Women's Lives Theoretical Perspectives

1. THEORETICAL
PERSPECTIVES
Theorizing Difference

2. Sex and Gender
The biological
characteristics of
men and women
the social
statuses and
meanings
assigned to men
and women
Sex Gender

3. Theories On Gender
biological sex
differences create
the behavioral
differences in
men and women.
differences in
men’s and
women’s
behaviors are
cultural and vary
among societies.
Essentialist Social Constructionist

4. Gender is…
① a process that humans create;
② a stratification system that ranks
people;
③ a structure that organizes life.

5. Transgender
“a way of being a man or a woman,
or a way of marking resistance to
those terms” (p.88)

6. Transgender Phenomena
“anything that disrupts or
denaturalizes normative gender,
and which calls our attention to the
processes through which
normativity is produced and
atypicality achieves visibility” (p.
85)

7. Intersex
a general term used for a variety of
conditions in which a person is
born with a reproductive or sexual
anatomy that doesn't seem to fit
the typical definitions of female or
male.

8. Hegemonic Masculinity
Some dominant forms of
masculinity are honored and
valued over other subordinated
forms of masculinity.