Exam 2 Review
COMM 4600-003
Spring 2003
Be sure to review
Allen Chapter 3, available at http://www.colorado.edu/communication/comm4600003/Reading.html/#Allen3
Also, be sure to emphasize the following
concepts in your review. If you have any
concerns or questions, please e-mail
me
Gender Matters
Key Terms and Concepts:
Sex vs. Gender—
Sex: A
biologically based designation generally linked to either phenotype (how
something looks) as manifest in the external manifestation of genitals or to
genotype (what the genetic code says) as manifest in XX (female) or XY (male)
chromosomes. This classification can
become problematic when phenotype and genotype disagree, or when the phenotype
is ambiguous.
Gender: A
social identification with maleness/femaleness and/or some position along a gender
continuum. Gender is often socially attributed to and expected of persons
exhibiting particular phenotypes. How
one comes to identify as a gendered individual, however, is not always directly
correlated to either phenotype or genotype.
Individuals whose gender identification differs from that which is
socially proscribed by their phenotype may feel the effects of social sanctions
and pressure to conform.
Transgender: A
term used to describe individuals who identify with a gender other than that
socially proscribed by their phenotype. Transvestites and transsexuals and intersex individuals may or may not identify as
transgender.
Ferms, Merms, and
Herms: Terms coined by Anne Fausto-Sterling in an attempt to capture the experience of
individuals born with an ambiguous phenotype.
Herms are genuine hermaphrodites, and possess one testis and one
ovary. Merms
and Ferms posess the gonads
indicated by their M/F designation and some aspect of the other sex’s genitalia,
but not their reproductive structures. Fausto-Sterling
now posits that even these designations are inadequate to capture the true
range of individual experience.
Doing Gender: The
ways in which we enact gender roles in ways that reinforce and reproduce
them as normal and natural and promote an understanding of gender as
“naturally” equated to phenotype and genotype.
Ideology of
Patriarchy: structural dominance of
men that is built into the institutions of society.” Patriarchal
systems value “masculine” attributes such as competition and control more than
“feminine” attributes such as collaboration and cooperation.
Hegemonic Masculinity: An ideal notion of men and masculinity as embodying
particular characteristics such as strong, independent, rational, and
heterosexual. This ideology of
masculinity gains hegemonic force when men adopt a belief that to be a “real
man” involves embodying these characteristics and not others. This, in turn, reinforces the dominance of
some men over others, makes some feelings and behaviors acceptable for men and
other unacceptable, and reinforces an understanding of “maleness” rooted in its
opposition to “femaleness.”
Race Matters
Race: A way
of classifying people developed to ascribe personal and group characteristics
on the basis of phenotype and/or bloodline (rule of hypo-descent). One’s
“racial” classification is not clearly manifest at the genetic level and while
contemporary biological and anthropological evidence has debunked the myth that
race is related to intelligence or “moral character” as was earlier claimed,
race persists as a sociohistorical artifact unifying
groups of people through a shared history of oppression and/or privilege.
Ethnicity: a
common origin or culture resulting from shared activities and identity based on
some mixture of language, religion, race, nationality and/or ancestry.
Racism: A
set of beliefs, values, norms, rules, and regulations that perpetuate the
success of a dominant race at the expense of others. Racism does not exist solely at the personal
or interpersonal levels, but is perpetuated and played out at the cultural and
institutional levels as well.
White Privilege: A set of unearned benefits derived by virtue of access to social
positions and institutions traditionally and/or historically closed to people
of color and reproduced through rules, norms, and policies at the cultural and
institutional levels.
Black Pride:
A movement begun during the Civil-Rights era to reclaim “blackness” as a source
of pride, to identify and educate both people of color and whites about the
history and contribution of people of color to American society, and to combat
internalized oppression by supporting people of color in developing a sense of
self that could be a source of pride in a country that had traditionally
associated color with negativity.
Whiteness: A
heuristic concept developed to make “white” visible as a racial category and to
illustrate how “whiteness,” too, is constructed as a racial category. Whiteness
has been described as an “unmarked” racial category because it is the one
racial designation in the
Optional Ethnicity: A concept developed to describe the flexibility white or light-skinned
people have in the United States to identify ethnically when convenient and/or
when there are social benefits to be derived from such identification, but to
identify as “just American” or to have their ethnic heritage remain invisible
where it could carry social costs. This
concept is closely tied to the notion of passing.
Hyphenated Identity: A term used to describe the experience of Americans whose identity is
constructed and/or constrained by a society that sees their race and/or
ethnicity first, and their nationality second.
These individuals do not have the option of identifying as “just
American” because they are continually reminded of and constructed as
African-American, Asian-American, Native-American etc…
This construction both defines people of color as “Other” and reproduces White
American culture as the unquestioned ideal against which they are measured.
Ideology of White Supremacy: an internalized belief in white superiority.
“Melting Pot”: The
notion of
Racial Tracking: The phenomenon of “funneling” students of color into primarily
technical, trade-oriented courses designed to prepare them for blue-collar and
service work while “funneling” white students into academic areas more likely
to prepare them for higher education and/or business and managerial roles.
Class Matters
Class –
Relative social rank in terms of income, wealth, status, and/or power.
Classism –
The institutional, cultural, and individual set of practices and beliefs that
assign differential value to people according to their socio-economic class;
and an economic system which creates excessive inequality and causes basic
human needs to go unmet.
Class Identity
– A label for one category of class experience, such as ruling class, owning
class, middle class, working class, lower class.
Ruling Class
– The stratum of people who hold positions of power in major institutions of
the society.
Owning Class/Rich – The stratum of families who own income-producing assets sufficient
to make paid employment unnecessary.
Middle Class
– The stratum of families for whom breadwinners’ higher education and/or
specialized skills brings higher income and more security than those of working
class people. This class of people still typically depend
on some income from sources other than owned assets.
Upper-Middle Class – The portion of the middle class with higher incomes due to
professional jobs and/or investment income.
Lower-Middle Class – The portion of the middle class with lower and less stable incomes
due to lower-skilled or unstable employment.
Working Class
– The stratum of families whose income depends almost exclusively on hourly
wages for labor.
Lower Class/Poor – The stratum of families with incomes insufficient to meet basic
human needs.
Economic Capital --financial assets and resources that contribute to one’s ability to
obtain access, power, and social position.
Cultural Capital –specialized skills and knowledge such as linguistic and cultural
competencies, passed down through one’s family or from experiences in social
institutions, such as an Ivy League education that contribute to one’s ability
to obtain access, power, and social position.
Social Capital –networks of connections that
both shape and reinforce identity and sense of self as a member of a particular
class and contribute to one’s ability to obtain access, power, and social
position.
Intersections
Tyranny of passing: A concept that helps us to understand the social and psychological
costs of conforming to social norms when we are not strongly identified with
them. Passing both has costs to the
individual who passes, even if they reap social benefits from doing so, because
they must suppress or deny some aspect of their identity in order to “pass,”
and has costs to the group that is made invisible in the act of passing.
Glass Ceiling:
The effect experienced by many women in organizations that their careers
plateau at middle management, and “breaking through” to executive levels
appears attainable in theory, but is rarely realized in practice (the metaphor
of glass implies that it can be seen, but not reached). This metaphor has been criticized by some
feminist authors of color who see it as reflective of white women’s experience,
but not of women of color. Other
metaphors such as “brick wall” have been suggested instead which imply both
that there is no illusion that executive ranks are attainable, and that, unlike
glass, “breaking through” is exceedingly unlikely.
Sticky Floor:
This metaphor serves as a parallel to the glass ceiling and draws attention to
the disproportionate concentration of women in low-level organizational
positions, and their relative difficulty in moving out of these positions
compared to their male counterparts.
Glass Escalator: A term coined to mirror the concept of glass ceiling and highlight the
relative frequency and ease with which men in female-dominated professions tend
to rise to positions of power, privilege, and authority.
Job re-segregation: The commonplace phenomenon of a job that was once male-dominated
losing value and diminishing in prestige as it becomes increasingly
female-dominated (i.e. schoolteaching and
clerking/secretarial work).
“Supply side” Justifications: These arguments are used to explain job segregation
and pay inequity by suggesting that women and/or people of color don’t work
hard enough, don’t really want the jobs in which they are not represented,
aren’t sufficiently qualified etc… These arguments make invisible structural
inequities and employer preferences and biases which contribute to employment
segregation and place the burden for change on the individuals already
underprivileged and dis-empowered by the status quo.
Privilege
– a resource
or state of being that is only readily available to some people because of
their social group membership.
Prejudice
– a set of
negative personal beliefs about a social group that leads individuals to
prejudge people from that group or the group in general, regardless of
individual differences among members of that group.
Oppression
– a systemic
social phenomenon based on the perceived and real differences among social
groups that involve ideological domination, institutional control, and the
promotion of the oppressor’s ideology, logic system, and culture to the
oppressed group. The result is the exploitation of one social group by another
for the benefit of the oppressor group.
Myth of Meritocracy –the ideological position that holds that success is achieved through
hard work and effort alone, and that individuals reap
rewards based on individual merit. This
position makes invisible the structural and institutional systems that favor
and support the success of some and challenge or inhibit the success of
others.
Correspondence Principle – a principle that says that educational experiences from
preschool to high school differentially prepare students for their ultimate
positions in the work force, and a student’s placement in various school
programs is based primarily on her or his race and class origin
Reconstruction—The period of time following the Civil War when freed slaves
were widely denied access to land and other asset-producing resources in a way
that preserved Whites as members of the Owning and ruling class while
relegating Blacks to low-paying wage-labor jobs.
Possessive Investment in Whiteness—refers to rules, policies, and practices that have
facilitated access to investment income and asset acquisition for Whites in a
way that has systematically excluded people of color (i.e. federal lending
programs, GI Bill…)
Also, be sure to review intersections between the
following concepts from your reading:
Poverty and Gender
Poverty and Race
Wealth and Gender/Race