Deck 4: Gender Theory

Question 1

How does the "lens of androcentrism" lead one to view the world?

A) It leads one to see humans as the center of the world, rather than, for instance, animals or the environment.
B) It makes the world appear to be organized into opposites according to gender: male or female, masculine or feminine.
C) It makes everything male appear to be the neutral norm, the universally human standard.
D) It leads one to view gender as an unvarying and fixed biological or psychological trait.

Answer 1

C

Question 2

How is gender essentialism flawed?

A) It does not account for inborn traits such as dominant or submissive personality types.
B) It does not take race or class into account.
C) It assumes that gender and sex are the same thing.
D) It doesn't account for all bodies, and it is akin to stereotyping.

Answer 2

D

Question 3

How did functionalist theory in sociology support the status quo?

A) It supported the idea that complementary sex roles in families and in society are socially required.
B) It argued that governments should monitor sexual function in their citizens to ensure a productive labor force.
C) It helped fund far-right political organizations that supported "family values."
D) It claimed that bisexuality is a deviance that must be medically and psychiatrically treated.

Answer 3

A

Question 4

What was one major flaw of the feminist theory that came to question functionalism in the 1970s?

A) It tended to concentrate narrowly on white, middle-class women and ignored the lives and work of African American women.
B) It unwittingly repeated the very same functionalist strategies that it decried, including the assumption that women are essentially different from men.
C) Its main platform was reproductive rights, and it ignored other social issues vital to women's rights.
D) It suggested that speaking out against power is not an operation of freedom.

Question 5

How does the interactionist approach understand gender?

A) It claims that gender is a set of social roles that each person in a society needs to take on for social interactions to run smoothly.
B) It considers gender to be an essential property of each human.
C) It suggests that gender is produced at an "intersection" with race, class, and sexuality.
D) It sees gender as a social practice that people produce or "do" in specific contexts and situations.

Question 6

What is the focus of structuralist theories of gender?

A) The idea that gender is a matter of social construction rather than essential biological truths
B) The way that gender inequalities are produced and maintained at the level of institutions, organizations, and social structures
C) An understanding of the body as a series of structures that together constitute gender
D) Artistic renderings of women and men that help the viewer deconstruct the binary system of gender

Question 7

What does it mean when Joan Acker says that organizational structures are gendered?

A) That buildings tend to resemble either male or female body parts
B) That, like many European languages, English contains gendered nouns
C) That organizational spaces, symbols, identities, and rules create and sustain gender inequalities
D) That most American corporations are invested in maintaining male ownership and management

Question 8

What does it mean to say that gender is a social institution?

A) That gender has been produced by the institutions of family, education, work, religion, and media
B) That gender is a process by which we distribute resources, care for people, and identify and legitimate rulers
C) That gender is produced by everyday social practices such as familiar greetings, dating rituals, and mealtime practices
D) That gender is not a political or ethical issue but rather wholly social

Question 9

How do power, prestige, and wealth affect gender difference?

A) Power, prestige, and wealth do not affect gender difference: it manifests similarly in all varieties of social class and wealth systems.
B) The middle classes in late capitalist societies demonstrate the most stratified and unequal gender differences.
C) The more power, prestige, and wealth are at stake, the less stratified and more equal the gender difference.
D) The more power, prestige, and wealth are at stake, the more stratified and unequal the gender difference.

Question 10

What does Ann Arnett Ferguson's study of African American schoolboys reveal about the "culture of poverty" thesis of "insubordinate" students?

A) That the problem is not individual, as this theory states, but rather interactional, between the boys and school staff, and institutional, a problem of race in the American system of education
B) That the problem is not institutional, as this theory states, but an individual. issue of these boys' troubles
C) That "insubordinate" behavior is a reflection of poor black households, disorganized entities loosely held together by single mothers dependent on welfare to survive
D) That schoolteachers are too hasty to accept responsibility for the boys' troubles, when research shows that they are caused by a variety of factors outside of the school

Question 11

The symbolic interactionist perspective known as _________ says that gender is a performance that we are constantly engaged in to show that we are women or men, girls or boys. Others can judge our performances as acceptable or not.

A) Structuration theory
B) Doing gender
C) Social Learning theory
D) Enculturated Lens theory

Question 12

The mid-twentieth century sociological theory of ____________ saw the heterosexual breadwinner/homemaker family as ideal and natural and, in spite of their importance to the survival of black families, viewed working black wives as pathological.

A) structural functionalism
B) historical materialism
C) symbolic interactionism
D) Structuration

Question 13

How does the "lens of gender polarization" lead one to view the world?

A) It leads one to see humans as the center of the world, rather than, for instance, animals or the environment.
B) It makes the world appear to be organized into opposites according to gender: male or female, masculine or feminine.
C) It makes everything male appear to be the neutral norm, the universally human standard.
D) It leads one to view gender as an unvarying and fixed biological or psychological trait.

Question 14

Which of the following is true regarding parents' views of gender socialization, or how children are taught the appropriate roles associated with their sex?

A) The majority of parents of both boys and girls believe that gender socialization should be challenged.
B) More mothers than fathers believe that gender socialization should be challenged and that their sons and daughters should be encouraged in the activities of the other sex.
C) More parents believe that daughters should be encouraged in the activities typical of boys and men than believe that sons should be encouraged in the activities typical of girls and women
D) All of the above are true.

Question 15

Social learning perspectives often view socialization into the established gender order as being complete by adulthood. By contrast, symbolic interactionist believe that gender is part of the ____________, meaning we actively create and reproduce gender in interaction.

A) structure of gender
B) interaction ritual
C) negotiated order
D) enculturated lens

Question 16

Garfinkle and Devor present the lives of extraordinary people to illustrate the ways that accomplishing gender operates in more mundane lives. This is because:

A) They show that the gender stylings that we think of as natural and inevitable are actually performances that can be imitated.
B) They show that passing as a woman or man requires the same activities for transgender people as it does for cisgender people.
C) They encourage cisgender people to see their own gender performance as a type of drag.
D) All of the above.

Question 17

What is undoing gender?

A) When one tries to do gender appropriately but fails
B) When a transgender person performs the gender consistent with their gender identity
C) When one actively disrupts gender inequality through social interactions and collaboration that does not reproduce stereotypical gender roles
D) None of the above

Question 18

Thorne observes that the relationship between ___________ may be more socially equal than other types of relationships.

A) sisters and brothers
B) wives and husbands
C) female doctors and male nurses
D) female bosses and male employees

Question 19

Proponents of ________ theories, like Giddens and Kanter, say that human beings both create social structures through our beliefs, norms, and practices and that we are the products of the social structures which have conditioned us.

A) social learning
B) structuralist
C) structural functionalist
D) symbolic interactionist

Question 20

Kanter observes that opportunity structures, power structures, and _________ inform and constrain the activities that individual deem attainable in society.

A) symbolic structures
B) social learning structures
C) functional structures
D) relative numbers

Question 21

As a counterpart to the invisible barriers to professional assent that women encounter, the glass _______ refers to the accelerated route to promotion that men often encounter when working in female-dominated professions.

A) door
B) window
C) escalator
D) rocket

Question 22

Joan Acker observes that gender does not simply influence how individuals interact with social structures but that gender is a central feature of institutions themselves. Interaction rules and standards regarding commitment to work make ________ ideal workers according to Acker.

A) single men
B) single people of any gender
C) men with stay-at-home wives
D) people of any gender who have a lot of debt

Question 23

What is a social institution?

A) Any physical setting where people interact
B) A persistent system of norms, power relations, and social roles surrounding social phenomena
C) A physical setting wherein members' activities are controlled around the clock with the goal of making them internalize new values and norms
D) Any organization that is directly related to the economy, including all work places

Question 24

Which of the following is NOT a social factor identified by this chapter which contributes to the creation of gendered experiences?

A) Social structure
B) Biology and evolution
C) Social Learning
D) Social Interaction

Question 25

__________ is the view that gender is a fixed biological and psychological trait that hardly varies among individuals or over time

A) Essentialism
B) Gender polization
C) Androcentrism
D) Structuralism