A simple teaching tool to promote gender sensitivity and assert women empowerment. Target audience: College students taking social anthropology

1. Gender Inequality

2. INTRODUCTION
Will examine:Will examine:
 Explanations for gender inequality
 Gender inequality in the home, the
labour force, and politics
 Recommendations for reducing
gender inequality*

4. GENDER INEQUALITY
 Social roles: Behaviours expected of people
occupying particular social positions
 In 20th
century, enormous change in
attitudes, expectations, behaviours, and
social roles of men and women in Canada
 But persistence of gender inequalities:
 Hierarchical asymmetries between women
and men in terms of distribution of power,
material wellbeing, and prestige*

6. GENDER STEREOTYPES
 Gender inequality is reinforced by gender
stereotypes:
 Set of prejudicial biologically-based
generalizations about men and women in
terms of personality traits and behaviour
 Persistence of polarized gender stereotypes is
supported by research
 Yet , gender-related identities and behaviours
largely socially constructed and continually
altered through social interaction*

8. GENDER STEREOTYPES
 Socially constructed nature of gender
identities means gender identities:
 Are not stable or fixed
 Need not be congruent with sex assigned
at birth
 Are not polar opposites (despite notion of
“opposite sex”), but can operate on a
continuum of masculinity and femininity*

10. DIMENSIONS OF INEQUALITY:
POWER, MATERIAL WELLBEING,
AND PRESTIGE
1. Power: Capacity to impose your will on others,
regardless of any resistance
2. Material wellbeing: Involves access to economic
resources required to pay for necessities of life
and other possessions and advantages
3. Prestige: Average evaluation of occupational
activities and positions arranged in a hierarchy*

11. EXPLAINING GENDER
INEQUALITY
 Feminism: Body of knowledge about causes
and nature of women’s subordination to
men in society, and various agendas - often
involving political action - for removing that
subordination
 Feminist theories:
1. Liberal feminism
2. Marxist feminism
3. Socialist feminism…*

12. What do we have?

13. Extent of Gender Inequality

14. 1. LIBERAL FEMINIST
THEORIES
 Gender inequalities caused and
perpetuated by gender stereotyping and
gendered division of labour
 Achieve gender equality through:
 Removing gender stereotyping and
discrimination in workplace and education,
and
 Changing laws to allow for equal
opportunities in labour force and politics*

15. 2. MARXIST FEMINIST
THEORIES
 Women’s unpaid domestic work maintains and
reproduces labour force
 Capitalists benefit by women (wives/mothers):
 Ensuring workers (males) ready to work each
day
 Raising children to become future labourers
 Acting as own reserve army of labour
 Achieve gender equality through socialism*

17. 3. SOCIALIST FEMINIST
THEORIES
 Agree with Marxist feminist theories but include
additional component:
 Recognize classes constitute only one set of social
relations that oppress women
 Second set of oppressive social relations:
 Patriarchy  System of male domination over
women
 Decrease gender inequality through:
 State-subsidies for maternal benefits and child care
 Equal pay for equal work*

18.  Male power and control over women
characterize all social relations, routine
behaviours, and commonly accepted
practices
 Workplace sexual harassment: Result of
general belief that men are superior to
women and may impose their will upon
them
 Is example of power as a system of
dominance and exploitation
 Is system because capacity of men
and incapacity of women to control
and influence has become routine*

19. SEPARATE SPHERES
 Separation of public sphere for men and
private sphere for women
 Consequences of separation for women:
 Association of domestic labour as women’s
work
 Devaluation of unpaid domestic labour
 Tendency to view nurturing and care-giving
as biologically-determined traits
 Financial dependence on men
 Reduced access to power, prestige, and
material wellbeing*

21. DOMESTIC LABOUR
 Despite rise in female labour force
participation, women still more likely than
men to do unpaid work involving home
maintenance and child-care
 While men have begun to do housework
and child-care, women still spend more
hours than men on domestic activities
 Consequences of “double day” for women:
 Less time available for recreational activities
 More likely to report feeling stressed*

22. OCCUPATIONAL SEGREGATION
AND SEX TYPING
 Women in paid labour force typically do jobs
that involve care-giving, nurturing, and
household-type management
 Has given rise to:
i. Sex typing (or sex labelling) of occupations:
 Designating an occupation as appropriate for
one sex
ii. Sex segregation of occupations:
 Concentration of women and men in different
occupations*

25. Lessons learned on
Gender Equality