13: Gender and Sexuality Part Two

Gender Stratification and Inequality

Stratification refers to a system in which groups of people experience unequal access to basic, yet highly valuable, social resources. There is a long history of gender stratification in the United States. When looking to the past, it would appear that society has made great strides in terms of abolishing some of the most blatant forms of gender inequality (see timeline below) but underlying effects of male dominance still permeate society (as the last line shows).

Before 1809—Women could not execute a will

Before 1840—Women were not allowed to own or control property

Before 1920—Women were not permitted to vote

Before 1963—Employers could legally pay a woman less than a man for the same work

Before 1973—Women did not have the right to a safe and legal abortion

Before 1981—No woman had served on the U.S. Supreme Court

Before 2009—No African American woman had been CEO of a U.S. Fortune 500 corporation

Before 2016—No Latina had served as a U.S. Senator

Before 2017—No openly transgender person had been elected in a state legislature

After 2022—Women did not have a right to a safe and legal abortion

Household Inequality

Gender inequality occurs within families and households. Here we’ll briefly discuss one significant dimension of gender-based household inequality: housework. Someone has to do housework, and that someone is usually a woman. It takes many hours a week to clean the bathrooms, cook, shop in the grocery store, vacuum, and do everything else that needs to be done. The research evidence indicates that women married to or living with men spend two to three times as many hours per week on housework as men spend (Gupta & Ash, 2008). This disparity holds true even when women work outside the home, leading sociologist Arlie Hochschild (Hochschild, 1989) to observe that women engage in a “second shift” of unpaid work when they come home from their paying job.

The good news is that gender differences in housework time are smaller than a generation ago. The bad news is that a large gender difference remains. As one study summarized the evidence on this issue, “Women invest significantly more hours in household labor than do men despite the narrowing of gender differences in recent years” (Bianchi, Milkie, Sayer, & Robinson, 2000, p. 196). In the realm of household work, then, gender inequality persists.

Health Care Inequality

In January of 2012, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, announced that all health care plans were required to provide coverage for contraceptives approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The effective meaning of Secretary Sebelius’ announcement was that contraceptives are considered by the Obama administration to be a requisite component of health care.

The premise of the contraceptive mandate demonstrates present inequities in the American health care industry for male and female patients. Whereas services for male reproductive health, such as Viagra, are considered to be a standard part of health care, women’s reproductive health services are called into question. In the context of the 2012 contraceptive mandate debate, health care professionals ‘ assessments that contraception is an integral component for women’s health care, regardless of sexual activity, went largely unaddressed. Instead, insurance coverage of contraception was framed as a government subsidy for sexual activity. This framing revealed inherent social inequalities for women in the domain of sexual health.

Furthermore, a 2020 Supreme Court ruling stated that employers with a sincere religious or moral objection also can choose not to cover birth control. Also, private plans may or may not cover the option for birth control that best fits the person who needs it, resulting again in additional costs to that person.

Women also experience other difficulties in health care due to biased views of gender. According to a 2018 study, men with chronic pain are viewed by doctors as “brave” or “stoic,” while view women with chronic pain are viewed as “emotional” or “hysterical.” Health care professionals are more apt to dismiss or diminish women’s description of their symptoms such as pain. This can lead to delayed or incorrect diagnoses, continued suffering, and health damage. It can also lead to inadequate management of symptoms. Distrust of health professionals due to negative experiences with them can also lead to the avoidance of medical care.

The Pay Gap

Despite making up nearly half (49.8 percent) of payroll employment, men vastly outnumber women in authoritative, powerful, and, therefore, high-earning jobs (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). Even when a woman’s employment status is equal to a man’s, she will generally make only 81 cents for every dollar made by her male counterpart (Payscale 2020). Women in the paid labor force also still do the majority of the unpaid work at home. On an average day, 84 percent of women (compared to 67 percent of men) spend time doing household management activities (U.S. Census Bureau 2011). This double duty keeps working women in a subordinate role in the family structure (Hochschild and Machung 1989). For additional, optional information, you can learn more at AAUW https://www.aauw.org/resources/research/simple-truth/ .

One reason for these differences, and for women’s lower earnings in general, is their caregiving responsibilities (Chang, 2010). Women are more likely than men to have the major, and perhaps the sole, responsibility for taking care of children and aging parents or other adults who need care. This responsibility limits their work hours and often prompts them to drop out of the labor force. If women rejoin the labor force after their children start school, or join for the first time, they are already several years behind men who began working at an earlier age. Economics writer David Leonhardt (2010, p. B1) explains this dynamic: “Many more women take time off from work. Many more women work part time at some point in their careers. Many more women can’t get to work early or stay late. And our economy exacts a terribly steep price for any time away from work—in both pay and promotions. People often cannot just pick up where they have left off. Entire career paths are closed off. The hit to earnings is permanent.”

Research interviewing women shows that women in leadership positions experience ageism at every age in the workplace. Older women are routinely discounted as outdated and not worthy of advancement, while younger women’s credibility is questioned (Diehl, Dzubinski, and Stephenson 2023).

Another reason is sex segregation in the workplace, which accounts for up to 45 percent of the gender gap (Kelley, 2011; Reskin & Padavic, 2002). Although women have increased their labor force participation, the workplace remains segregated by gender. Almost half of all women work in a few low-paying clerical and service (e.g., waitressing) jobs, while men work in a much greater variety of jobs, including high-paying ones. Part of the reason for this segregation is that socialization affects what jobs young men and women choose to pursue, and part of the reason is that women and men do not want to encounter difficulties they may experience if they took a job traditionally assigned to the other sex. A third reason is that sex-segregated jobs discriminate against applicants who are not the “right” sex for that job. Employers may either consciously refuse to hire someone who is the “wrong” sex for the job or have job requirements (e.g., height requirements) and workplace rules (e.g., working at night) that unintentionally make it more difficult for women to qualify for certain jobs. Although such practices and requirements are now illegal, they still continue. The sex segregation they help create contributes to the continuing gender gap between female and male workers. Occupations dominated by women tend to have lower wages and salaries. Because women are concentrated in low-paying jobs, their earnings are much lower than men’s (Reskin & Padavic, 2002).

This fact raises an important question: Why do women’s jobs pay less than men’s jobs? Is it because their jobs are not important and require few skills? The evidence indicates otherwise: Women’s work is devalued precisely because it is women’s work, and women’s jobs thus pay less than men’s jobs because they are women’s jobs (Magnusson, 2009).

Studies of comparable worth support this argument (Levanon, England, & Allison, 2009). Researchers rate various jobs in terms of their requirements and attributes that logically should affect the salaries they offer: the importance of the job, the degree of skill it requires, the level of responsibility it requires, the degree to which the employee must exercise independent judgment, and so forth. They then use these dimensions to determine what salary a job should offer. Some jobs might be better on some dimensions and worse on others but still end up with the same predicted salary if everything evens out.

When researchers make their calculations, they find that certain women’s jobs pay less than men’s even though their comparable worth is equal to or even higher than the men’s jobs. For example, a social worker may earn less money than a probation officer, even though calculations based on comparable worth would predict that a social worker should earn at least as much. The comparable worth research demonstrates that women’s jobs pay less than men’s jobs of comparable worth and that the average working family would earn several thousand dollars more annually if pay scales were reevaluated based on comparable worth and women were paid more for their work.

Even when women and men work in the same jobs, women often earn less than men, and men are more likely than women to hold leadership positions in these occupations. Government data provide ready evidence of the lower incomes women receive even in the same occupations. For example, among full-time employees, female marketing and sales managers earn only 66 percent of what their male counterparts earn; female human resource managers earn only 80 percent of what their male counterparts earn; female claims adjusters earn only 77 percent; female accountants earn only 75 percent; female elementary and middle school teachers earn only 91 percent; and even female secretaries and clerical workers earn only 91 percent (US Department of Labor, 2011).

Feminization of Poverty

Women disproportionately make up the majority of individuals who live in poverty across the world. The gender wage gap, the higher proportion of single mothers compared to single fathers, and the high cost of childcare create a gendered experience when it comes to living in poverty. Considering the economic situation produced by these factors, women (11 percent) are more likely to live in poverty than men (8 percent) (Fins 2020). Women in all racial and ethnic groups are more likely than White men to live in poverty. United States census data shows that poverty rates are higher for Black women (18 percent), Native American women (18 percent), Latinx women (15 percent), and Asian women (8 percent) (Fins 2020).

The Glass Ceiling

The idea that women are unable to reach the executive suite is known as the glass ceiling. It is an invisible barrier that women encounter when trying to win jobs in the highest level of business. At the beginning of 2021, for example, a record 41 of the world’s largest 500 companies were run by women. While a vast improvement over the number twenty years earlier – where only two of the companies were run by women – these 41 chief executives still only represent eight percent of those large companies (Newcomb 2020).

Why do women have a more difficult time reaching the top of a company? One idea is that there is still a stereotype in the United States that women aren’t aggressive enough to handle the boardroom or that they tend to seek jobs and work with other women (Reiners 2019). Other issues stem from the gender biases based on gender roles and motherhood discussed above.

Another idea is that women lack mentors, executives who take an interest and get them into the right meetings and introduce them to the right people to succeed (Murrell & Blake-Beard 2017).

Part of the problem keeping women out of the highest paying, most prestigious positions is that they have historically not held these positions. As a result, recruiters for high- status jobs are predominantly white males, and tend to hire similar people in their networks. Their networks are made up of mostly white males from the same socio-economic status, which helps perpetuate their over-representation in the best jobs.

Men, on the other hand, can often ride a “glass escalator” to the top, even in female occupations. An example is seen in elementary school teaching, where principals typically rise from the ranks of teachers. Although men constitute only about 16 percent of all public elementary school teachers, they account for about 41 percent of all elementary school principals (Aud et al., 2011).

Sexual Dynamics

Social stigmas surround women’s sexuality in ways that are highly restrictive and contradictory. After sexual encounters, men are praised for their actions and for “scoring.” In contrast, women are often criticized and labeled negatively by peers and society regardless of how they handle sexual advances. If they turn down advances, they are called a “prude” or “bitch,” but if they accept advances, they are labeled as “easy” or a “slut.” Recent research on hookup culture shows that women are being criticized less than they were previously, but the stigma and social responses are still frequently negative, regardless of a hookup attempt’s outcome (Armstrong et al. 2014).

Women’s and men’s experiences with online dating demonstrate differences when it comes to sexual harassment and fear of assault when arranging face to face meetings. Women are more often the recipients of sexually explicit photos and unwanted contact (see below). Men receive unwanted sexually explicit photos or conversations, but the social norms are gendered and reflect a power dynamic in which unwanted contact with women may lead to fear and concerns for safety. Women are twice as likely to say that they are concerned about their physical and emotional risks in dating (Pew Research Center 2020).

Data from PEW research center shows that younger women who use dating sites or apps are likely to report negative interactions with others on platforms. Women were more likely than others to be contacted after they said they were not interested, sent sexually explicit messages or images they didn't request, called offensive names and threatened to be physically harm. Numbers were highest for women in 18-34 age range.

Dating apps have expanded to reach a broader audience. There are apps for queer women, gay men, trans people, Black people, religiously affiliated, kink, etcetera. Apps like Bumble have been developed to put the “power” in the hands of women as they control who can and can’t message them. Her, Lex, and Grindr are specifically made for lesbian, gay, trans, nonbinary, and queer people and attempt to create a safe and accepting space that may not be accessible in other apps like Tinder, Bumble, Match, and Hinge.

Sexual Harassment in the Workplace

Another workplace problem (including schools) is sexual harassment, which, as defined by federal guidelines and legal rulings and statutes, consists of unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or physical conduct of a sexual nature that is used as a condition of employment or promotion or that interferes with an individual’s job performance and creates an intimidating or hostile environment.

Although men can be, and are, sexually harassed, women are more often the targets of sexual harassment. This gender difference exists for at least two reasons, one cultural and one structural. The cultural reason centers on the depiction of women and the socialization of men. As our discussion of the mass media and gender socialization indicated, women are still depicted in our culture as sexual objects that exist for men’s pleasure. At the same time, our culture socializes men to be sexually assertive. These two cultural beliefs combine to make men believe that they have the right to make verbal and physical advances to women in the workplace. When these advances fall into the guidelines listed here, they become sexual harassment

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The second reason that most targets of sexual harassment are women is more structural. Reflecting the gendered nature of the workplace and of the educational system, typically the men doing the harassment are in a position of power over the women they harass. A male boss harasses a female employee, or a male professor harasses a female student or employee. These men realize that subordinate women may find it difficult to resist their advances for fear of reprisals: A female employee may be fired or not promoted, and a female student may receive a bad grade.

How common is sexual harassment? This is difficult to determine, as the men who do the sexual harassment are not about to shout it from the rooftops, and the women who suffer it often keep quiet because of the repercussions just listed. But anonymous surveys of women employees in corporate and other settings commonly find that 40–65 percent of the respondents report being sexually harassed (Rospenda, Richman, & Shannon, 2009) In studies of college students, almost one-third of women undergraduates and about 40 percent of women graduate students report being sexually harassed by a faculty member (Clodfelter, Turner, Hartman, & Kuhns, 2010).

Despite the fact that sexual harassment is illegal, most women (and men) who are sexually harassed do not bring court action. Two reasons explain their decision not to sue: they fear being fired and/or they worry they will not be believed. But another reason has to do with the mental and emotional consequences of being sexually harassed. These consequences include relationship problems, a loss of self-esteem, fatigue, depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, and a feeling of powerlessness. These effects are similar to those for posttraumatic stress disorder and are considered symptoms of what has been termed sexual harassment trauma syndrome. This syndrome, and perhaps especially the feeling of powerlessness, are thought to help explain why sexual harassment victims hardly ever bring court action and otherwise often keep quiet. According to law professor Theresa Beiner, the legal system should become more aware of these psychological consequences as it deals with the important question in sexual harassment cases of whether harassment actually occurred. If a woman keeps quiet about the harassment, it is too easy for judges and juries to believe, as happens in rape cases, that the woman originally did not mind the behavior that she now says is harassment.

Houle et al. analyzed data from a study of 1,010 ninth-graders in St. Paul, Minnesota, that followed them from 1988 to 2004, when they were 30 or 31 years old. The study included measures of the respondents’ experience of sexual harassment at several periods over the study’s sixteen-year time span (ages 14–18, 19–26, 29–30, and 30–31), their level of psychological depression, and their sociodemographic background. Focusing on depression at ages 30 or 31, the authors found that sexual harassment at ages 14–18 did not affect the chances of depression at ages 30–31, but that sexual harassment during any of the other three age periods did increase the chances of depression at ages 30–31. These results held true for both women and men who had been harassed. The authors concluded that the “effects of harassment are indeed lasting, as harassment experiences early in the career were associated with heightened depressive symptoms nearly 10 years later.”

In finding long-term effects of sexual harassment on women and men in a variety of occupations and organizational settings, Houle et al.’s study made an important contribution to our understanding of the psychological consequences of sexual harassment. Its findings underscore the need for workplaces and campuses to do everything possible to eliminate this illegal and harmful behavior and perhaps will prove useful in sexual harassment lawsuits.

Women of Color: A Triple Burden

Women of color face difficulties for three reasons: their gender, their race, and, often, their social class, which is frequently near the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. They thus face a triple burden that manifests itself in many ways. This is an example of the concept of intersectionality, first highlighted by sociologist Kimberlé Crenshaw. This is the idea that various categories, including gender, race, class and ethnicity, interact and contribute towards systematic social inequality. Various forms of oppression, such as racism or sexism, do not act independently of one another; instead these forms of oppression are interrelated, forming a system of oppression that reflects the “intersection” of multiple forms of discrimination. In light of this theory, the oppression and marginalization of women is shaped not only by gender, but by other factors such as race and class.

For example, women of color experience extra income inequality. Earlier we discussed the gender gap in earnings, with women earning 82.2 percent of what men earn, but women of color face both a gender gap and a racial/ethnic gap. Table 4.3 depicts this double gap for full-time workers. We see a racial/ethnic gap among both women and men, as African Americans and Latinos of either gender earn less than whites. We also see a gender gap between men and women, as women earn less than men within any race/ethnicity. These two gaps combine to produce an especially high gap between African American and Latina women and white men: African American women earn only about 70 percent of what white men earn, and Latina women earn only about 60 percent of what white men earn.

These differences in income mean that African American and Latina women are poorer than white women. We noted earlier that almost 32 percent of all female-headed families are poor. This figure masks race/ethnic differences among such families: 24.8 percent of families headed by non-Latina white women are poor, compared to 41.0 percent of families headed by African American women and also 44.5 percent of families headed by Latina women (DeNavas-Walt et al., 2011). While white women are poorer than white men, African American and Latina women are clearly poorer than white women.

Gender-Based Violence

Rape is a type of sexual assault in which one or more individuals forces sexual contact on another individual without consent. Rape is often thought of as a crime committed by a man against a woman, but increasingly, social and legal definitions of rape recognize that this does not have to be the case. In 2012, the Federal Bureau of Investigation updated its definition of rape, which had originally been instituted in 1972, and which previously limited rape to a crime against women. This definition, considered outdated and overly narrow, was replaced by a new definition, which recognizes that rape can be perpetrated by a person of any gender against a victim of any gender. The new definition also broadens the instances in which a victim is unable to give consent. These instances now include temporary or permanent mental or physical incapacity, and incapacity caused by the use of drugs or alcohol.

Rape, then is not always against women. But this obscures another fact: Women are far more likely than men to be raped and sexually assaulted. They are also much more likely to be portrayed as victims of pornographic violence on the Internet and in videos, magazines, and other outlets. Also, women are more likely than men to be victims of domestic violence, or violence between spouses and others with intimate relationships.

The gendered nature of these acts against women distinguishes them from the violence men suffer. Rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, and pornographic violence are directed against women precisely because they are women. These acts are thus an extreme manifestation of the gender inequality women face in other areas of life.

The definition of rape rests on the notion of consent. In modern legal understanding, consent may be explicit or implied by context, but the absence of objection never itself constitutes consent, and consent can be withdrawn at any time. Consent cannot be forced and it cannot be given by certain categories of people considered incapable of consent (e.g., minors and the cognitively disabled).

Sexually violent acts are acts of power, not of sex. This can be seen most clearly when considering war rape and prison rape. War rape is the type of sexual pillaging that occurs in the aftermath of a war, typically characterized by the male soldiers of the victorious military raping the women of the towns they have just taken over. Prison rape is the type of rape that is common (and seriously under reported) in prisons all over the world, including the United States, in which inmates will force sex upon one another as a demonstration of power.

Sexual violence is not mainly about sex; it’s more about control and dominance. In situations of sexual assault, sex is used as a weapon to gain power over another person. The images in the picture below show how violence is excused and victims are unfairly blamed. These victims can be anyone.

The Extent and Context of Rape and Sexual Assault

Rates of sexual violence in the LGBTQIA+ community are the same or higher than in heterosexuals (Human Rights Campaign 2024). Sexual violence will be experienced by about half of all trans individuals and bisexual women during their lifetimes (Flanders, Anderson, and Tarasoff 2020). Their experiences relate to having higher risk factors such as poverty, stigma, and marginalization. Another factor is hate-motivated violence, which can often take the form of sexual assault and sexual violence. There are also high rates of intimate partner violence and sexual assault by partners within the LGBTQIA+ community (Human Rights Campaign 2024).

Transphobia and homophobia are evident in the rates of sexual assault experienced by transgender individuals, with almost half experiencing such assaults in their lifetime. People who are trans and BIPOC experiencing even higher rates (Griffiths and Armstrong 2023). Another concerning trend is that people identifying with the LGBTQIA+ community are less likely to access services, and if they do attempt to get help, they may be denied services due to their sexual or gender identity (Kumar and Joseph 2021). This lack of access further adds to the barriers faced by LGBTQIA+ individuals. The next section of this chapter will examine a few of the other ways that policies and social institutions create barriers for LGBTQIA+ individuals.

Our knowledge about the extent and context of rape and reasons for it comes from three sources: the FBI Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), and surveys of and interviews with women and men conducted by academic researchers. From these sources we have a fairly good if not perfect idea of how much rape occurs, the context in which it occurs, and the reasons for it.

According to the UCR, which are compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from police reports, 88,767 reported rapes (including attempts, and defined as forced sexual intercourse) occurred in the United States in 2010 (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2011). Because women often do not tell police they were raped, the NCVS, which involves survey interviews of thousands of people nationwide, probably yields a better estimate of rape; the NCVS also measures sexual assaults in addition to rape, while the UCR measures only rape. According to the NCVS, 188,380 rapes and sexual assaults occurred in 2010 (Truman, 2011). Other research indicates that up to one-third of US women will experience a rape or sexual assault, including attempts, at least once in their lives (Barkan, 2012). A study of a random sample of 420 Toronto women involving intensive interviews yielded an even higher figure: Two-thirds said they had experienced at least one rape or sexual assault, including attempts. The researchers, Melanie Randall and Lori Haskell (1995, p. 22), concluded that “it is more common than not for a woman to have an experience of sexual assault during their lifetime.”

Studies of college students also find a high amount of rape and sexual assault. About 20–30 percent of women students in anonymous surveys report being raped or sexually assaulted (including attempts), usually by a male student they knew beforehand (Fisher, Cullen, & Turner, 2000; Gross, Winslett, Roberts, & Gohm, 2006). Thus at a campus of 10,000 students of whom 5,000 are women, about 1,000–1,500 women will be raped or sexually assaulted over a period of four years, or about 10 per week in a four-year academic calendar.

Sexual violence is particularly difficult to track because it is severely under reported. Records from police and government agencies are often incomplete or limited. Most victims of sexual violence do not report it because they are ashamed, afraid of being blamed, concerned about not being believed, or are simply afraid to relive the event by reporting it. Most countries and many NGOs are undertaking efforts to try to increase the reporting of sexual violence as it so obviously has serious physical and psychological impacts on its victims.

The public image of rape is of the proverbial stranger attacking a woman in an alleyway. While such rapes do occur, most rapes actually happen between people who know each other. A wide body of research finds that 60–80 percent of all rapes and sexual assaults are committed by someone the woman knows, including husbands, ex-husbands, boyfriends, and ex-boyfriends, and only 20–35 percent by strangers (Barkan, 2012). A woman is thus two to four times more likely to be raped by someone she knows than by a stranger.

Rape Culture

Language, norms, and everyday behaviors contribute to a culture that permits sexual violence. Sexual violence is normalized through environments that promote an unequal distribution of power and value toxic masculinity. From these environments springs rape culture, which justifies, naturalizes, and may glorify sexual pressure, coercion, and violence (Marcus 1992; Pascoe and Hollander 2016). Rape culture facilitates sexual assault and is perpetuated through the presence of persistent gender inequalities and attitudes about gender and sexuality. As you learned in Chapter 9, gender norms organize social institutions in our society, including power structures and institutional discrimination. Sexuality works to structure our world similarly.

One way rape culture is normalized is through displays of sexual violence in popular culture. Campaigns and advertisements are meant to grab attention, but is there a point at which they can go too far? View the images in the picture below. What messages are being conveyed about bodies, gender relations, and consent in these Dolce & Gabbana ads? How do these messages shape our culture?

Left: A woman in black outfit and high heels lays on the ground while a shirtless man in sunglasses crouches over her and holds down her arms. Three men, one shirtless, one with an unbuttoned shirt watch. Center: Topless man with bare legs exposed lays on floor arching back. Man in white unbuttoned shirt stands next to him unzipping his white pants. Three men are in the background, two are watching the naked man, one is looking away fixing his tie. Right: A woman in a white top and skirt lays on a tiled floor while men and women crouch over her body. One man with an open shirt watches from the background.

A series of ads from Dolce and Gabbana that have since been banned in some countries. They explicitly depict sexual violence in several ways.

The ideas and norms that are part of rape culture also serve as barriers to reporting sexual violence. In U.S. culture, there is a great deal of uncertainty around the types of consequences perpetrators of sexual violence will experience. Influenced by how the media portrays such cases, people may not report incidents of sexual violence due to fears of not being believed. Concerns include doubts about men’s ability to control themselves, mistrust in authority figures’ responses, embarrassment, self-blame, and lack of support from others. These fears create barriers for survivors seeking help and justice.

Women and Politics

One of the most important places for women to help other women is in politics. Historically in the United States, like many other institutions, political representation has been mostly made up of White men. By not having women in government, their issues are being decided by people who don’t share their perspective. The number of women elected to serve in Congress has increased over the years, but does not yet accurately reflect the general population. In 2021, the population of the United States was 49 percent male and 51 percent female (Census.gov 2022), but the population of Congress was 72.3 percent male and 27.7 percent female (Manning 2022). Until the number of women in the federal government accurately reflects the population, there will be inequalities in our laws.

Women’s bodies are often brought into political conversations. Often, decisions are made regarding what is appropriate for women with little feedback from the group that is directly affected. For example, there is the issue of abortion, and the recent court decision that greatly affects some women’s decision-making abilities today.

On June 24, 2022, in a 6-to-3 decision, the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade ruling that protected women’s autonomy to choose abortion. The due process clause added to the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that provided a “right to privacy” and protected pregnant women’s rights to an abortion has changed. This decision comes at a time when data from the PEW Research Center shows that 61 percent of adults believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases (Pew Research Center 2022a, 2022b).

States where the right to an abortion is not restricted, is restricted, or is completely banned. What do restrictions look like in your state? Image description: https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/soceveryday1e/back-matter/image-descriptions/#oofig9-21

A decision made by nine individuals appointed by a handful of (male) presidents impacts the lives of families and fundamentally restricts women’s autonomy and choices. Now, individual states and government officials have the power to determine women’s reproductive rights. Current laws and policies within individual states will make accessing safe medical procedures difficult. Several states already had laws banning abortion that predated Roe v. Wade, and others had trigger laws (bans on abortion that would go into effect with the overturning of Roe v. Wade) (Mangan 2022a). Some states have bans on abortions after six weeks of gestation. At such an early stage, many women might not be aware that they are pregnant. Others might not be able to secure doctor’s appointments within the narrow timeframe.

Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, argued that the 1973 ruling was an error made on weak arguments and an “abuse of judicial authority” (Totenberg and McCammon 2022). Dissenting Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan said that the court decision means that “young women today will come of age with fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers . . . from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A state can force her to bring a pregnancy to term even at the steepest personal and familial costs” (Totenberg and McCammon 2022). This ruling has significant implications for women’s positions in society—or at least for some women. Affluent women have always and will continue to have options when it comes to seeking medical care.

There are many reasons a woman may choose to get an abortion. Rather than questioning why someone might want control over their reproductive rights and bodies, it is interesting from a sociological perspective to understand how complicated this court decision becomes when we examine our current social institutions. As the dissenting justices pointed out, women will be expected (and can be forced) to carry pregnancies to term when our current work and family policies do not uniformly support family life.

In the United States, parental leave policies are limited. If workplaces offer parental leave, it is often unpaid. This can either create an additional financial burden or make time off inaccessible at a time when new parents and guardians need to adjust to the mental and physical demands that come with newborns. If eligible, employees may need to take short-term disability or use the Family and Medical Leave Act. Government programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) attempt to offer financial support for low-income families with children, but there is still a stigma associated with participating in welfare programs (McLaughlin 2021). Eligibility requirements are restrictive and benefits are low. For example, in Oregon the current maximum monthly benefit for a family of three is $503. We also should consider how this decision will impact the growing fertility industry.

Keep in mind that this discussion is intended to point out how women’s rights are now restricted. This decision disproportionately affects women of color and those with lower socioeconomic status (Dehlendorf, Harris, and Weitz 2013; Johnson 2022). The overturning of Roe v. Wade also brings into question other rulings where it was used as precedent. For example, Justice Clarence Thomas has mentioned that we need to reexamine marriage equality and contraceptive rights (Mangan 2022b). This single court decision demonstrates that gender organizes our daily lives, from how we learn to interact with others to how our laws serve to protect us.

Benefits and Costs of Being Male in a Sexist Society

Most of the discussion so far has been about women, and with good reason: In a sexist society such as our own, women are the subordinate, unequal sex. But gender means more than female, and a few comments about men are in order.

Reducing Gender Inequality

Gender inequality is found in varying degrees in most societies around the world, and the United States is no exception. Just as racial/ethnic stereotyping and prejudice underlie racial/ethnic inequality, so do stereotypes and false beliefs underlie gender inequality. Although these stereotypes and beliefs have weakened considerably since the 1970s thanks in large part to the contemporary women’s movement, they obviously persist and hamper efforts to achieve full gender equality.

A sociological perspective reminds us that gender inequality stems from a complex mixture of cultural and structural factors that must be addressed if gender inequality is to be reduced further than it already has been since the 1970s. Despite changes during this period, children are still socialized from birth into traditional notions of femininity and masculinity, and gender-based stereotyping incorporating these notions still continues. Although people should certainly be free to pursue whatever family and career responsibilities they desire, socialization and stereotyping still combine to limit the ability of girls and boys and women and men alike to imagine less traditional possibilities. Meanwhile, structural obstacles in the workplace and elsewhere continue to keep women in a subordinate social and economic status relative to men.

To reduce gender inequality, then, a sociological perspective suggests various policies and measures to address the cultural and structural factors that help produce gender inequality. These steps might include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Reduce socialization by parents and other adults of girls and boys into traditional gender roles.
• Confront gender stereotyping by the popular and news media.
• Increase public consciousness of the reasons for, extent of, and consequences of rape and sexual assault, sexual harassment, and pornography.
• Increase enforcement of existing laws against gender-based employment discrimination and against sexual harassment.
• Increase funding of rape-crisis centers and other services for girls and women who have been raped and/or sexually assaulted.
• Increase government funding of high-quality day-care options to enable parents, and especially mothers, to work outside the home if they so desire, and to do so without fear that their finances or their children’s well-being will be compromised.
• Increase mentorship and other efforts to boost the number of women in traditionally male occupations and in positions of political leadership.

As we consider how best to reduce gender inequality, the impact of the contemporary women’s movement must be neither forgotten nor underestimated. Since it began in the late 1960s, the women’s movement has generated important advances for women in almost every sphere of life. Brave women (and some men) challenged the status quo by calling attention to gender inequality in the workplace, education, and elsewhere, and they brought rape and sexual assault, sexual harassment, and domestic violence into the national consciousness. For gender inequality to continue to be reduced, it is essential that a strong women’s movement continue to remind us of the sexism that still persists in American society and the rest of the world.

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