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Chapter 7 introduces the concept of gender, referring to broad and pervasive sets of cultural expectations which people often identify with. The dominant, but not only, gendered categories in North America are ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’, and these categories are consequential over the life-course. Gendered patterns exist in education, employment, household work/domestic labour and in gender-based violence. Furthermore, these patterns intersect with other social roles and identities, such as race/ethnicity and class. These complex intersections are visible in the circumstances which led to the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, a significant exploration of how social forces affect people’s lives in deep ways.
Feminist theorizing has been central to analyses of gender, looking at how the construction of masculinity and femininity leads to different outcomes between groups of men and women. Feminist theorizing also identifies how ‘woman’ is not a homogenous category, but includes people with very different social positions and who have multiple aspects to their identities.
Conflict theorists identify the role traditional ‘women’s work’ has played in reproducing society and the workforce and how this intersects with capitalism. Structural functionalists examine how a gendered division of labour both reproduced gender distinctions while at the same time filling crucial social roles of child-rearing, earning a wage, and domestic labour. Symbolic interactionists are interested in how ideas and expectations of gender get reproduced through popular media and how ideas about gender affect interpersonal interactions.
Gender affects educational pathways. Women are underrepresented in STEM subject enrollment in both high school and post-secondary institutions. This is partly both caused by, and reinforces, ideas about gendered aptitudes and interests.
Gender affects career and workplace. When women generally devote more time to childcare and are tasked more frequently with more domestic work, men and women then have different career trajectories due to the relative balance of these non-career responsibilities.
Gender-based violence is a particularly serious manifestation of gender differences, where women in Canada are more likely to experience violent victimization than men. When this does occur, it is underreported due to myths about sexual violence. Women are also more likely than men to experience intimate partner violence. Indigenous women in Canada are further overrepresented as victims of violence, and this risk includes intimate partner violence.
Gender is both personal, relating to identity, and pervades society. While gender norms vary with time and place, they are nonetheless robust and shape people’s lives in consequential ways.