Week 11 · Chapter

Chapter 11 — Sex, Gender & Sexuality

Introduction to Sociology Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~40–50 minutes · Objective 6 (analyze race and ethnicity and sex, gender, and sexuality as socially constructed categories — prejudice, discrimination, and institutional racism; gender socialization and 'doing gender'; the earnings gap and its competing explanations — reasoning from documented evidence in the source's own categories rather than from anecdote or stereotype), building on Objective 1 (apply the sociological imagination — connecting personal troubles to public issues — and the three major theoretical perspectives (structural functionalism, conflict theory, symbolic interactionism) to interpret a social phenomenon, naming the level of analysis each works at and placing the discipline's founders with the ideas and works they are known for) and Objective 2 (describe and evaluate the major sociological research methods (surveys, experiments, field research and ethnography, secondary-data analysis), distinguish reliability from validity and a population from a sample, and read a social statistic critically — what it measures, over what population and period, what it shows and does not, and whether it is a correlation or a cause) · Read it first this week; the lecture, the slide deck, the tutorial, the quiz, and the Sociology in Action Workshop all build on it.

In plain language

Many forms ask about your sex or your gender, and this week shows that those are two different questions. Sex (the body: anatomy, chromosomes, and hormones) is not the same as gender (what a society expects of women and men). You will see how people learn gender from family, friends, school, and screens, and how they keep doing gender (acting out those expectations in everyday moments) without noticing. You will meet sexuality (desire, attraction, and relationships) as a category a society shapes too. Then you will read a real 2024 pay figure one careful step at a time and weigh the competing explanations for it.

Why you already care about this

In its report Highlights of Women's Earnings in 2024, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that women who were full-time wage and salary workers had median usual weekly earnings that were 83% of men's. In 1979, the first year with comparable data, the figure was 62%. That is a change of 21 percentage points in 45 years.

You meet the ideas behind that number long before you read it. A relative gives one cousin a toy tool set and another a toy kitchen. A coach tells a player to "stop crying like a little kid," and everyone on the bench hears who is allowed to cry. A group chat argues over whether a new haircut "looks too girly." At a first job, the manager asks the newest woman on the team to take the meeting notes, every time.

None of these moments feels like sociology. Each one is a small lesson about what a society expects from women and men. This chapter gives you the words for those lessons and the habits to read a pay figure without being fooled by it.

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

tell sex from gender, and both from gender identity, in a case;
explain why sociologists call gender socially constructed, with evidence from culture and from time;
name the agent of socialization at work in a gender lesson;
spot doing gender in an everyday interaction;
define patriarchy and the gender order, and run one case through the three perspectives with the level of analysis named;
explain why sociologists treat sexuality as a social category;
read the 2024 earnings ratio four ways, with the arithmetic shown, and tell a raw ratio from a controlled estimate;
lay out five competing explanations of the gender pay gap without declaring a winner.

Carry this line with you: sex is the body; gender is the script — and scripts are learned.

Where we are

Already covered: Week 2 taught the four data questions and the percentage point. Week 4 named the agents of socialization and said gender socialization would get its own week. Week 5 showed that people build reality together and gave you the idea of a role. Week 7 taught the median, and Week 8 added the level-of-analysis habit. Week 10 read race as a category people built and told prejudice from discrimination.
This week: sex versus gender, gender identity, gender as socially constructed, gender socialization, doing gender, patriarchy and the gender order, three lenses on gender inequality, sexuality as a social category, and the 2024 earnings ratio.
How they connect: Week 10 asked who built the race categories; this week asks the same question of gender, and reads the earnings ratio with Week 2's four questions and Week 8's habit.
Where we're going next: Week 12, Family & Marriage, begins the institutions unit and watches doing gender at home.

Week 10 is the chapter this one leans on most. There you saw that a category can be built by people and still be real in its consequences. Gender is a second case of that idea. Week 4's agents of socialization, the people and groups who teach a culture, return in Section 3. Week 7's median, the middle value when every case is lined up, sits inside this week's pay figure. And Week 8's habit asks you to name the level of every explanation you meet, which matters most in Section 8.

1. Tell sex from gender: the week's key distinction

Picture an illustrative clinic intake form. One line asks "Sex," and the next asks "Gender." The person filling it in pauses. Are those not the same question? A sociologist would say no, and this whole week rests on why.

Start with the body. Bodies differ in anatomy, chromosomes, and hormones, and those are the things a doctor measures.

Sex is the physical and physiological characteristics, such as anatomy, chromosomes, and hormones, that are used to classify bodies as female or male.

Now think about everything a society adds on top. Who is expected to wear a suit to a wedding. Who is praised for being "tough" and who for being "sweet." Who is expected to pick up a child from school. None of those expectations is written in a chromosome.

Gender is the behaviors, traits, and social positions that a society associates with being a woman or a man, which vary across cultures and change over time.

There is a third idea. A person also has their own sense of who they are.

Gender identity is a person's own inner sense of their gender, as distinct from the sex characteristics of their body and from the expectations other people hold.

Worked example — sorting five illustrative statements. Decide whether each statement is about sex, gender, or gender identity.

"A blood test measured a person's hormone levels." A physiological characteristic: sex.
"In this family, the sons are expected to mow the lawn and the daughters to set the table." An expectation a group attaches to being a woman or a man: gender.
"Since childhood, a person has known herself to be a woman." A person's own inner sense: gender identity.
"A teammate is teased for wearing nail polish to practice." A reaction to someone breaking an expectation: gender.
"An ultrasound shows the anatomy of a fetus." A physical characteristic: sex.

In words: ask "is this about the body, about what a society expects, or about a person's own inner sense?" Body is sex, expectation is gender, and inner sense is gender identity.

Misconception check — sex and gender as one word. Students often use "sex" and "gender" as if they meant the same thing, because everyday speech swaps them all the time. The swap hides the whole point of the week. Sex is about bodies; gender is about what a society expects and assigns. The cure: before you use either word, ask "am I talking about a body, or about an expectation?"

Memory hook: sex is the body; gender is the script.

2. See gender as built: culture, time, and gender roles

Imagine two illustrative societies on either side of a river. On the east bank, weaving cloth is men's work and selling at the market is women's work. On the west bank, it is the other way around. Children on each bank grow up sure that their bank's way is natural. They cannot both be right about nature. They can both be right about their own society.

That is the evidence sociologists use. Expectations about gender differ from one culture to another, and they change over time within one culture. If an expectation moves when you cross a border or a generation, it was built by people, not fixed by biology.

Socially constructed describes a category whose meaning comes from the shared expectations of people in a society rather than from nature alone, which is why the category differs between societies and changes over time.

Week 10 used the same idea for race. Gender is a second case. And as Week 5's Thomas theorem said, something people built is still real in its consequences.

The expectations come in bundles that attach to positions, much like Week 5's roles.

A gender role is the set of behaviors and duties a society expects from a person because of their gender, such as who cooks, who leads, or who shows feelings in public.

Worked example — testing an expectation for construction. Take an illustrative expectation, "men should not cry in public," and run three checks.

Does it differ across cultures? In the two illustrative river societies, crying at a funeral might be expected of men on one bank and frowned on for men on the other. If it varies, it is not fixed by biology.
Does it change over time? Ask an older relative whether the rule was the same when they were young, and compare it with what you see among your friends. A rule that moves with the generations is a rule people keep or drop.
Who enforces it? A teasing friend, a coach, a parent. An expectation that needs enforcing is a social expectation, because bodies do not need to be reminded.

In words: if a gender expectation varies across places, shifts across time, and has to be enforced by people, it is socially constructed.

Caveat: "socially constructed" does not mean "fake" or "easy to change." A built category can shape pay, safety, and chances, as Section 7's figure shows.

Misconception check — gender as fixed across cultures. Students often assume that the gender roles they grew up with are the same everywhere and always were. It is tempting, because a familiar rule feels natural. The cure: ask whether the rule holds on the other side of a border or in a grandparent's youth. If it does not, it is a gender role a society built.

Memory hook: if it moves across borders or generations, people built it.

3. Learn it: gender socialization

Think back to Week 4. You learned that socialization is the lifelong process of learning a culture and becoming a self, and that it is taught by six agents: family, peers, school, media, religion, and the workplace. Week 4 said gender would get its own week. This is it.

Gender socialization is the lifelong process of learning the expectations a society attaches to gender, taught by family, peers, school, media, religion, and the workplace.

Worked example — a scene set for gender socialization. These scenes are illustrative, constructed for this course. For each one, name the agent and say what is being taught.

Family. At a birthday party, a relative hands one cousin a toolbox set and the other a play kitchen, based on which cousin is a boy and which is a girl. Agent: the family. Lesson: which kinds of work belong to which gender.
Peers. On a youth basketball team, a player who cries after a loss is told to "toughen up," and the others laugh. Agent: peers. Lesson: boys are expected to hide sadness, and peers will enforce it.
School. A middle school dress code lists far more rules for skirts and tops than for shorts and T-shirts. Agent: the school. Lesson: some students' bodies need more rules than others', part of the school's hidden curriculum.
Media. A feed shows ads for cleaning products with only women in them and ads for power tools with only men. Agent: the media. Lesson: who does housework and who fixes things.
Religion. A youth group at a place of worship gives boys and girls different jobs at a community dinner. Agent: religion. Lesson: a set of roles carried with moral weight.
Workplace. On the first week at an office job, a new hire notices who is expected to bring snacks to meetings. Agent: the workplace. Lesson: gender expectations keep being taught to adults.

In words: every agent teaches a gender lesson, each in its own way, and the teaching does not end in childhood.

Misconception check — "gender is learned once, at home." Students often picture gender socialization as something parents finish before school starts. It is tempting, because the family is the first teacher. But the scene set shows five other agents at work, and the workplace keeps teaching adults. The cure: ask "who is teaching this lesson right now?" and expect the answer to change across the life course.

Pause and choose one of these two prompts.

(a) Describe one gender lesson you learned from a family member or a friend, and name the agent that taught it.
(b) Describe one gender lesson you have seen in an ad, a show, or a feed, and name what it taught about women or men.

Memory hook: six agents, one lifelong lesson.

4. Do it: doing gender in everyday interaction

Picture an illustrative meeting at a small software company. Two new coworkers sit down, one a man and one a woman. The manager asks for a volunteer to take notes. The woman glances around, then picks up a pen. The man starts the discussion. Nobody said a word about gender. But the moment ran on a gender script, and everyone in the room helped it run.

In 1987, Candace West and Don Zimmerman published "Doing Gender" in the journal Gender & Society. Their argument changed how sociologists talk about gender.

Doing gender is Candace West and Don Zimmerman's 1987 idea that gender is something people continually do in everyday interaction, and that others notice and respond to, rather than something a person is.

Look at what that changes. Gender is not only something inside a person, waiting to come out. It is something a person does: in how they sit, speak, dress, and offer to help. And because other people notice and respond, the doing is shared. If the man had picked up the pen instead, someone might have joked about it. The joke would be part of doing gender too.

This is symbolic interactionism at work, the micro-level lens you met in Week 1. Week 5's dramaturgy said everyday life is a performance on a front stage. Doing gender says one of the scripts in that performance is a gender script.

Worked example — finding the doing in three moments. For each illustrative moment, name what is being done and who responds.

A text thread. A friend signs off "lol ok" to the guys in the group chat and "omg love you!!" to her sister. What is done: a style of speech matched to the audience's gender. Who responds: the group, which would find the opposite surprising.
A hardware store. A clerk walks past a woman holding a drill to ask the man beside her what they need. What is done: the clerk treats the man as the one who knows tools. Who responds: both customers, who must decide whether to go along.
A dance class. A teacher tells the class "gentlemen lead," and a student who wants to follow hesitates. What is done: a rule assigns roles by gender. Who responds: the hesitating student, who weighs the cost of breaking the script.

In words: in each moment, someone acts out a gender expectation and others hold them to it.

Misconception check — "doing gender means I can opt out." Students often hear "doing gender" and conclude that gender is a performance a person can drop at will, like a costume. It is tempting, because "doing" sounds like a choice. But West and Zimmerman's point is that the doing happens in interaction, with others who notice and respond. You can change how you do gender; you cannot step outside a world that reads you through it. The cure: ask "who is watching, and how would they react if the script changed?"

Memory hook: gender is a verb, and the audience is part of the scene.

5. Name the structure: patriarchy, the gender order, and three lenses

Zoom out from one meeting to a whole society. Picture an illustrative country where, generation after generation, most top elected offices, most company boards, and most religious leadership roles are held by men, while most unpaid caregiving at home is done by women. No single meeting produced that pattern. It is a pattern of the whole.

Sociologists have two words for patterns at this level.

Patriarchy is a social system in which men as a group hold more power and resources than women as a group, across families, workplaces, and government.
The gender order is the society-wide pattern of gender arrangements across institutions: who tends to do which work, hold which positions, and carry which expectations.

Notice that both words describe groups and patterns, the macro level from Week 1. Neither says anything about one particular man or woman. Reading a society-wide pattern as a fact about one person is Week 8's ecological fallacy.

How do the three perspectives explain gender inequality? Each answers a different question.

Structural functionalism (macro). In the tradition of Parsons, whom Week 1 named as a developer of this lens, functionalists read traditional gender roles as complementary. Complementary roles are the structural-functionalist reading of traditional gender roles as two different but matching sets of duties that fit together and help the family run.
Conflict theory (macro), joined by feminist theory. Feminist theory is a body of theory, joined to the conflict perspective in this course, that reads gender as a structure of unequal power and resources and asks who benefits from it.
Symbolic interactionism (micro). Interactionists read gender meanings as created and re-created in everyday interaction, the doing gender of Section 4.

Worked example — one illustrative dress code, three lenses. An illustrative high school's dress code bans tank tops and short skirts and says nothing about the clothes most boys wear.

Structural functionalism (macro): the code keeps order by giving every student a clear set of expectations, and separate rules for girls and boys fit the school's picture of complementary roles.
Conflict theory and feminist theory (macro): the rules fall more heavily on girls, who lose class time when sent home to change. The adults who wrote the code are not affected, so the code reflects and keeps an unequal distribution of power.
Symbolic interactionism (micro): when a teacher stops a student in the hallway over a strap, the moment teaches both of them what a girl's body is supposed to mean, and the student learns to read herself through that look.

In words: the first two lenses read the dress code at the macro level of the institution and the society, and the third reads it at the micro level of one hallway moment. No lens is declared correct; each answers a different question.

Misconception check — "one lens wins." Students often decide that the feminist reading is plainly right or that the functionalist reading is plainly old-fashioned, and stop there. Both moves skip the work. The perspectives are complementary lenses, not rival verdicts. The cure: state each reading at full strength, then name the level each one works at.

Memory hook: patriarchy is a pattern of the whole, not a fact about one person.

6. Read sexuality as a social category

Think about the words people use for relationships, from a school dance to a wedding announcement. A society offers a set of labels, attaches meanings to them, and sets rules about who may show affection where. Those labels, meanings, and rules are learned, like the gender expectations above.

Sexuality is the part of human life that involves sexual desire, attraction, and relationships, which sociologists study as a social category as well as a personal experience.
Sexual orientation is the pattern of a person's emotional, romantic, or sexual attraction to people of a particular gender or genders.

Why does sociology study something that feels so personal? For the same reason it studies gender. The labels a society offers, the meanings it attaches to them, and the reactions people meet are taught through socialization and enforced in interaction. The three perspectives apply here as well. A structural lens asks how institutions, such as marriage law or a school's rules for a dance, treat different relationships. An interactionist lens asks how you learn which labels exist and what others will make of them.

Worked example — sorting the personal from the social. For each illustrative statement, decide whether it describes a person's own experience or a social rule or label.

"A student feels drawn to a classmate." A person's own experience of attraction.
"A school's dance rules say each couple must be one boy and one girl." A social rule an institution sets.
"A teenager learns, from jokes in the locker room, which relationships get mocked." A social meaning taught by peers.

In words: attraction is felt by a person, but the labels, rules, and reactions around it are social, and those are what sociology studies.

Honesty note: this course stops at that idea. The research on sexuality is deep and belongs to specialized courses, so this chapter names the category and the habit of reading it socially, and goes no further.

Misconception check — "sexuality is purely private, so it is not sociology." Students often think that anything personal lies outside sociology. It is tempting, because attraction is felt inside one person. But the categories, laws, and reactions that shape how people can live are social. The cure: ask "which part of this is a feeling, and which part is a rule or label other people made?"

Memory hook: the feeling is personal; the labels are social.

7. Read the earnings ratio: the 83% four ways

Now read the real figure with Week 2's four questions. The source is the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Highlights of Women's Earnings in 2024.

Two terms first.

The earnings ratio is women's median usual weekly earnings divided by men's median usual weekly earnings, multiplied by 100 and written as a percent.
Median usual weekly earnings is the middle amount when the weekly pay that a group of workers usually receives is lined up from lowest to highest.

The figure covers one group, defined by the source.

Full-time wage and salary workers are people who work for an employer for pay, as opposed to working for themselves, and who usually work full time; the group the Bureau of Labor Statistics earnings ratio covers.

The figures below are the ones you will work with.

Women's median usual weekly earnings as a percent of men's, full-time wage and salary workers, 1979 and 2024, Bureau of Labor Statistics
Year	Earnings ratio
1979 (first year with comparable data)	62%
2024	83%

Worked example — the 2024 earnings ratio, read four ways. Take the five steps in order.

What is measured? The median usual weekly earnings of women who were full-time wage and salary workers, written as a percentage of the median for men.
Over whom? Full-time wage and salary workers in the United States, in 2024, compared with 1979, the first year with comparable data.
What does it show? Work it one step at a time.
- The ratio: women's median usual weekly earnings were 83% of men's in 2024, so for every 100 dollars of men's median weekly earnings, women's median was 83 dollars.
- The gap in 2024: 100 − 83 = 17, so women's median was 17 percent below men's median.
- The gap in 1979: the ratio was 62%, so 100 − 62 = 38, and women's median was 38 percent below men's median.
- The change: 83 − 62 = 21 percentage points over 2024 − 1979 = 45 years.
- The change as a percent: 21 ÷ 62 × 100 ≈ 33.9 percent, so the ratio in 2024 was about a third higher than in 1979.
- The gap's size then and now: 17 ÷ 38 × 100 ≈ 45, so the 2024 gap was about 45 percent of its 1979 size, less than half.
What does it not show? A comparison of women and men in the same job, with the same hours, or with the same experience; part-time workers; or why the gap exists.
Correlation or cause? Neither. It is a description of two years of earnings, not a test of what causes the gap.

In words: in 2024 the middle woman working full time earned 83% of what the middle man working full time earned, up from 62% in 1979, and the figure by itself does not say why.

That last sentence has a practical stake. A human-resources office that reads 83% as "we pay women 17 percent less for the same work" will act on a claim the figure never made. An office that reads it as a national ratio of medians will ask for its own same-job data before deciding anything.

The gender pay gap is the difference between women's and men's earnings, often stated as how far women's median earnings fall below men's.

In practice (your tools). In any free spreadsheet, type 83 in cell B1 and 62 in cell B2. In B3, type =B1-B2 to get 21, the change in percentage points. In B4, type =B3/B2*100 to get about 33.9, the percent change. In B5, type =100-B1 to get 17, the 2024 gap. Keep the units in a label beside each cell, so nobody reads the 21 as a percent.

Misconception check — "women earn 83 cents for the same job." Students often read the 83% as a same-job comparison, because that is how the number is often quoted. It is not. It compares the middle woman with the middle man across all full-time jobs together. The cure: say "a ratio of medians across all full-time jobs," and save "the same job" for a controlled comparison.

Misconception check — percent and percentage point swapped. Students also call the 21-point change "21 percent." The change from 62% to 83% is 21 percentage points, which is about 33.9 percent of the 1979 ratio. Write the unit every time.

Memory hook: a ratio of medians describes a gap; it does not explain it.

8. Weigh raw against controlled, then weigh the explanations

The 83% is one kind of comparison. Sociologists and economists also build a second kind, and the two answer different questions.

A raw ratio is an earnings ratio that compares the middle woman's earnings with the middle man's across all jobs together, with no adjustment for occupation, hours, or experience; also called the uncontrolled ratio.
A controlled estimate is a comparison of women's and men's earnings among workers matched on named factors, such as occupation, hours, and experience, so that it answers how pay differs among similar workers.

Worked example — one illustrative firm, two comparisons. An illustrative firm has ten full-time workers, five women and five men. Job X pays 700 dollars a week and Job Y pays 1,000 dollars a week, and each job pays women and men the same. Four of the five women work in Job X and four of the five men work in Job Y.

Women's median. Line up the five women's weekly pay: 700, 700, 700, 700, 1,000. The middle value is 700 dollars.
Men's median. Line up the five men's weekly pay: 700, 1,000, 1,000, 1,000, 1,000. The middle value is 1,000 dollars.
The raw ratio. 700 ÷ 1,000 × 100 = 70%.
The same-job ratio. In Job X, women and men both earn 700 dollars, so the ratio is 100%. In Job Y, both earn 1,000 dollars, so the ratio is 100%.

In words: this firm shows a raw ratio of 70% and a same-job ratio of 100% at the same time. The controlled comparison removes the part of the gap tied to job mix. It cannot say why four of the five women landed in the lower-paid job.

That last question is where the debate lives. The documented explanations of the gender pay gap are these five.

Occupational segregation is the concentration of women and men in different occupations, so that some jobs are held mostly by women and others mostly by men.
Differences in hours. Even among full-time workers, the hours people work can differ, and pay follows hours.
The motherhood penalty is the earnings disadvantage that mothers face compared with women who are not mothers, one of the explanations offered for the gender pay gap.
The devaluation of women's work is the pattern of paying less for kinds of work because women mostly do them, rather than because the work requires less skill or effort; one of the explanations offered for the gender pay gap.
Discrimination, from Week 10, is treating people unequally because of their group; here, paying or promoting women less because they are women.

These are competing accounts of a plainly reported gap. Each has its supporters, and some overlap: occupational segregation, for instance, could itself reflect choices, hiring practices, devaluation, or discrimination. Week 8's habit helps here. "Women choose lower-paid jobs" is an individual explanation, and it is a claim. "Some jobs are paid less because women do them" is a structural explanation, and it is a claim too. The raw ratio tests neither. This course presents all five and declares no winner; you weigh them on further evidence.

Misconception check — the gap "explained away" or "proven" from the raw number. Students often take the 83% and run in one of two directions. One says "it is all choices, so there is no real gap"; the other says "it proves discrimination." It is tempting, because one number feels like an answer. But the raw ratio describes a gap; it does not explain it. The cure: name the comparison, name the explanation you are testing, and ask what further evidence, such as a controlled estimate, would bear on it.

Pause and choose one of these two prompts.

(a) Pick one of the five explanations and describe the kind of evidence that would make it more convincing to you.
(b) Pick one of the five explanations and describe the kind of evidence that would make it less convincing to you.

Memory hook: raw asks "how far apart?"; controlled asks "how far apart among similar workers?"

For more on this week's ideas, the module's Readings & Resources page links to short articles and videos.

Key terms

Sex — The physical and physiological characteristics, such as anatomy, chromosomes, and hormones, that are used to classify bodies as female or male. (first used: 1. Tell sex from gender: the week's key distinction)
Gender — The behaviors, traits, and social positions that a society associates with being a woman or a man, which vary across cultures and change over time. (first used: 1. Tell sex from gender: the week's key distinction)
Gender identity — A person's own inner sense of their gender, as distinct from the sex characteristics of their body and from the expectations other people hold. (first used: 1. Tell sex from gender: the week's key distinction)
Socially constructed — Describes a category whose meaning comes from the shared expectations of people in a society rather than from nature alone, which is why the category differs between societies and changes over time. (first used: 2. See gender as built: culture, time, and gender roles)
Gender role — The set of behaviors and duties a society expects from a person because of their gender, such as who cooks, who leads, or who shows feelings in public. (first used: 2. See gender as built: culture, time, and gender roles)
Gender socialization — The lifelong process of learning the expectations a society attaches to gender, taught by family, peers, school, media, religion, and the workplace. (first used: 3. Learn it: gender socialization)
Doing gender — Candace West and Don Zimmerman's 1987 idea that gender is something people continually do in everyday interaction, and that others notice and respond to, rather than something a person is. (first used: 4. Do it: doing gender in everyday interaction)
Patriarchy — A social system in which men as a group hold more power and resources than women as a group, across families, workplaces, and government. (first used: 5. Name the structure: patriarchy, the gender order, and three lenses)
Gender order — The society-wide pattern of gender arrangements across institutions: who tends to do which work, hold which positions, and carry which expectations. (first used: 5. Name the structure: patriarchy, the gender order, and three lenses)
Complementary roles — The structural-functionalist reading of traditional gender roles as two different but matching sets of duties that fit together and help the family run. (first used: 5. Name the structure: patriarchy, the gender order, and three lenses)
Feminist theory — A body of theory, joined to the conflict perspective in this course, that reads gender as a structure of unequal power and resources and asks who benefits from it. (first used: 5. Name the structure: patriarchy, the gender order, and three lenses)
Sexuality — The part of human life that involves sexual desire, attraction, and relationships, which sociologists study as a social category as well as a personal experience. (first used: 6. Read sexuality as a social category)
Sexual orientation — The pattern of a person's emotional, romantic, or sexual attraction to people of a particular gender or genders. (first used: 6. Read sexuality as a social category)
Earnings ratio — Women's median usual weekly earnings divided by men's median usual weekly earnings, multiplied by 100 and written as a percent. (first used: 7. Read the earnings ratio: the 83% four ways)
Median usual weekly earnings — The middle amount when the weekly pay that a group of workers usually receives is lined up from lowest to highest. (first used: 7. Read the earnings ratio: the 83% four ways)
Full-time wage and salary workers — People who work for an employer for pay, as opposed to working for themselves, and who usually work full time; the group the Bureau of Labor Statistics earnings ratio covers. (first used: 7. Read the earnings ratio: the 83% four ways)
Gender pay gap — The difference between women's and men's earnings, often stated as how far women's median earnings fall below men's. (first used: 7. Read the earnings ratio: the 83% four ways)
Raw ratio — An earnings ratio that compares the middle woman's earnings with the middle man's across all jobs together, with no adjustment for occupation, hours, or experience; also called the uncontrolled ratio. (first used: 8. Weigh raw against controlled, then weigh the explanations)
Controlled estimate — A comparison of women's and men's earnings among workers matched on named factors, such as occupation, hours, and experience, so that it answers how pay differs among similar workers. (first used: 8. Weigh raw against controlled, then weigh the explanations)
Occupational segregation — The concentration of women and men in different occupations, so that some jobs are held mostly by women and others mostly by men. (first used: 8. Weigh raw against controlled, then weigh the explanations)
Motherhood penalty — The earnings disadvantage that mothers face compared with women who are not mothers, one of the explanations offered for the gender pay gap. (first used: 8. Weigh raw against controlled, then weigh the explanations)
Devaluation of women's work — The pattern of paying less for kinds of work because women mostly do them, rather than because the work requires less skill or effort; one of the explanations offered for the gender pay gap. (first used: 8. Weigh raw against controlled, then weigh the explanations)

Summary

Sex is the body; gender is what a society expects; gender identity is a person's inner sense.
Gender varies across cultures and changes over time, so it is socially constructed.
Six agents teach gender, and the teaching lasts a lifetime.
Doing gender happens in interaction, and others hold people to the script.
Patriarchy and the gender order describe groups and patterns, not one person.
Functionalism sees complementary roles; conflict and feminist theory see unequal power; interactionism sees meanings made in moments.
Sexuality is felt personally and organized socially.
In 2024, women's median weekly earnings were 83% of men's, up from 62% in 1979: a raw ratio, not a same-job comparison.
Five explanations of the gap compete; the course declares no winner.

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

Sort each illustrative statement as sex, gender, or gender identity. (a) a lab report lists a person's chromosomes; (b) a family expects the oldest daughter to cook for guests; (c) a person says, "I have always known I am a man"; (d) a doctor notes a newborn's anatomy.
In an illustrative county, women's median weekly earnings among full-time workers are 900 dollars and men's are 1,200 dollars. Find the earnings ratio, and say how far women's median falls below men's in percent.
In an illustrative state, the earnings ratio rises from 70% to 77% over ten years. By how many percentage points did it rise, and by what percent?
At an illustrative office, the newest woman on the team is always asked to plan birthday parties. Match each reading to its lens. (a) "the team runs smoothly when each person has a set job"; (b) "party planning takes time from the work that counts toward promotion, and it falls on her"; (c) "each time she is asked and agrees, the team treats party planning as her thing."

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

(a) Sex: chromosomes are a physical characteristic. (b) Gender: an expectation a family attaches to being a daughter. (c) Gender identity: a person's own inner sense. (d) Sex: anatomy is a physical characteristic. The test is always "body, expectation, or inner sense?"
The ratio is 900 ÷ 1,200 × 100 = 75%. The gap is 100 − 75 = 25, so women's median falls 25 percent below men's. Like the national figure, this is a raw ratio of medians, so it does not say whether women and men in the same job are paid differently.
77 − 70 = 7 percentage points. As a percent change, 7 ÷ 70 × 100 = 10 percent. Both describe the same change, so the unit tells the reader which one you mean.
(a) Structural functionalism (macro): set roles that fit together keep the team running. (b) Conflict theory and feminist theory (macro): an unequal load that costs her a resource, time toward promotion. (c) Symbolic interactionism (micro): doing gender, as a meaning is built in repeated moments. No reading is declared correct; each works at its own level.

Next up in this module: the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, the quiz, the discussion, and the assignment — and next week the same three-lens model turns to family and marriage, where doing gender happens at home.

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