Using Gender to Undo Gender

Abstract

Women’s status in the Western world has improved enormously, but the revolution that would make women and men truly equal has not yet occurred. I argue that the reason is that gender divisions still deeply bifurcate the structure of modern society. Feminists want women and men to be equal, but few talk about doing away with gender divisions altogether. From a social constructionist structural gender perspective, it is the ubiquitous division of people into two unequally valued categories that undergirds the continually reappearing instances of gender inequality. I argue that it is this gendering that needs to be challenged by feminists, with the long-term goal of doing away with binary gender divisions altogether. To this end, I call for a feminist degendering movement.

The Rules of Engagement: Negotiating Painful and “Intimate” Touch in Mixed-Sex Martial Arts

“…As Deutsch (2007) claims, just as gender is often "done" in ways which typically reproduce patriarchal inequality whilst reifying narrow, heteronormative forms of male and female identity and embodiment, gender may also be "undone", as a means of resisting or reformulating the structural division of the sexes constitutive of patriarchy (cf. Butler, 2004;Lorber, 2000). We therefore hold that sociological interest is rightly directed towards any embodied practice which involves potential breakages from these otherwise socially dominant codes, for as Butler explains, "the strange, the incoherent, that which falls "outside", gives us a way of understanding the taken-for-granted world of sexual categorisation as a constructed one, indeed, as one that might well be constructed differently" (1990, p. 149).…”

“…The problems associated with touch in mixed-sex practice are thereby seen as the products of the "doing" of gender, vis-à-vis the performance of heteronormative discourses of binary sexual difference, and the concurrent maintenance of unequal power structures characteristic of patriarchal culture (Deutsch, 2007;Lorber, 2000;West & Zimmerman, 1987). From a position sensitised to the progressive, transformative capacity of both integrated sports and women's development of combative physicality (e.g.…”

The Gender Concept and the Organizational Metaphors as Intelligibility Nuclei for the Analysis of Gender Problems in University Organizations

“…5(1), June 2017 This is reflected in the backwardness they suffer in organizations so that if they are hired for part-time, they are hired full-time or permanently, obtaining stable positions within their hierarchies. Another metaphor is the glass escalator, which is used by Lorber (2000) to understand the case of men occupying positions traditionally recognized as feminine, where they tend to be more valued and more easily promoted. Another is the glass wall that explains the difficulty some women have in moving from one work area to another or moving horizontally within their organization, for example, changing from teaching to research or from research to a secretariat or direction in an organization or university organization.…”

Institutions as reference points for parents-to-be in European societies: a theoretical and analytical framework

“…Similarly, a mother swims against the current of intensive mothering when she wants to return to her job more quickly than prescribed by the dominant gender culture. Couples may motivate such culturally 'deviant' options either in terms of economic rationality, or by actively 'undoing gender' (Deutsch 2007;Lorber 2000), irrespective of financial constraints or relative income. Research by Ridgeway (2011) suggests, however, that under conditions of uncertainty or disagreement, couples tend to draw on more traditional gender ideologies prevailing in society.…”