Gender and Society

Paper 3
Question 1-
-Interplanetary Theory of Gender: It focuses on on the differences between men and women. These are biological and evolutionary differences, and it is almost as if men and women are so different that they are from different planets. An example from class is that men are more aggressive because of testosterone, and women are more nurturing, there is no way they could be the same.
-Unconscious Bias: It is a bias that we have (based on socialism and experiences) that we do not even know we obtain. An example is the Orchestra Hiring Experiment. When knowing that a man was playing, they were more likely to be hired, but when you could not tell which gender was playing, it turned out to be more equal.
-Denial of Responsibility: People are aware that there is injustice in the treatment between the genders, but it is not their fault and there is nothing they can do about it. An example are the Walmart managers. They had a requirement that they employee be able to relocate 100 miles away. If they notice a woman resign because of this requirement, there is nothing they can do to make them stay.
-Status Belief: A widely held belief about the competence and worth of a group in society. It shapes behavior by affecting the sense of how others expect out of us. An example from class is the social influence example from Wagner, Ford, Ford 1986. Men and women had to work together on a problem. If the person had the most social influence, they are more likely to stay with their initial answer and there partner is more willing to change. Men stayed with their initial response 72% of the time when disagreeing with their partner. Women stayed 51% of the time when disagreeing.
-Horizontal Segregation: Division of genders in a workplace between similar but separate jobs. An example is the Sears workplace. Women were more likely to work in