexual woman), one must first establish a categorical
status as female.
Even as popular images portray lesbians as “females who are
not feminine” (Frye 1983, P. 129), the accountability of persons
for their “normal,
natural sexedness” is preserved.
Nor is accountability threatened by the existence of sex-change
operations—presumably, the most radical challenge to our cultural
perspective on sex and gender. Although no one coerces transsexuals
into
hormone therapy, electrolysis, or surgery, the alternatives
available to
them are undeniably constrained:
When the transsexual experts maintain that they use transsexual
procedures only with people who ask for them, and who prove
that they
can “pass,” they obscure the social reality. Given patriarchy’s
prescription
that one must be either masculine or feminine, free choice is
conditioned.
(Raymond 1979, p. 135, italics added)
The physical reconstruction of sex criteria pays ultimate tribute
to the
“essentialness” of our sexual natures—as women or as men.
Let us return to the question: Can we avoid doing gender?
Earlier, we
proposed that, insofar as sex category is used as a fundamental
criterion
for differentiation, doing gender is unavoidable. It is unavoidable
because
of the social consequences of sex-category membership: the allocation
of
power and resources not only in the domestic, economic, and
political
domains but also in the broad arena of interpersonal relations.
In virtually
any situation, one’s sex category can be relevant, and one’s
performance as
an incumbent of that category (i.e., gender) can be subjected
to evaluation.
Maintaining such pervasive and faithful assignment of lifetime
status
requires legitimation.
But doing gender also renders the social arrangements based on
sex
category accountable as normal and natural, that is, legitimate
ways of
organizing social life. Differences between women and men that
are
created by this process can then be portrayed as fundamental
and enduring
dispositions. In this light, the institutional arrangements
of a society can
be seen as responsive to the differences, the social order being
merely an
accommodation to the natural order. Thus if, in doing gender,
men are
also doing dominance and women are doing deference (cf. Goffman
1967,
pp. 47-95), the resultant social order, which supposedly reflects
“natural
differences,” is a powerful reinforcer and legitimator of hierarchical
arrangements.
Frye observes: For efficient subordination, what’s wanted is that
the structure not appear
to be a cultural artifact kept in place by human decision or
custom, but
that it appear natural—that it appear to be quite a direct consequence
of
facts about the beast which are beyond the scope of human manipulation.
That we are trained to behave so differently as women and men,
and to
behave so differently toward women and men, itself contributes
mightily
to the appearance of extreme dimorphism, but also, the ways
we act as
women and men, and the ways we act toward women and men, mold
our
bodies and our minds to the shape of subordination and dominance.
We
do become what we practice being. (Frye 1983, p. 34)
If we do gender appropriately, we simultaneously sustain, reproduce,
and
render legitimate the institutional arrangements that are based
on sex
category. If we fail to do gender appropriately, we as individuals—
not the
institutional arrangements—may be called to account (for our
character,
motives, and predispositions).
Social movements such as femininism can provide the ideology
and
impetus to question existing arrangements and the social support
for
individuals to explore alternatives to them. Legislative changes,
such as
those proposed by the Equal Rights Amendment, can also weaken
the
accountability of conduct to sex category, thereby affording
the possibility
of more widespread loosening of accountability in general. To
be sure,
equality under the law does not guarantee equality in other
arenas. As
Lorber points out, assurance of “scrupulous equality of categories
of
people considered essentially different needs constant monitoring.”
What
such proposed changes can do is provide the warrant for asking
why, if
we wish to treat women and men as equals, there needs to be
two sex
categories at all (see Chapter 18).
The sex category/gender relationship links the institutional
and
interactional levels, a coupling that legitimates social arrangements
based
on sex category and reproduces their asymmetry in face-to-face
interaction.
Doing gender furnishes the interactional scaffolding of social
structure,
along with a built-in mechanism of social control. In appreciating
the
institutional forces that maintain distinctions between women
and men,
we must not lose sight of the interactional validation of those
distinctions
that confers upon them their sense of “naturalness” and “rightness.”
Social change, then, must be pursued at the institutional and
cultural
levels of sex category and at the interactional level of gender.
Such a
conclusion is hardly novel. Nevertheless, we suggest that it
is important
to recognize that the analytical distinction between institutional
and
interactional sphere does not pose an either/or choice when
it comes to he question of effecting social change.
Reconceptualizing gender not as a
simple property of individuals but as an integral dynamic of
social orders
implies a new perspective on the entire network of gender relations:
the social subordination of women, and the cultural practices which help
sustain it; the politics of sexual object-choice, and particularly
the
oppression of homosexual people; the sexual division of labor,
the formation
of character and motive, so far as they are organized as femininity
and
masculinity; the role of the body in social relations, especially
the politics of
childbirth; and the nature of strategies of sexual liberation
movements.
(Connell 1985, p. 261)
Gender is a powerful ideological device, which produces, reproduces,
and
legitimates the choices and limits that are predicated on sex
category. An
understanding of how gender is produced in social situations
will afford
clarification of the interactional scaffolding of social structure
and the social
control processes that sustain it.
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