causes of gender discrimination essay

10 Causes of Gender Inequality

Over the years, the world has gotten closer to achieving gender equality. There is better representation of women in politics, more economic opportunities, and better healthcare in many places of the world. However, the World Economic Forum estimates it will take another century before true gender equality becomes a reality. What drives the gap between genders? Here are 10 causes of gender inequality:

#1. Uneven access to education

Around the world, women still have less access to education than men. ¼ of young women between 15-24 will not finish primary school . That group makes up 58% of the people not completing that basic education. Of all the illiterate people in the world, ⅔ are women. When girls are not educated on the same level as boys, it has a huge effect on their future and the kinds of opportunities they’ll get.

#2. Lack of employment equality

Only 6 countries in the world give women the same legal work rights as men. In fact, most economies give women only ¾ the rights of men. Studies show that if employment became a more even playing field, it has a positive domino effect on other areas prone to gender inequality.

#3. Job segregation

One of the causes for gender inequality within employment is the division of jobs. In most societies, there’s an inherent belief that men are simply better equipped to handle certain jobs. Most of the time, those are the jobs that pay the best. This discrimination results in lower income for women. Women also take on the primary responsibility for unpaid labor, so even as they participate in the paid workforce, they have extra work that never gets recognized financially.

#4. Lack of legal protections

According to research from the World Bank , over one billion women don’t have legal protection against domestic sexual violence or domestic economic violence. Both have a significant impact on women’s ability to thrive and live in freedom. In many countries, there’s also a lack of legal protections against harassment in the workplace, at school, and in public. These places become unsafe and without protection, women frequently have to make decisions that compromise and limit their goals.

#5. Lack of bodily autonomy

Many women around the world do not have authority over their own bodies or when they become parents. Accessing birth control is frequently very difficult. According to the World Health Organization , over 200 million women who don’t want to get pregnant are not using contraception. There are various reasons for this such as a lack of options, limited access, and cultural/religious opposition. On a global scale, about 40% of pregnancies are not planned and while 50% of them do end in abortion, 38% result in births. These mothers often become financially dependent on another person or the state, losing their freedom.

#6. Poor medical care

In addition to limited access to contraception, women overall receive lower-quality medical care than men. This is linked to other gender inequality reasons such as a lack of education and job opportunities, which results in more women being in poverty. They are less likely to be able to afford good healthcare. There’s also been less research into diseases that affect women more than men, such as autoimmune disorders and chronic pain conditions. Many women also experience discrimination and dismissal from their doctors, broadening the gender gap in healthcare quality.

#7. Lack of religious freedom

When religious freedom is attacked, women suffer the most. According to the World Economic Forum , when extremist ideologies (such as ISIS) come into a community and restrict religious freedom, gender inequality gets worse. In a study performed by Georgetown University and Brigham Young University, researchers were also able to connect religious intolerance with women’s ability to participate in the economy. When there’s more religious freedom, an economy becomes more stable thanks to women’s participation.

#8. Lack of political representation

Of all national parliaments at the beginning of 2019, only 24.3% of seats were filled by women. As of June of 2019, 11 Heads of State were women. Despite progress in this area over the years, women are still grossly underrepresented in government and the political process. This means that certain issues that female politicians tend to bring up – such as parental leave and childcare, pensions, gender equality laws and gender-based violence – are often neglected.

It would be impossible to talk about gender inequality without talking about racism. It affects what jobs women of color are able to get and how much they’re paid, as well as how they are viewed by legal and healthcare systems. Gender inequality and racism have been closely-linked for a long time. According to Sally Kitch, a professor and author, European settlers in Virginia decided what work could be taxed based on the race of the woman performing the work. African women’s work was “labor,” so it was taxable, while work performed by English women was “domestic” and not taxable. The pay gaps between white women and women of color continues that legacy of discrimination and contributes to gender inequality.

#10. Societal mindsets

It’s less tangible than some of the other causes on this list, but the overall mindset of a society has a significant impact on gender inequality. How society determines the differences and value of men vs. women plays a starring role in every arena, whether it’s employment or the legal system or healthcare. Beliefs about gender run deep and even though progress can be made through laws and structural changes, there’s often a pushback following times of major change. It’s also common for everyone (men and women) to ignore other areas of gender inequality when there’s progress, such as better representation for women in leadership . These types of mindsets prop up gender inequality and delay significant change.

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About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

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Essay on Gender Discrimination

• Updated on  
• Jul 14, 2022

One of the challenges present in today’s society is gender discrimination. Gender discrimination is when someone is treated unequally based on their gender. Gender discrimination is not just present in the workplace but in schools, colleges and communities as well. As per the Civil Rights Act of 1964,  gender discrimination is illegal in India. This is also an important and common essay topic in schools and competitive exams such as IELTS , TOEFL , SAT , UPSC , etc. Let’s explore some samples of essay on gender discrimination and tips for writing an impactful essay.

Tips for Writing an Impactful Essay

If you want to write a scoring and deep impact essay, here are some tips for writing a perfect informative essay:

• The most important and first step is to write an introduction and background information about and related to the topic
• Then you are also required to use the formal style of writing and avoid using slang language
• To make an essay more impactful, write dates, quotations, and names to provide a better understanding
• You can use jargon wherever it is necessary as it sometimes makes an essay complicated
• To make an essay more creative, you can also add information in bulleted points wherever possible
• Always remember to add a conclusion where you need to summarise crucial points
• Once you are done read through the lines and check spelling and grammar mistakes before submission

Essay on Gender Discrimination in 200 Words

One of the important aspects of a democratic society is the elimination of gender discrimination. The root cause of this vigorous disease is the stereotypical society itself. When a child is born, the discrimination begins; if the child is male, he is given a car, bat and ball with blue, and red colour clothes, whereas when a child is female, she is given barbie dolls with pink clothes. We all are raised with a mentality that boys are good at sports and messy, but girls are not good at sports and are well organised. This discriminatory mentality has a deeper impact when girls are told not to work while boys are allowed to do much work. This categorising males and females into different categories discriminating based on gender are known as gender discrimination. Further, this discriminatory behaviour in society leads to hatred, injustice and much more. This gender discrimination is evident in every woman’s life at the workplace, in educational institutions, in sports, etc., where young girls and women are deprived of their rights and undervalued. This major issue prevailing in society can be solved only by providing equality to women and giving them all rights as given to men.

Essay on Gender Discrimination in 300 Words 

Gender Discrimination, as the term signifies, is discrimination or discriminatory behaviour based on gender. The stereotypical mindset of people in the past has led to the discrimination that women face today. According to Kahle Wolfe, in 2015, women earned 83% of the income paid to men by working the same hours. Almost all women are not only discriminated against based on their salaries but also on their looks.

Further, most women are allowed to follow a certain dress code depending upon the work field and the dress women wear also decides their future career.

This dominant male society teaches males that women are weak and innocent. Thus women are mostly victims and are targeted in crimes. For example, In a large portion of the globe, women are blamed for rapes despite being victims because of their clothes. This society also portrays women as weaker and not eligible enough to take a stand for themselves, leading to the major destruction of women’s personalities as men are taught to let women down. This mindset of people nowadays is a major social justice issue leading to gender discrimination in society.

Further, gender-based discrimination is evident across the globe in a plethora of things, including sports, education, health and law. Every 1 out of 3 women in the world is abused in various forms at some point in their lives by men. This social evil is present in most parts of the world; in India, women are burnt to death if they are incapable of affording financial requirements; in Egypt, women are killed by society if they are sensed doing something unclean in or out of their families, whereas in South Africa baby girls are abandoned or killed as they are considered as burden for the family. Thus gender discrimination can be only eliminated from society by educating people about giving equal rights and respect to every gender.

Top Universities for Gender Studies Abroad

UK, Canada and USA are the top three countries to study gender studies abroad. Here’s the list of top universities you can consider to study abroad for Indian students if you planning to pursue gender studies course abroad:

We hope this blog has helped you in structuring a terrific essay on gender discrimination. Planning to ace your IELTS, get expert tips from coaches at Leverage Live by Leverage Edu .

Sonal is a creative, enthusiastic writer and editor who has worked extensively for the Study Abroad domain. She splits her time between shooting fun insta reels and learning new tools for content marketing. If she is missing from her desk, you can find her with a group of people cracking silly jokes or petting neighbourhood dogs.

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Gender Discrimination Causes Inequality

Gender discrimination: inequality starts in childhood.

Every girl and boy deserves an equal chance to survive and thrive. As the leading expert on childhood, Save the Children has been championing equal rights for every child for over 100 years – in fact, we invented the concept. Today, we are the leading champion for the human rights of the world’s 2.2 billion girls and boys.

Yet, gender discrimination, starting in childhood, continues to rob children of their childhoods and limit their chances – disproportionately affecting the world’s girls. A girl is far more likely to be denied her rights, kept from school, forced to marry and subjected to violence – her voice undervalued, if it’s heard at all. This assault on childhood also deprives nations of the energy and talent they need to progress.

At the current rate of change, it will take over 200 years [1]  to achieve gender equality, and that’s just in the U.S. This is unacceptable. Together, we can create a more equal world, right from the start. Make a one-time donation to the Children's Emergency Fund or join Team Tomorrow to connect with the causes you care about - like  inequality - through your monthly donation.

To stay current and receive more tools and tips from our experts, sign up here. 

What is gender discrimination?

Gender discrimination means any exclusion or restriction made on the basis of gender that creates barriers for girls, boys, women and/or men in recognizing, enjoying or exercising their full and equal human rights.

What is gender inequality?

Gender inequality is discrimination on the basis of sex or gender causing one sex or gender to be routinely privileged or prioritized over another.

Gender equality is a fundamental human right and that right is violated by gender-based discrimination. Gender disparity starts in childhood and is right now limiting the lifelong potential of children around the world – disproportionately affecting girls.

Around the world, while contexts and gender roles vary from place to place, we can see that gender inequalities occur everywhere; and at every stage of life, beginning with childhood or even before birth. 

At Save the Children, we put gender equality at the heart of everything we do. Our vision is a world in which all people – girls, boys, women and men – have equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities, regardless of gender norms, identities or expressions. A world where everyone is equally recognized, respected and valued.

Is gender discrimination against the law?

Gender discrimination is prohibited under almost every human rights treaty. This includes international laws providing for equal gender rights between men and women, as well as those specifically dedicated to the realization of women’s rights, such as the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women [2] – considered the international bill of rights for women.

Federal, state and local laws protect individuals from gender discrimination and gender inequality in the United States. Additionally, it is recognized in both law and policy that promoting gender equality is critical to achieving foreign policy objectives for a more prosperous and peaceful world.

What are the causes of gender inequality?

Gender prejudice and resulting gender discrimination begin in childhood. From the moment they’re born, girls and boys face unequal gender norms  as well as social norms regarding expectations and access to resources and opportunities, with lifelong consequences – in their homes, schools and communities.

For example, the world’s boys are often encouraged to go to school and get an education to prepare for work, while girls carry heavy household responsibilities that keep them from school, increasing the odds of child marriage and pregnancy.

Join us in celebrating Womens' History Month with a gift that truly makes a difference – gift boxes from Save the Children. This gift box talks about inequalities and the ways we’re working to make all children equal. A great gift for an amazing girl or woman in your life.

What are the effects of gender inequality?

Despite worldwide progress, gender inequality persists. The COVID-19 pandemic has threatened to put years of hard-won progress at risk. Far too many girls, especially those from the poorest families, still face gender discrimination in education, child marriage and pregnancy, sexual violence and unrecognized domestic work. These are some types of gender inequality. 

Gender Inequality Examples:

• Gender inequality in girls education. Even before the pandemic, girls were more likely than boys to never set foot in a classroom and be denied equal opportunities. Conflict, poverty and other forms of social disadvantage also magnify gender inequality in education. Girls living in countries affected by conflict, for example, are 2.5 times more likely to be out of school than boys. Some 9.7 million children were at risk of being forced out of school by the end of 2020, with girls facing an increased risk.
• Child marriage . Child marriage is a form of gender-based violence and a result and driver of gender inequality and gender discrimination. Experts predict that the COVID-19 pandemic is set to reverse 25 years of progress, which saw child marriage rates decline. In fact, Save the Children analysis revealed a further 2.5 million girls at risk of marriage by 2025 because of the  pandemic —the greatest surge in child marriage rates in nearly three decades.  
• Gender-based violence . Gender-based violence occurs everywhere around the world across all economic and social groups. While both boys and girls are negatively impacted, girls are particularly at risk. An estimated 1 in 3 women globally have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetime, mostly at the hands of their partners. Types of violence may include: prenatal sex selection, female infanticide, neglect, female genital mutilation, rape, child marriage, forced prostitution, honor killing and dowry killing. Many of these gross violations of human rights have been used as weapons of war around the world. Refugee children are particularly vulnerable.
• Child labor. There are currently 152 million children engaged in child labor around the world. [3] Child labor makes it difficult for children to attend school or limits their attendance, putting them at risk of falling behind their peers. Boys and girls are affected differently by child labor and parents’ decisions are often influenced by wider social norms about the different roles that they should play in the home and in society. Girls are much more likely to shoulder the responsibility for household chores while boys are more likely to engage in harmful work such as construction. Girls are usually pulled out of school earlier than boys and are more likely to face sexual exploitation and slavery.

What is the importance of gender equality?

Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable future. Eradicating gender issues means a world where women and men, girls and boys all enjoy equal rights, resources, opportunities and protections.

Empowering girls from the start is proven to have lasting and compounding benefits over the course of their lives. When girls are supported to be active in civic and political spaces, in particular, they are empowered with the tools and skills they need to be drivers of positive change in their families and communities. Girls are the experts of their own experiences, priorities and needs, and are powerful catalysts for a world where gender equality flourishes.

Promoting gender equality is also central to ensuring child protection and the fulfillment of child rights, as abuse, neglect, violence against women and exploitation both reflect and reinforce gender inequalities

What are the effects of gender equality on society?

When girls are empowered to lead their lives, speak their minds and determine their futures, everyone benefits. History suggests that when we fight gender oppression, societies are more stable, safe and prosperous, with happier, better educated citizens. 

Investing in gender equality can have large-scale benefits:

• Every $1 invested in women’s and children’s health can generate a $20 return – according to the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health
• A girl’s eventual income will increase by up to 20% for every year she stays in school – according to UN Women . It also encourages girls to marry later and have fewer children, and leaves them less vulnerable to violence.
• Advancing women’s equality could add up to $28 trillion to global annual growth by 2025 – according to the McKinsey Global Institute .

How does Save the Children challenge gender discrimination and promote gender equality?

Gender equality is a basic right for all people, including both girls and boys. Based on this understanding, Save the Children believes that it is critical to directly address gender discrimination and gender inequality in order to ensure that no harm comes to children, and to advance our vision for a world where every child attains their equal right to grow up healthy, educated and safe.

A focus on gender equality is essential to close inequality gaps and ensure that we reach every last child, including those who are most vulnerable. Gender inequalities intersect with and exacerbate other factors contributing to vulnerability, including age, race, socio-economic class, gender identity, geography, health status and ability.

To build a more equal, inclusive future, free from gender discrimination, we need to start in childhood. Thanks to supporters like you, Save the Children reaches hundreds of millions of children every year, promoting gender equality and empowering girls, right from the start.

Promoting gender equality works! Since 2000, Save the Children helped achieve a 25% decline in child marriage worldwide, empowering 11 million girls to stay in school or transition to work, deciding for themselves when they’re ready for marriage and motherhood.

In addition, Save the Children is proud to be the first nonprofit to be Gender Fair-certified for our commitment to advancing gender equality and empowering the world’s girls.

[1] Equality Can't Wait  |  [2]  U.N Women |  [3] Child Labour Position

**Sources: Unless otherwise noted, gender inequality facts and gender inequality statistics have been sourced from Save the Children’s program and monitoring and evaluation experts, as well as  published reports , including our  gender equality reports .

You can help challenge gender discrimination as a monthly donor!

When you support Save the Children – whether it’s by donating, advocating or participating in an event challenge – you challenge gender discrimination and gender inequality around the world, helping bridge the gap between the challenges girls face and the futures they deserve. You’re helping ensure all children have equal opportunities to grow up healthy, educated and safe.

Join  Team Tomorrow  to connect with the causes you care about — like inequality — through your monthly donation.

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Gender Inequality Essay

500+ words essay on gender inequality.

For many years, the dominant gender has been men while women were the minority. It was mostly because men earned the money and women looked after the house and children. Similarly, they didn’t have any rights as well. However, as time passed by, things started changing slowly. Nonetheless, they are far from perfect. Gender inequality remains a serious issue in today’s time. Thus, this gender inequality essay will highlight its impact and how we can fight against it.

  About Gender Inequality Essay

Gender inequality refers to the unequal and biased treatment of individuals on the basis of their gender. This inequality happens because of socially constructed gender roles. It happens when an individual of a specific gender is given different or disadvantageous treatment in comparison to a person of the other gender in the same circumstance.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Impact of Gender Inequality

The biggest problem we’re facing is that a lot of people still see gender inequality as a women’s issue. However, by gender, we refer to all genders including male, female, transgender and others.

When we empower all genders especially the marginalized ones, they can lead their lives freely. Moreover, gender inequality results in not letting people speak their minds. Ultimately, it hampers their future and compromises it.

History is proof that fighting gender inequality has resulted in stable and safe societies. Due to gender inequality, we have a gender pay gap. Similarly, it also exposes certain genders to violence and discrimination.

In addition, they also get objectified and receive socioeconomic inequality. All of this ultimately results in severe anxiety, depression and even low self-esteem. Therefore, we must all recognize that gender inequality harms genders of all kinds. We must work collectively to stop these long-lasting consequences and this gender inequality essay will tell you how.

How to Fight Gender Inequality

Gender inequality is an old-age issue that won’t resolve within a few days. Similarly, achieving the goal of equality is also not going to be an easy one. We must start by breaking it down and allow it time to go away.

Firstly, we must focus on eradicating this problem through education. In other words, we must teach our young ones to counter gender stereotypes from their childhood.

Similarly, it is essential to ensure that they hold on to the very same beliefs till they turn old. We must show them how sports are not gender-biased.

Further, we must promote equality in the fields of labour. For instance, some people believe that women cannot do certain jobs like men. However, that is not the case. We can also get celebrities on board to promote and implant the idea of equality in people’s brains.

All in all, humanity needs men and women to continue. Thus, inequality will get us nowhere. To conclude the gender inequality essay, we need to get rid of the old-age traditions and mentality. We must teach everyone, especially the boys all about equality and respect. It requires quite a lot of work but it is possible. We can work together and achieve equal respect and opportunities for all genders alike.

FAQ of Gender Inequality Essay

Question 1: What is gender inequality?

Answer 1: Gender inequality refers to the unequal and biased treatment of individuals on the basis of their gender. This inequality happens because of socially constructed gender roles. It happens when an individual of a specific gender is given different or disadvantageous treatment in comparison to a person of the other gender in the same circumstance.

Question 2: How does gender inequality impact us?

Answer 2:  The gender inequality essay tells us that gender inequality impacts us badly. It takes away opportunities from deserving people. Moreover, it results in discriminatory behaviour towards people of a certain gender. Finally, it also puts people of a certain gender in dangerous situations.

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• 06 September 2023

Gender equality: the route to a better world

You have full access to this article via your institution.

The Mosuo people of China include sub-communities in which inheritance passes down either the male or the female line. Credit: TPG/Getty

The fight for global gender equality is nowhere close to being won. Take education: in 87 countries, less than half of women and girls complete secondary schooling, according to 2023 data. Afghanistan’s Taliban continues to ban women and girls from secondary schools and universities . Or take reproductive health: abortion rights have been curtailed in 22 US states since the Supreme Court struck down federal protections, depriving women and girls of autonomy and restricting access to sexual and reproductive health care .

SDG 5, whose stated aim is to “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”, is the fifth of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, all of which Nature is examining in a series of editorials. SDG 5 includes targets for ending discrimination and violence against women and girls in both public and private spheres, eradicating child marriage and female genital mutilation, ensuring sexual and reproductive rights, achieving equal representation of women in leadership positions and granting equal rights to economic resources. Globally, the goal is not on track to being achieved, and just a handful of countries have hit all the targets.

How the world should oppose the Taliban’s war on women and girls

In July, the UN introduced two new indices (see go.nature.com/3eus9ue ), the Women’s Empowerment Index (WEI) and the Global Gender Parity Index (GGPI). The WEI measures women’s ability and freedoms to make their own choices; the GGPI describes the gap between women and men in areas such as health, education, inclusion and decision making. The indices reveal, depressingly, that even achieving a small gender gap does not automatically translate to high levels of women’s empowerment: 114 countries feature in both indices, but countries that do well on both scores cover fewer than 1% of all girls and women.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made things worse, with women bearing the highest burden of extra unpaid childcare when schools needed to close, and subjected to intensified domestic violence. Although child marriages declined from 21% of all marriages in 2016 to 19% in 2022, the pandemic threatened even this incremental progress, pushing up to 10 million more girls into risk of child marriage over the next decade, in addition to the 100 million girls who were at risk before the pandemic.

Of the 14 indicators for SDG 5, only one or two are close to being met by the 2030 deadline. As of 1 January 2023, women occupied 35.4% of seats in local-government assemblies, an increase from 33.9% in 2020 (the target is gender parity by 2030). In 115 countries for which data were available, around three-quarters, on average, of the necessary laws guaranteeing full and equal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights had been enacted. But the UN estimates that worldwide, only 57% of women who are married or in a union make their own decisions regarding sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Systemic discrimination against girls and women by men, in many contexts, remains a colossal barrier to achieving gender equality. But patriarchy is not some “natural order of things” , argues Ruth Mace, an anthropologist at University College London. Hundreds of women-centred societies exist around the world. As the science writer Angela Saini describes in her latest book, The Patriarchs , these are often not the polar opposite of male-dominated systems, but societies in which men and women share decision making .

After Roe v. Wade: dwindling US abortion access is harming health a year later

One example comes from the Mosuo people in China, who have both ‘matrilineal’ and ‘patrilineal’ communities, with rights such as inheritance passing down either the male or female line. Researchers compared outcomes for inflammation and hypertension in men and women in these communities, and found that women in matrilineal societies, in which they have greater autonomy and control over resources, experienced better health outcomes. The researchers found no significant negative effect of matriliny on health outcomes for men ( A.  Z. Reynolds et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 117 , 30324–30327; 2020 ).

When it comes to the SDGs, evidence is emerging that a more gender-equal approach to politics and power benefits many goals. In a study published in May, Nobue Amanuma, deputy director of the Integrated Sustainability Centre at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies in Hayama, Japan, and two of her colleagues tested whether countries with more women legislators, and more younger legislators, are performing better in the SDGs ( N. Amanuma et al. Environ. Res. Lett. 18 , 054018; 2023 ). They found it was so, with the effect more marked for socio-economic goals such as ending poverty and hunger, than for environmental ones such as climate action or preserving life on land. The researchers recommend further qualitative and quantitative studies to better understand the reasons.

The reality that gender equality leads to better outcomes across other SDGs is not factored, however, into most of the goals themselves. Of the 230 unique indicators of the SDGs, 51 explicitly reference women, girls, gender or sex, including the 14 indicators in SDG 5. But there is not enough collaboration between organizations responsible for the different SDGs to ensure that sex and gender are taken into account. The indicator for the sanitation target (SDG 6) does not include data disaggregated by sex or gender ( Nature 620 , 7; 2023 ). Unless we have this knowledge, it will be hard to track improvements in this and other SDGs.

The road to a gender-equal world is long, and women’s power and freedom to make choices is still very constrained. But the evidence from science is getting stronger: distributing power between genders creates the kind of world we all need and want to be living in.

Nature 621 , 8 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02745-9

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Gender Disparity, Its Causes and Consequences Research Paper

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Hypothesized Causes

Hypothesized consequences.

Gender disparity is one of the most disturbing and challenging global issues in the contemporary world. In general, this social phenomenon may be described as specific differences in access to status, resources, and well-being for women and men. Gender disparity traditionally favors men and is frequently institutionalized through social norms, justice, and law. The peculiarities of gender disparity related to the men’s superior social position cause gender discrimination. It implies unfair treatment including exclusion, distinction, and restriction based on the female sex, violation of women’s rights, and denial of their opportunities (Zarar, Bukhsh, and Khaskheli 2017). Gender discrimination rejects the equality of women and men and female fundamental freedoms and opportunities in the economic, political, cultural, civil, and social fields.

Despite substantial progress in all spheres of life, women remain vulnerable to discrimination, prejudice, violence, and exploitation all over the world. According to the research of WHO conducted with the Medical Research Council and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 35% of women “have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence” (Al Dosary 2016:165). Discrimination is present even in developed countries “that claim to be champions of women’s rights” (Zarar et al. 2017:1). In a substantive number of organizations, “the gender gap in wages” that implies the different payment for men and women is still observed (Popescu 2016). Meanwhile, gender discrimination and stigmatization are particularly common in developing countries, such as India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh (Zarar et al. 2017). Women are frequently treated as second-class citizens – they are not allowed to leave the house without the male relative’s permission and spend money on their essential needs (Zarar et al. 2017). The non-implementation of established social regulations may lead to severe legal or domestic punishment.

Women currently remain vulnerable to discrimination, prejudice, violence, and exploitation all over the world because culture and society form gender roles, norms, and stereotypes that may hurt the perception of femininity. For instance, according to cultural and religious norms and traditions of specific communities, a woman is regarded as the man’s property. After marriage, she will not be able to return to her parents or take care of them during old age. That is why the birth of a girl is frequently unwanted. In Islamic culture, women are responsible for covering themselves with a veil and housekeeping regardless of their desires or talents. Traditionally, patriarchal norms deny women’s right to make decisions related to their reproduction and sexuality.

As social norms are accepted both consciously and unconsciously by group members, gender discrimination may be learned as well. The major “agents of gender socialization,” such as family, educational institutions, peer groups, and mass media, have a highly substantial impact on the creation of women’s image (Chambliss and Eglitis 2018:260). Parents traditionally have particular beliefs concerning their children’s behavior based on their gender. In addition, they explicitly or indirectly transmit their vision of other people. Children adopt their parents’ views and may support women’s discrimination in the future if it was common in their family. The focus of mass media and advertising on women’s frequently exaggerated femininity and sexuality, emotional instability, or a lack of independence leads to the negative perception of women as well.

Women currently remain vulnerable to discrimination, prejudice, violence, and exploitation all over the world because a substantial number of communities do not have educational standards and the appropriate level of economic development to reduce gender discrimination. In general, people from high socioeconomic classes and higher educational backgrounds do not support gender discrimination and do not have a prejudice against women (Zarar et al. 2017). Violence against female citizens exists mostly among the representatives of lower socioeconomic classes with a substantively poor educational background.

Because women currently remain vulnerable to discrimination, prejudice, violence, and exploitation all over the world, they frequently suffer from health problems and emotional stress. The act of violence causes a harmful emotional and physical impact on victims. Abused women are typically subjected to anxiety, depression, suicidal behavior, and personality or somatic disorders. Violence may result in crucial physical injuries of the victim’s body as well. The devastating effect of women’s exploitation and discrimination frequently implies the inhibition of their self-determination. Moreover, gender discrimination negatively influences the development of society as women’s talents, skills, potential, and contribution to the communities’ growth are highly essential.

Because women currently remain vulnerable to discrimination, prejudice, violence, and exploitation all over the world, feminist organizations are expanding operations worldwide. In general, feminism may be defined as a historical, social, and political movement that aims to provide social, economic, political, and personal gender equality. Due to feminism, women may vote, study, choose the place of work, make decisions concerning their reproduction, control money, and have their property. However, women’s rights are currently violated in various societies across the globe. That is why feminists organize missions to support women in developing countries.

Al Dosary, Ahmad Hamad. 2016. “Health Impact of Domestic Violence against Saudi Women: Cross Sectional Study.” International Journal of Health Sciences 10(2): 165-173.

Chambliss, William J., and Daina S. Eglitis. 2018. Discover Sociology . 3 rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Popescu, Gheorghe H. 2016. “Gender, Work, and Wages: Patterns of Female Participation in the Labor Market .” Journal of Self-Governance and Management Economics 4(1): 128-134.

Zarar, Rukhshanda, Muneera Moula Bukhsh, and Waheed Akbar Khaskheli. 2017.” Causes and Consequences of Gender Discrimination against Women in Quetta City.” Arts and Social Sciences Journal 8(3):1-6.

• The Problem of Women’s Empowerment
• Sexism Against Women in the Military
• Feminism in the Past and Nowadays
• The Contemporary Image of Feminism
• Feminism in Latin America
• Legal Issue: A Working Dress Code
• Gender Equality in Finland and the U.S.
• The Economy of Kinship
• Women’s Rights and Gender Inequality in Saudi Arabia
• "The Price of Inequality" by Joseph Stiglitz
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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The Discrimination of Women in Society

This essay will discuss the various forms of discrimination faced by women in society. It will explore historical and contemporary issues, including gender-based violence, workplace inequality, and societal stereotypes. The piece will also consider the progress made in gender equality and the ongoing challenges women face in achieving equal rights and opportunities. Additionally, PapersOwl presents more free essays samples linked to Discrimination.

How it works

The unequal treatment of individuals based on their gender is a deeply rooted problem in most societies, even our own. Discrimination of women in health, education, and politics has consequences for the development of their lives and their freedom of choice. A country’s culture directly impact how gender equality is exercised as a basic human right.

The first step to finding suggestion and solutions for this global problem, is understanding what it is: “Gender equality is, first and foremost, a human right.

Women are entitled to live in dignity and in freedom from want and from fear. Empowering women is also an indispensable tool for advancing development and reducing poverty. Empowered women contribute to the health and productivity of whole families and communities and to improved prospects for the next generation.” United Nations Population Fund, para. 2

Globally, the discrimination of women is caused by several issues. Not all of these issues are present in all areas, however, these are the basic reasons why global gender inequality exists. Limited access to resources, education, and basic healthcare, long determined and sustained gender preconceptions and widespread gender-based violence are the foundations of this seemingly insurmountable problem. What is sobering, is that The World Economic Forum’s ninth Global Gender Gap Report estimates that the world will not eliminate the gender gap until 2095 — that’s another 81 years.4

So, what is standing in our way? Let’s look at each of our barriers independently. Women’s access to, and use of, natural resources is likely to differ from that of men’s, as a result of gender division. Women often have customary access to agricultural land for food and to forests for foraging and fuel collection. However, women rarely have any legal tenure. Attitudes towards land tenure for women can restrict women’s opportunities to make decisions about the use of land and resources.5

Access to education is also an obstacle. Large gender gaps exist in access, learning achievement and continuation in education in many settings, most often at the expense of girls. Poverty, geographical isolation, minority status, disability, early marriage and pregnancy, gender-based violence, and traditional attitudes about the status and role of women, are among the many obstacles that stand in the way of women and girls fully exercising their right to participate in, complete and benefit from education.7 Study after study shows that educating girls would be an incredibly effective way to raise economic productivity, lower infant and maternal mortality, improve nutrition and promote health.

Significant inequities in access to health care services and overall health status persist for women, especially in the area of reproductive health. Today, at least half of the world’s people lack access to essential health because they are not available or are financially out of reach. A disproportionate number of these people are women and girls. This is unacceptable. A woman should not have to choose whether to purchase food or pay for a health visit.8

A gender stereotype is a generalized view or preconception about attributes, or characteristics that are or ought to be possessed by women and men or the roles that are or should be performed by men and women. Gender stereotypes can be both positive and negative for example, “women are nurturing” or “women are weak”. Gender stereotyping is wrongful when it results in a violation or violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms. An example of this is the failure to criminalize marital rape based on the stereotype of women as the sexual property of men. Another example is the failure of the justice system to hold perpetrator of sexual violence accountable based on stereotypical views about women’s appropriate sexual behavior.9

Violence against women and girls is both a cause and a consequence of gender inequality. Estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO) indicate that about 1 in 3 (35 percent) of women and girls worldwide have experienced physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime. Violence against women is not only a cause of gender inequality, it is a consequence of it. In many places, gender-based violence is reinforced by discriminatory laws and exclusionary social norms that undermine women and girl’s opportunities for education, income and independence. 10

Everything we have learned over the past decade shows that when women are empowered—through economic opportunity, health care and education—the benefits go far beyond the individual. Families, communities and nations are better off. Population growth slows, economic growth is stronger, and countries have more capacity, as well as more room to make choices which favor sustainability.6 So, if that is true, why isn’t anyone doing anything about it?

The answer is, they are. There are several government and non-government agencies that have made global gender equality a priority. Organizations That Address Gender Equality While most countries recognize that equal rights should exist between men and women, this is often not the case. Many have produced regulations intended to fight discrimination and programs granting women access to health, education and economic rights such as land ownership. But these regulations don’t seem to solve the problem. We need compassionate organizations to fix the gap concerning gender equality.11

InterAction: Since 1992, InterAction, through its Commission on the Advancement of Women, has worked to advance female empowerment and gender equality in the policy and practice of InterAction members and other agencies. ProMundo: Promundo is a global leader in promoting gender justice and preventing violence by engaging men and boys in partnership with women and girls. CARE: CARE’s commitment to women’s empowerment and gender equality is based on decades of expertise in dozens of countries and in every development sector. We see gender as a cross-cutting issue that we address in every program to make an equal world free of poverty. Sonke Gender Justice: Sonke’s vision is a world in which men, women and children can enjoy equitable, healthy and happy relationships that contribute to the development of just and democratic societies. They work across Africa to strengthen government, civil society and citizen capacity to promote gender equality. International Planned Parenthood: IPPF pushes for legal and policy reforms which combat female genital mutilation (FGM), early forced marriage and other forms of gender discrimination.

Centre for Health and Social Justice: CHSJ is a resource organization on issues of men, masculinity and gender, health rights of marginalized communities and reproductive and sexual health and rights. White Ribbon: White Ribbon is the world’s largest movement of men and boys working to end violence against women and girls, promote gender equity, healthy relationships and a new vision of masculinity. UN Women: UN Women, among other issues, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls, empowerment of women and achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. National Organization for Women: The National Organization for Women Foundation (“NOW Foundation”) is an organization devoted to achieving full equality for women through education and litigation. The Foundation focuses on a broad range of women’s rights issues, including economic justice, pay equity, racial discrimination and women’s health and body image. And, World Health Organization: The Global Gender, Equity and Human Rights team, comprised of staff across all six regions as well as in some WHO country offices, oversees the integration of gender, equity and human rights into healthcare programs and policies across the different program areas that make up the World Health Organization.

Each and every one of these organizations are doing their par to chip away at an issue that seems daunting, if not all together impossible. However, for the focus of this paper, we are going to be looking at Equality Now. Since 1992, this international network of lawyers, activists and supporters have held governments responsible for ending legal inequality, sex trafficking, sexual violence & harmful practices, such as female genital mutilation and child marriage. The basic premise of this organization is that social change often begins with legal change. They help advance women’s and girls’ rights, because when women and girls, men and boys are treated equally, “everyone wins.”12 Their mission statemen states, “Every day, women and girls around the world face violence and discrimination. Sexual exploitation, harmful cultural practices and systemic inequalities violate their human rights and prevent them from reaching their potential. This kind of inequality is bad for everyone, not just for women: research shows that where women and girls are treated unfairly, there is more societal conflict and less economic stability. It is our intention to achieve legal and systemic change that addresses violence and discrimination against women and girls around the world. A country’s laws set the tone for how it treats its people, and how its people treat each other. When women and girls have fewer rights than men and boys, violence and discrimination are legitimized and ignored. That’s why we use a unique combination of legal advocacy, regional partnership-building and community mobilization to encourage governments to adopt, improve and enforce laws that protect and promote the rights of women and girls around the world.

One of the many initiatives of this organization is the elimination of what they call Harmful Practices. Harmful Practices is an all-encompassing term used by the United Nations to categorize forms of violence or ritual discrimination, primarily committed against girls and women, that have become culturally normalized. There is no comprehensive list of harmful practices, however some of the most common include: Female genital mutilation, child and forced marriage, bride kidnapping and polygamy. These practices represent a denial of the dignity and integrity of the individual and a violation of human rights.

Harmful practices have the following characteristics: They constitute a denial of the dignity of the individual and violate human rights and fundamental freedoms of women as recognized under international law. They constitute discrimination against women and are harmful because they result in violence, negative physical, psychological, economic or social harm. They are traditional, emerging or re-emerging practices that are kept in place through social norms that perpetuate male dominance. They are imposed on women by families, community members or society at large, regardless of whether the victim provides or is able to provide full, free and informed consent.

There are provisions under national, regional and international law that prohibit harmful practices and oblige states to take measures to eliminate both harmful practices and their root causes. The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) requires states take all appropriate measures to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, with a view to achieving the elimination of prejudices and customary and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women.13

The Maputo Protocol starts off by defining harmful practices as ‘all behavior, attitudes and/or practices which negatively affect the fundamental rights of women and girls, such as their right to life, health, dignity, education and physical integrity’. Article 2(2) of the Maputo Protocol requires states to ‘modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of women and men … with a view to achieving the elimination of harmful cultural and traditional practices and all other practices …12

Another initiative of Equality Now is their efforts to fight against gender-based violence, a subject we dealt with pretty heavily in this class. When women and girls can live free from the threat of sexual violence, they can live healthier lives. When communities are safer for women and girls, they are safer and more prosperous for everyone. Equality Now’s work to end sexual violence can positively impact not only the woman or girl – but also her entire community. 12 Overwhelmingly committed by men against women, sexual violence can take many forms, including rape, domestic violence and harassment and objectification. Violence against women and girls is rooted in inequality. Around the world, rape and sexual abuse are everyday violent occurrences — affecting close to a billion women and girls over their lifetimes. However, despite the pervasiveness of these crimes, laws are insufficient, inconsistent, not systematically enforced and, sometimes, promote violence. The work of Equality Now is to advance global gender equality supports their efforts to get justice for survivors and victims of sexual violence – with the ultimate goal of preventing violence altogether. Equality Now uses the law to end violence against women and girls by advocating for strong laws and policies to protect women and girls from sexual violence, making sure that the justice system works, with proper investigation, prosecution and punishment of offenders, pushing for legal procedures that support survivors and prevent re-victimization and working with partners to bring specific cases to national, regional and international courts to underscore the global nature of this human rights abuse.

The last, and probably most important work being done by Equality Now, is their work toward achieving legal equality. They believe that legal equality is the first step to gender equality. A country’s laws set the tone for how it treats its people, and how its people treat each other. When women and girls have fewer rights than men and boys, violence and discrimination are legitimized and ignored. Equal treatment under the law is fundamental to creating a happier, fairer, more prosperous world for everyone. 12 Equality Now, uses a unique combination of legal advocacy, regional partnership-building and community mobilizations to encourage governments to adopt, improve and enforce laws that protect and promote the rights of women and girls around the world. This involves urging governments and policymakers to enact and enforce laws that promote equal rights for women and girls, holding governments accountable to international human rights standards, making the justice system works for women and girls and elevating cases to national, regional and international courts and bodies, inspiring people around the world to fight for equality.

The reason Equality Now is able to make any strides at all is the fact that many areas of the world have adopted, and attempted to put into practice, several initiatives to legally mandate equality. International human rights law is the set of rules and minimum standards that governs relations between nations and sets standards for how a State treats its people. It guarantees equal rights, protections and access to justice for women and girls.12 For example, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations in 1966, states that “All persons are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law.” (Article 26). There is also the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which was adopted in 1979, has been ratified by more than 50 countries in the world. And, although the United States has not ratified the resolution, over 40 cities and local governments have adopted CEDAW ordinances. This treaty, sometimes described as the “bill of rights” for women, was the first to address women’s rights as human rights.

Because of the existence of these mandates and others like them, Equality Now can use their powers to enforce action. Each country’s government sets laws that apply to individuals within its borders. Since these national laws have the most direct effect on individuals, it is critical that they meet international standards. By advocating for stronger national laws that follow regional and international standards, we continue to create a fairer world for women and girls.12 Regional laws often match international laws and are sometimes tailored to specific issues in that region. Equality Now uses regional and international human rights law to hold governments accountable for their promises and to bring local issues to the attention of human rights bodies.

At the moment, Equality Now has urgent issues pending. Some of the most important of these are Sudan Uprising; Let us not forget the women; Make Equality A Reality for All Muslim Women; and even United States: End Sexual Harassment in the Workplace! Their website, located at https://www.equalitynow.org, gives detailed summaries of their initiatives, invitations to donate or join letter writing campaigns, as well as thoughtful stories and personal experiences.

Equality Now is composed of 35 staff members, led by the Global Executive Director. Each of Equality Now’s regional offices—Africa, the Americas, and Europe—is led by a regional director. The staff collectively has a strong background is human rights law, legal advocacy, and international and regional frameworks. The global Board of Directors consists of individuals with diverse expertise and geographic perspectives. Board member skills and areas of knowledge include international policy and women’s and human rights; finance, organizational management and strategic planning; and communications, marketing and fundraising.12 Their combined expertise has brought about some substantial, albeit slow, change.

In 2015, in nations across the globe, Equality Now helped protect hundreds of thousands of girls through a multitude of ways. After working with international organizations to promote ending Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). In countries like Somalia and Egypt, it was made illegal. In the United States, Equality Now supported the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, strengthening Federal trafficking laws and further crippling the sex tourism industry. And, in a precedent-setting decision, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights officially informed us that it had ruled in their favor in the case of “Makeda,” who was abducted, raped and forced into marriage in Ethiopia at age 13. This case, which started in 2002, was one of their first and longest-running campaigns under their Adolescent Girls’ Legal Defense Fund.

Globally, no country has fully attained gender equality. Scandinavian countries like Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden lead the world in their progress toward closing the gender gap. In these countries, there is relatively equitable distribution of available income, resources, and opportunities for men and women. The greatest gender gaps are identified primarily in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. However, a number of countries in these regions, including Lesotho, South Africa, and Sri Lanka outrank the United States in gender equality.14

So, if you are a girl, you can stay in school, help empower your female classmates to do the same and fight for your right to access sexual and reproductive health services. If you are a woman, you can address unconscious biases and implicit associations that form an unintended and often an invisible barrier to equal opportunity. If you are a man or a boy, you can work alongside women and girls to achieve gender equality and embrace healthy, respectful relationships. You can fund education campaigns to curb cultural practices like female genital mutilation and change harmful laws that limit the rights of women and girls and prevent them from achieving their full potential. 1″

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Gender Inequality — Gender Inequality: Causes And Solutions

Gender Inequality: Causes and Solutions

• Categories: Gender Discrimination Gender Inequality Women's Rights

About this sample

Words: 1213 |

Published: Feb 8, 2022

Words: 1213 | Pages: 3 | 7 min read

Table of contents

Consequences, perspectives, solution/course of action, works cited.

• EU. (2018). Gender Equality. https://ec.europa.eu/info/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/gender-equality_en
• Jahan, S. (2018). Human Development Indices and Indicators 2018. United Nations Development Programme.
• Naschold, F. (2000). Poverty and income inequality in developing countries: An overview. Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.
• Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. (2016). Poverty reduction strategy paper.
• The Express Tribune. (2015). Multidimensional poverty drops to 38.8% in 2014-15. https://tribune.com.pk/story/926258/multidimensional-poverty-drops-to-38-8-in-2014-15/
• The News. (2019). Aurat March: Women demand rights, equality across Pakistan. https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/447416-aurat-march-women-demand-rights-equality-across-pakistan
• UN Women. (n.d.). Gender equality.
• UN. (n.d.). Gender equality: UN Women.
• UN. (2017). Passport gender gaps.
• UN. (2019). Gender inequality remains deeply entrenched in all regions of the world, UN report finds.

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Conventus Law

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What Are The Causes And Effects Of Gender Discrimination?

October 2, 2020 by Conventus Law

2 October, 2020

As a societal issue, gender discrimination has long been an extraordinarily significant problem in American society. Despite advances in education and women's rights legislation in the United States over the last hundred years, women in the workforce still face a barrage of questionable behavior and discriminatory hiring practices on a regular basis.

On average, for example, women in general still only earn around 80% of the money of their male counterparts in the workplace, and women from ethnic minority groups may face even worse conditions on the job: Currently, Hispanic women in the United States earn around 50% less pay than white men occupying the same roles.

But contrasting pay-rates are only part of the wider picture of gender bias in the workplace. Despite being qualified for challenging and high-paying positions, many women in the United States may simply lack the opportunities to advance their careers.

Why Recognizing the Signs of Discrimination on the Basis of Gender is Important

So how did such a dire situation arise in a country where equality is often touted as a central national value? Moreover, what are the psychological effects of this form of discrimination? Answers relating to these questions are complex, but there are identifiable roots and consequences of this form of iniquity in American society.

At base, it is important to recognize the signs of this form of discrimination because there are ways to approach the issue from a legal standpoint. Offending employers can and should be held accountable for their discriminatory practices.

Indeed, discrimination on the basis of gender is currently illegal in the United States. This principle was enshrined in US legal code with the passage of laws such as the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (A good Gender Discrimination lawyer will be trained to apply these laws to specific cases, and trusted West Coast employment lawyers can and will act as excellent guides towards equitable solutions in discrimination cases.)

Seeking a Just Outcome From a Legal Standpoint

As is often the case in human affairs, however, the existence of a particular law and the enforcement of that law are two separate issues: Indeed, despite legal protections afforded to women in the workplace, discrimination on the basis of gender is still widespread throughout the country. (In fact, many toxic employers even rely on the assumption that employees will not take their cases to court.)

This is due to a variety of different issues attending discrimination in the workplace. For example, women who are discriminated against may feel afraid of speaking with a Gender Discrimination attorney about bringing a case to court due to fears of reprisal from their employers or because they blame themselves for workplace abuses.

Indeed, discrimination on the basis of gender is often accompanied by misplaced feelings of shame. This is an intentional byproduct of discrimination: Many discriminatory employers attempt to blame their victims in order to absolve themselves of legal or professional consequences. Fortunately, a trained Gender Discrimination lawyer will be adept at countering bad-faith arguments on the part of such employers.

What Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Looks Like

To better understand this form of prejudice, it is also important to understand what discrimination on the basis of gender looks like on a day-to-day basis. Like many forms of prejudice, this form of discrimination can take on a variety of different forms.

During the hiring process, for example, a woman may be discriminated against simply because she is a woman: Newly-married women may have their job applications rejected because employers assume that they will be starting families in the near future and will require maternity leave. Those with families may be discriminated against because employers often stereotype working mothers as unreliable.

Discrimination on the basis of gender may also occur in other nefarious ways. For example, a woman who becomes pregnant may be effectively fired from her job in order to save an employer the cost of paying for maternity leave expenses. She may also be fired due to fulfilling childcare obligations at a later date. (Judges tend to take a very hard line on employers who commit these kind of discriminatory offenses.)

This form of gender prejudice can also extend into outright harassment. Throughout her time at a particular business, a woman may find that she is the subject of workplace jokes or insults about her job performance. This is particularly true when businesses operate as a kind of "boy's club" wherein women are demeaned on a regular basis. Indeed, discrimination on the basis of gender can quickly devolve into outright sexual harassment: The two issues are closely related.

Causes of Gender Discrimination

Like many forms of prejudice, discrimination on the basis of gender can originate from a wide variety of different sources. These can include outmoded social expectations, distorted beliefs, personal senses of entitlement, and outright bigotry.

For example, many industries in the United States have tended to exclusively hire male workers. As recently as fifty years ago, certain jobs were seen as "male-oriented" jobs fit only for men. For generations, in fact, occupational roles within society such as those held by doctors, lawyers, accountants, and business executives were primarily male-dominated; unfortunately, public acceptance of female professionals is a relatively recent phenomenon.

Even today, most executive positions are given to men; presently, less than 10% of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are women. Men outnumber women in the US Senate by a nearly three-to-one ratio. Even as society strives to become more inclusive, most women will face an uphill battle in the workforce at some point in their careers. The so-called "glass ceiling" is still vey much in effect in US society.

Effects of Discrimination Based on Gender

There can be little doubt that the effects of gender discrimination can be extraordinarily destructive on a person's mental health. Because many employers using discriminatory practices attempt to shame their victims into submission, for example, the victims of discrimination often struggle with grievous feelings of guilt and regret. They often blame themselves for the abuse that they have received from their employer.

The victims of these measures often do not realize that this form of emotional confusion is part and parcel of workplace discrimination. It is used to cause victims to question their role in the abuse and is often referred to by psychologists as "victim-blaming."

For example, an employer who fires an employee for taking maternity leave may use convoluted excuses to cover their tracks. They may cite a trumped-up "performance review" to justify their own discriminatory practices. These actions are smokescreens to conceal illegal behavior.

Sadly, an employee in such a situation may come to doubt their own performance at work and even come to believe their employer's excuses. Even if the employee worked hard at their job and made a good-faith effort to get along with and help their peers in the workplace, the employee may secretly blame themselves for their abrupt termination.

The employee in this situation may also worry about what their employer will say about them in court if a case is brought forward. They may worry about the way in which their future employment prospects will be affected by a "bad" reference from an abusive employer. (Fortunately, a good Gender Discrimination attorney will often be familiar with the tricks that such employers play to avoid taking responsibility for their actions.)

Undoubtedly, researching good West Coast employment lawyers can be a great first step towards holding toxic employers accountable for their actions. With the right counsel to guide them through the intricacies of the legal system, an employee who has been discriminated against can and should move forward to seek out a legal acknowledgement of their human rights.

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• The Causes, Effects & Remedies for Gender Discrimination Website title: Smallbusiness.chron.com URL: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/causes-effects-remedies-gender-discrimination-10726.html
• Gender Discrimination: Causes and Reduction Website title: Psychology Discussion - Discuss Anything About Psychology URL: http://www.psychologydiscussion.net/gender-discrimination/gender-discrimination-causes-and-reduction/1738

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Seminar: What Causes Gender Inequality?

- A Working Syllabus - SOC-UA 937 – Fall 2018

Robert Max Jackson

      In this course we will investigate what causes inequality between women and men .  How does it arise, why does it take different forms, why does it vary in degree across societies, what are the components that add up to gender inequality, how do various institutions and practices contribute to it, and how does it change?  The course will emphasize the history of gender inequality in the United States.

While we focus on gender inequality, we will also seek to understand social causation more generally.  We will explore the diverse ways social causation works and how we can identify the causes behind important social phenomena. 

Table of Contents

Description – Scope, Organization, and Access:

The Scope of the Topics and Materials. We know a lot about gender inequality – its history, how people experience it in their lives, the ways it varies in intensity and form across time and place, the beliefs that make it seem natural, and much more.  The outpouring of research and commentary on gender inequality over the past half century has been extraordinary.  Unfortunately, despite all this, our understanding of what causes gender inequality remains troubled. Both ordinary people and experts (such as scholars) commonly fluctuate between simplistic explanations that founder under close scrutiny and throwing up their hands in frustration over what can seem an enigma beyond human comprehension.  Here we will seek to surmount this dilemma.  We will explore diverse facets of gender inequality and varied ideas about what causes might be decisive.  We will also look carefully at the ways we can identify and verify the causes of social phenomena.  Through these efforts we will aim both to enhance our understanding of what produces gender inequality and to improve our general ability to do causal social analyses effectively.

The class organization and goals. In this class, each week's work will be organized around an analytical task, as well as a set of readings.  Rather than focusing on discussion of the readings, the analytical tasks involve attempting a causal analysis of some aspect of gender inequality related to the week's issue, building on the materials we read (in brief papers of a couple pages).  The approach in this class seeks to develop analytical skills as well as understandings of the relevant literature by stressing doing actual analyses of gender inequality. (Note: this class does not have an exam nor a final paper.)

All class meetings are organized as discussions.  Part of our class discussions will be on the common readings and part on students' efforts to explore the analytical tasks  each week.  We will adjust the time devoted to these two goals according to our experiences over the class.  Every week, students will initiate discussions on readings and papers. To make this work, each week's papers will be exchanged (electronically) with enough lead time that we can all read all the papers prior to the class meetings.

Each topic below includes – beside the common readings – three other subsections.  These are: an analytical task , recommended readings , and related readings .  The analytical task is the writing assignment for the week.  Everyone should read the common readings while doing the analytical task (and be prepared to discuss them).  In each of these papers – always  brief papers – students will try out causal ideas related to the week's topic.  Recommended and related readings are optional materials useful for those who want to dig deeper into a topic.  To simplify navigating through the syllabus, these subsections are hidden until the viewer clicks on the subsection heading, then they will appear.

Most of our readings will be articles available for downloading.  The links will appear in the  online version of the course syllabus.  Excerpts from Down So Long . . .: The Puzzling Persistence of Gender Inequality (book manuscript by RMJ not yet published) will similarly be available for downloading from the class web site.  (As we will read selections from Jackson's book Destined for Equality [Harvard U Press] throughout the course, you might want to buy it or borrow it.) 

Any student unfamiliar with the study of gender, can (and probably should) pick up the basics from a standard textbook in the area – I recommend Michael Kimmel's Gendered Society (which I use in my basic general undergraduate class on gender, so used copies should be easy to find).

For further relevant sources, my reading lists/syllabi for two graduate courses might be valuable.  The one most directly related is What Causes Gender Inequality: Analytical Foundations ; a more general class, What Causes Inequality: Analytical Foundations , may provide materials for broader questions about different kinds of inequalities and how to think about gender inequality in relationship to them.

A note on the "hidden" material below :   Each section of this guide includes – beside the common readings – three subsections, one for an analytical task , one for recommended readings , and one for related readings .  To simplify navigating through the course guide, only the headings for these subsections are initially visible.  The contents of all these subsections are hidden (so that the beginning appearance of the page is similar to a standard syllabus) until the viewer clicks on a subsection heading, then its contents will appear.  While this organization is helpful for negotiating the page most of the time, it can become an obstacle if we want to search the page (for example, for a particular article) as searches will ignore the hidden material (that is, if you search a page you are viewing in an internet browser, the search will only examine what is shown on the page at that time).  To overcome this limitation, you can "open" all the hidden sections to show everything on the page by clicking the § symbol at the top of the page.  (To restore the page to the normal condensed view, simply reload the page which will collapse all the "hidden" sections to their usual look).  The table of contents at the top of this page will aid speedy navigation to any topic, which is particularly helpful if you reveal all the "hidden" material.

I. Introduction.  What do we mean by gender inequality?

To analyze the causes of gender inequality, we need to know what we mean by gender inequality.  How can we conceive of and talk about gender inequality in ways that are general enough to apply across the range of relevant phenomena, consistent enough to minimize conceptual ambiguities, and precise enough to be analytically effective?  Gender inequality has been extraordinarily diverse and wide spread.  Women and men are unequal in every conceivable way in endless circumstances, both immediate and enduring, by both objective criteria and subjective experience.   So, what counts as gender inequality? Can we characterize it in ways that let us confidently and impartially assess when there is more or less of it?

• No task for the introductory meeting.
• Down So Long :   Why Is It So Hard to Explain Gender Inequality?  
• Chafetz, Janet Saltzman. " Feminist Theory and Sociology: Underutilized Contributions for Mainstream Theory ." Annual Review of Sociology 23, no. 1 (1997): 97-120. [doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.23.1.97]; or Chafetz, Janet Saltzman. " The Varieties of Gender Theory in Sociology ." In Handbook of the Sociology of Gender , edited by Janet Saltzman Chafetz, 3-23. Boston, MA: Springer US, 2006. [doi:10.1007/0-387-36218-5_1]
• Rosenfeld, Rachel A. " What Do We Learn About Difference from the Scholarship on Gender? ." Social Forces 81, no. 1 (2002): 1-24. [doi:10.1353/sof.2002.0057]
• Destined for Equality : Egalitarian Impulse

II. Causality - What are causes, mechanisms, and the like?

We casually refer to causes and effects in normal interactions all the time.  We all conduct our lives – choosing actions, making decisions, trying to influence others – based on theories about why and how things happen in the world.  From the early stages of childhood we attribute causes, building a vision of the social (and physical) world that makes it understandable.  Every action, every choice about what to do, is based on our anticipation of its effects, our understandings of consequences.  Analytical and scientific reasoning has a similar form, but requires that we approach causation more systematically and self-consciously.

• Our analytical task this week is to attempt a "simple" causal analysis of a gender difference that is obvious but not often questioned - the way we dress.  The purpose of this exercise is to get us thinking about causality. 
• To the degree that we can, we want to try to think of different kinds of causes based on varied ways of framing the causal question.  Realistically, one could easily write a book about all the possible ways of interpreting this causal question and answering it.  We are just trying to develop some sensible insights in a couple pages. 

The underlying idea is simple but powerful.  If we are trying to explain some phenomenon, X, then we need to identify variations in the likelihood of X or the rate of X, and look for potential causes that (1) vary across the relevant circumstances in a way that could explain X and (2) that we can connect to the outcomes for X in some way.  For example, with the gender distinctive clothing question, some ways to better specify the question and look at it through comparisons are:

• What causes individual conformity to the cultural pattern?   What induces women and men to conform to the expectations for dressing differently?  Whenever we observe a consistent pattern of social behavior, some common conditions or processes must be inducing people to act in a similar way.  Figuring out what encourages conformity and discourages deviance allows us to provide a causal explanation.  Think about what happens to people who do not conform to the expectations about male and female appropriate clothing.  And, just as important, ask why it is that people punish nonconformists.  Here the basic comparison is between people who conform and those who do not, or between the reactions of people to conformity and nonconformity.
• What causes differences in dress "codes" across cultures? What circumstances could exist across societies that consistently produce gender differences in modes of dress?  The clothing characteristic of each sex varies greatly across societies (and time).  Clothing differs between "primitive" cultures and modern ones, between warm and cold climates, and between different parts of the world.  But seemingly everywhere men and women dress differently.  How can we explain this pattern?  Here the primary comparison is between cultures that have different clothing.
• Why do the expectations about clothing differences vary by context ?  Why are gender differences in dress greater in some circumstances than in others?  For example, both women and men may wear similar coveralls in a factory, but women and men generally wear dramatically different clothing to formal dances.  Our efforts to find causes behind any phenomena are improved by looking at variations.  If male and female clothing is just a little different in some contexts but greatly different in others, we can usefully focus on what might produce this variance in gender differences.  Here the primary comparison is between contexts with greater differences in the expected clothing and contexts with lesser differences.
• The gender differences in apparel (and appearance adjustment more generally) could be considered as one example of apparel differences that find groups defined by age, ethnicity, or region dressing differently.  That is to say, it is not only women and men who consistently dress differently.  Different ways of dressing also distinguish other groups.  If we think about those other groups, does it give us insights into explaining the difference between women's and men's clothing?
• The gender differences in dress could be considered as one example of a wider range of behavioral differences between women and men such as rules of proper decorum, speech patterns, or displays of sexuality.  That is, we can point to other presentational differences between women and men.  If we think about the range of these presentational differences, do they suggest ideas that might help explain differences in apparel?
• Maggetti, Martino, Fabrizio Gilardi, and Claudio M. Radaelli. Designing Research in the Social Sciences . London, 2013. {Read Chs. 1-3; Glance at rest which can be valuable} [doi:10.4135/9781473957664]
• Gerring, John. " Causation: A Unified Framework for the Social Sciences ." Journal of Theoretical Politics 17, no. 2 (2005): 163-98. [doi:10.1177/0951629805050859]
• Epstein, Joshua M. " Why Model? ." Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 11, no. 4 (2008): 12. [Generic Link]
• Wikipedia. " Causality "
• Little, Daniel. 1991. Varieties of Social Explanation: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Social Science. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Pp. 1-87    
• Richard Hamming, " You and Your Research ", Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar (7 March 1986)
•   Andrew Abbott.  " The Causal Devolution ." Sociological Methods & Research November 1998 27: 148-181.
• Ernest Nagel.   1960. " Determinism in History ."   Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 20:3:291-317. 
• Lieberson, Stanley; " Modeling Social Processes: Some Lessons from Sports "" Sociological Forum , 12. March 1997:11-35.

III.  How is gender inequality symbolized and reproduced in everyday life?

To start our investigation of the causes of gender inequality, we will consider how people experience and act out gender in their day to day lives.  We want to think about the most basic questions.  Why and when do women and men act differently?  Why and when do people respond differently to women than men?  How do all these private individual actions when taken together over time influence the understanding of gender in a culture and gender inequality?

• For this task, we choose some familiar (to us) setting or type of interaction where women and men typically engage each other.  For example, this could be a workplace, a bar, interactions between buyers and sellers, or parties.  We use this as our source of empirical data and focus our argument on explaining gender interactions there.
• First, we need to read Ridgeway's argument carefully.  Then we try to apply her argument to the setting we have chosen.  We want to assess how much we believe people's actions (in the context we chose) fit the expectations we can derive from her argument and when they might not.  As we work on our analyses, we are evaluating Ridgeway's approach as a tool. The right tool allows us to construct a better edifice with less effort; the wrong tool does not.
• For example, first, we simply consider possible differences between men's and women's actions. 
• Then we consider how their actions might differ between opposite-sex and same-sex encounters. 
• We can broaden the range of the examples we use to think about these differences by considering other characteristics that might affect interactions, such as the age or race of the people, whether the interaction is cordial or unfriendly, how well the people know each other, and so on. 
• We want to ask ourselves if the gender aspect of the interaction will be influenced by these other circumstances that seem relevant to interactions. For example, does gender influence cordial interactions differently from the ways it influences confrontations in our setting? If we believe the answer is yes, then we consider how and why. 
• Analogously, we want to think about the ways that people's goals in gendered interactions vary in these kinds of circumstances, and how these goals influence their actions.  For example, in the same setting, a person seeking sex will commonly act differently than someone trying to curry favor or sell a product.
• When we apply a systematic logic to the analysis, we usually do not want to write about all the possibilities we think about.  Instead, we use the ones that we find telling.  But we will not identify those telling possibilities unless we systematically work through all the relevant possible influences.
• the presence or absence of onlookers (i.e., the relative privacy of the interaction) or
• the gender distribution of other people present (i.e., mostly male, mostly female, or mixed)
• Conformity .  Whenever we try to explain patterns like this, we want to consider the exceptions.  When will people violate the implications of gender expectations and what follows when they do?  Are there circumstances that make it more likely people will depart from conventional behavior?  Violations of norms or common expectations are valuable for causal analyses because cracks in the veneer of social order can reveal its structure and dynamics.
• Bring it together .  After working through the steps above, we try to assess when Ridgeway's approach does a good job explaining how gender influences behavior in our chosen setting, and when her approach seems to fall short.   Do we see ways that her approach neglects or misunderstands important causes influencing the gender character of behavior in the context we examine?  Our central goal here is to explain how and why gender organizes interactions in our chosen example. We are not attempting a general evaluation of Ridgeway's ideas, but a focused assessment of their effectiveness in the setting we have selected to try them out.
• Cecilia L. Ridgeway, Framed by Gender , Chs. 1-2 {I recommend buying Ridgeway's book, but it is also available on line through the library via this link}; If any of Ridgeway's presentation seems unclear, try reading Ridgeway's article listed under the recommended readings for this week.
• Hyde, J. S. (2005). The Gender Similarities Hypothesis . American Psychologist , 60, 581-592.
• Rosabeth Moss Kanter.  " Some Effects of Proportions on Group Life: Skewed Sex Ratios and Responses to Token Women "    American Journal of Sociology , Vol. 82, No. 5 (Mar., 1977), pp. 965-990
• Erving Goffman, " The Arrangement between the Sexes " Theory and Society, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Autumn, 1977), pp. 301-331 
• Deniz Kandiyoti, " Bargaining with Patriarchy ." Gender and Society ," Vol. 2, No. 3 (Sep 1988), pp. 274-290
• Cecilia L. Ridgeway, " Framed Before We Know It: How Gender Shapes Social Relations ".  Gender & Society 2009 23:145-160    
• Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman " Doing Gender " Gender & Society 1987 1: 125-151.
• Cecilia Ridgeway.  Framed by Gender .  Oxford: 2011.

IV. Why have women apparently occupied a subordinate position in all societies?  And how does explaining the "origins" of gender inequality relate to explaining the "persistence" of gender inequality?

Although some scholars may question if women have been subordinate in all societies, all agree that men have been dominant in most societies although the degree of dominance varies greatly.  This raises the very tricky question, how do we explain the prevalence of male dominance?  This exceedingly elusive question continues to elude any answer that will evoke a consensus. 

• Please read the " Basics of Causal Descriptions " on a separate page for some simple, beginning ideas about describing a causal analysis.
• Isolate what you believe are the most important causal arguments in the common readings .  Give a critical asisessment of their different approaches .  In doing this, try to pay attention to what it is that makes you find the causal arguments more or less persuasive.  The recommended and related readings provide a range of material that you can look at as you need to deepen and sharpen your arguments.
• It can be helpful to look back at the material from Topic II, especially Gerring's list of criteria for causal arguments.
• Assume that sometime in the near future we launch a rocket into space with a crew of 1,000.  This crew is evenly divided between women and men, the women and men have similar credentials and accomplishments, and the two sexes are about equally represented at each level of authority.  The crew members' cultural understandings are similar to those of college students today.
• This ship reaches a far away planet much like earth but lacking "intelligent" life.  Unfortunately, the ship's engines have become unstable and the crew must abandon it. So they must start life on this new planet.  While they possess much advanced knowledge, they have no technology.  They must start from scratch, producing food, organizing themselves into a community, pairing off to reproduce, slowly building toward some kind of technological development over generations.  [Note: If the distant planet scenario seems unnerving, we could have the same effect by dropping a 1,000 people on a remote island that is isolated as a social experiment.]
• Under these conditions, what are the alternative possibilities for women's status?  What might decide which alternative occurs?
• Down So Long:   Analyzing the Persistence of Gender Inequality: How to Think about the Origins
• Joan N. Huber. " Reproductive Biology, Technology, and Gender Inequality: An Autobiographical Essay "  Annual Review of Sociology , Vol. 34 (2008) : 1-13
• Sharon Smith. " Engels and the Origin of Women's Oppression "  International Socialist Review Issue 2, Fall 1997
• Rosemary L. Hopcroft. " Gender Inequality in Interaction - An Evolutionary Account ." Social Forces   87.4 (2009): 1845-1871.
• Sapolsky, Robert.  " Testosterone rules " Discover . Chicago: Mar 1997. Vol. 18, Iss. 3; p. 44 
• Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (2002). A Cross-Cultural Analysis Of The Behavior Of Women And Men: Implications For The Origins Of Sex Differences . Psychological Bulletin, 128, 699-727.
• Downes, Stephen M., " Evolutionary Psychology ", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2014 Edition)
• Sven Walter, " Evolutionary Psychology ," The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2009
• Bolger, Diane. " Introduction ." In A Companion to Gender Prehistory , edited by Diane Bolger, 1-19. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2012. [doi:10.1002/9781118294291.ch0]
• Buller, David J. " Evolutionary Psychology: A Critique ." In Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology , edited by Elliott Sober. Cambridge, MA: A Bradford Book, 2006. [also, compare David Buller. " A Guided Tour of Evolutionary Psychology " (In A Field Guide to the Philosophy of Mind . Eds. Marco Nani and Massimo Marraffa. "An official electronic publication of the Department of Philosophy of University of Rome" 2000.) Also by Buller see: " Evolutionary Psychology: The Emperor's New Paradigm ," Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9 (2005): 277-283 and for a full treatment his book Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books, 2005.]
• Fausto-Sterling, Anne. " Beyond Difference: A Biologist's Perspective ." Journal of Social Issues 53, no. 2 (2010): 233-58. [doi:10.1111/j.1540-4560.1997.tb02442.x]
• Goodman, Madeleine J., P. Bion Griffin, Agnes A. Estioko-Griffin, and John S. Grove. " The Compatibility of Hunting and Mothering among the Agta Hunter-Gatherers of the Philippines ." Sex Roles 12, no. 11-12 (1985): 1199-209. [doi:10.1007/bf00287829]
• Rigby, Nichole, and Rob J. Kulathinal. " Genetic Architecture of Sexual Dimorphism in Humans ." Journal of Cellular Physiology 230, no. 10 (Oct 2015): 2304-10. [doi:10.1002/jcp.24979]
• Stulp, Gert, and Louise Barrett. " Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Height Variation ." Biological Reviews 91, no. 1 (Feb 2016): 206-34. [doi:10.1111/brv.12165]
• Joseph Henrich. " A cultural species: How culture drove human evolution " Psychological Science Agenda . Science Brief. 2009
• Rosemary L. Hopcroft. " Gender Inequality in Interaction – An Evolutionary Account ." Social Forces  87.4 (2009): 1845-1871.
• Randall Collins. " A Conflict Theory of Sexual Stratification ." Social Problems , Vol. 19, No. 1 (Summer, 1971), pp. 3-21
• Rae Blumberg. " A General Theory of Gender Stratification. " Sociological Theory  2  (1984): 23-101
• Rae Blumberg. " Extending Lenski's Schema to Hold Up Both Halves of the Sky.”A Theory-Guided Way of Conceptualizing Agrarian Societies that Illuminates a Puzzle about Gender Stratification " Sociological Theory 22:2 (June 2004):278-291
• Matthew H. McIntyre, Carolyn Pope Edwards.  The Early Development of Gender Differences   Annual Review of Anthropology , Vol. 38 (2009): 83-97
• Laurie Wermuth and Miriam Ma'at-Ka-Re Monges. " Gender Stratification: A Structural Model for Examining Case Examples of Women in Less-Developed Countries ." Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 23.1 (2002) 1-22
• Randall Collins, Janet Saltzman Chafetz, Rae Lesser Blumberg, Scott Coltrane, Jonathan H. Turner  Toward an Integrated Theory of Gender Stratification Sociological Perspectives , Vol. 36, No. 3 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 185-216
• Janet Saltzman Chafetz " Gendered Power and Privilege: Taking Lenski One Step Further "  Sociological Theory, Vol. 22, No. 2, Religion, Stratification, and Evolution in Human Societies: Essays in Honor of Gerhard E. Lenski (Jun., 2004), pp. 269-277
• Joan N. Huber. " Comparative Gender Stratification ." Handbook of the Sociology of Gender , 1999, p65-80
• Maurice Godelier, " The Origins of Male Domination " New Left Review , May-June 1981, pp. 3-17
• William Tulio Divale, Marvin Harris. " Population, Warfare, and the Male Supremacist Complex ." American Anthropologist , New Series, Vol. 78, No. 3 (Sep., 1976), pp. 521-538 [See also: William Divale, Marvin Harris, Donald T. Williams. " On the Misuse of Statistics: A Reply to Hirschfeld et al. "  American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 80, No. 2 (Jun., 1978), pp. 379-386; William Divale, Marvin Harris.  " The Male Supremacist Complex: Discovery of a Cultural Invention " American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 80, No. 3 (Sep., 1978), pp. 668-671
• C C Mukhopadhyay, and P J Higgins. " Anthropological Studies of Women's Status Revisited: 1977-1987 ". Annual Review of Anthropology Vol. 17 (1988): 461-495
• Naomi Quinn. " Anthropological Studies on Women's Status ".  Annual Review of Anthropology Vol. 6 (1977): 181-225 
• Chris Hann. " Reproduction and Inheritance: Goody Revisited ." Annual Review of Anthropology , Vol. 37 (2008): 145-158

V.   What determines men's and women's roles and positions within families?

Family and kinship are potentially relevant to gender inequality in varied ways and a lot of work had pursued such issues.  Probably the two most important general issues involve the ways that women and men are unequal within families and the ways that family organization both contributes to and is influenced by gender inequality beyond the family institution.  We will just touch the surface of these issues this week.

• The general analytical problem .  We want to provide an integrated analytical overview of the principal causal arguments about gender inequality and family organization that appear in the common readings.
• Each of the readings has various causal arguments about family organization, some directly about gender inequality, some relevant to gender inequality but not directly exploring it.  Some of the causal questions may receive different causal analyses by these authors.  Sometimes two or more authors may use a similar causal approach to explain different causal problems.  Our goal is to sort this out. 
• Our overviews should be organized around the causal arguments, not a series of summaries of what each author wrote (see Thinking Tools).
• First approach .  We start by identifying the principal causal problems addressed by the group of papers.  That is, we figure out what they suggest needs to be explained.  Then, we organize these causal problems in a sensible order (including consideration of some problems potentially being secondary or sub-problems of others).  Under each causal problem, we summarize and assess all the relevant explanations found in the readings.
• Second approach .  We start by identifying the principal causal frameworks used in the papers.  That is, we figure out what they suggest are the conditions or processes that have the most important influence over the outcomes.  Then, we organize these causal frameworks in a sensible order, taking into account which are entirely different and which might be variations of a similar theme, and which are competing versus complementary.  For each of these, after summarizing the causal logic of the framework, we show how it has been used by these authors, describing the range of outcomes the framework is supposed to determine and how it has such effects.
• Note that regardless which way we organize our analysis of competing causal arguments, it can be valuable to think about not only what is considered by the authors being examine, but also which theoretical questions and which causal frameworks seem relevant but absent.
• Please reread the " Basics of Causal Descriptions " on the starting point for describing a causal analysis.

(We should start with the understanding that this kind of analytical overview is rather easy to do poorly and very demanding to do well and thoroughly.  At this stage we are not aspiring to a professional job but hoping to achieve a reasonable, if basic, analysis.)

• Andrew J. Cherlin,  American Marriage in the Early Twenty-First Century The Future of Children Volume 15, Number 2, Fall 2005
• Down So Long:   Intimate Combat: The Responsibility for Child Rearing
• Brines, Julie. 1994. " Economic Dependency, Gender, and the Division of Labor at Home ."  American Journal of Sociology 100(3): 652-689. 
• William J. Goode. " The Theoretical Importance of Love "  American Sociological Review, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Feb., 1959), pp. 38-47  [jstor: 2089581]
• Kathleen Gerson. " Changing Lives, Resistant Institutions: A New Generation Negotiates Gender, Work, and Family Change "  Sociological Forum , Vol. 24, No. 4, December 2009
• Destined for Equality : Institutional Individualism: "Individualistic Family" 157-169
• Coltrane, Scott. 1989. " Household Labor and the Routine Production of Gender ." Social Problems 3
• Stephanie Coontz. " The Historical Transformation of Marriage ," Journal of Marriage and Family ,  Volume 66, Issue 4 (p 974-979) November 2004.
• Beth Anne Shelton, Daphne John.  " The Division of Household Labor ." Annual Review of Sociology , Vol. 22, (1996), pp. 299-322
• Andrew J. Cherlin, " The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage "  Journal of Marriage and Family , Volume 66, Issue 4 (p 848-861)   November 2004. 
• Kathleen Gerson.  " Moral Dilemmas, Moral Strategies, and the Transformation of Gender: Lessons from Two Generations of Work and Family Change " Gender & Society . Vol. 16 No. 1, February 2002 8-28
• Sara B. Raley, Marybeth J. Mattingly, Suzanne M. Bianchi. " How Dual Are Dual-Income Couples? Documenting Change From 1970 to 2001 . Journal of Marriage and Family 68:1 (2006), 11-28
• Davis, S. N., T. Greenstein and J. G. Marks, " Effects of Union Type and Division of Household Labor ," Journal of Family Issues 28 (2007):1247-72. [doi: 10.1177/0192513X07300968]
• Scott Coltrane. Father-Child Relationships and the Status of Women: A Cross-Cultural Study . American Journal of Sociology, 93 (1988): 1060-1095.
• Joann Vanek. " Time Spent in Housework ." Scientific American 231 (Nov 1974):116-120. 
• Valerie Kincade Oppenheimer. " The Sociology of Women's Economic Role in the Family ." American Sociological Review , Vol. 42, No. 3 (Jun., 1977), pp. 387-406 
• Kathleen Gerson.  (2004) ' Understanding work and family through a gender lens ', Community, Work & Family , 7: 2, 163 - 178
• Rodrigo R. Soares, Bruno L. S. Falcão. " The Demographic Transition and the Sexual Division of Labor ." The Journal of Political Economy , Vol. 116, No. 6 (Dec., 2008), pp. 1058-1104 
• Pennington, Suzanne(2009) ' Bisexuals "Doing Gender" in Romantic Relationships ', Journal of Bisexuality , 9:1, 33-69
• Tichenor, Veronica. " Maintaining Men's Dominance: Negotiating Identity and Power When She Earns More ." Sex Roles 53, no. 3-4 (2005): 191-205. [doi:10.1007/s11199-005-5678-2]
• Becker, G. S., " Human Capital, Effort, and the Sexual Division of Labor ," Journal of Labor Economics 3(1) (1985):33-58.  [

V. part 2.   What determines men's and women's roles and positions within families? This week we will continue with the same topic, but work on a different analytical task.

• The goal this week will be to develop a basic causal argument that takes into account the criteria discussed in Gerring's article on causation (Section II). 
• To begin, select some aspect of family organization related to or expressing gender inequality that you want to try to explain.  That which is to be explained==the explanandum==may be selected from those that appear in the readings or may be some other factor you would like to examine.  Examples would include the relative control over family decisions exercised by wives and husbands or changes in the time men spend at child care activities.  Remember that modest goals are generally a better idea than grand ones when doing causal analyses.  Remember also that causal explanations are commonly built on comparisons: between two points in time, between distinctive groups, between different circumstances, or the like.
• Offer an explanation for the issue chosen.  This explanation may use any mixture of ideas derived from the readings, from other published work, or from your own ideas.  The goal here is to provide one, reasonable, brief causal analysis.  To say that it is reasonable means that it is plausible, not that it is correct or complete.  We are also not asking for originality (although it is always a pleasure when it occurs).
• Evaluate how well the explanation meets selected criteria for causal arguments derived from Gerring.  The summary tables of those criteria are reproduced    here.   You should select a small number of the criteria that you think most relevant to the causal argument, and discuss how the proposed causal analysis fulfills these criteria or why it cannot.

VI. What is the role of sex differences in the functioning and perpetuation of gender inequality?

Attempts to explain gender inequality at all levels are haunted by essentialism .  Essentialist arguments impute distinctive attributes to women and men and attribute the social differences between women's and men's activities, opportunities, statuses, and roles to these distinct attributes.  Even theoretical analyses of gender inequality that expressly reject the possibility of consequential, inherent sex differences,  commonly build their explanations of inequality on gender differences.  To complicate matters, essentialist arguments proclaiming superior attributes for women exist alongside of the arguments proclaiming women inferior.  Moreover, while for some, essentialism always means a difference based in biology or genetics, for others it includes cultural differences that are embodied in women and men.

• Select one form or facet of gender inequality that you will try to explain for this task.  This instance or aspect of gender inequality should be sufficiently important, widespread, and enduring or recurring to merit thoughtful theory and explanation.  It should also be narrow or specific enough that the goal of explaining it is plausible.  For example, the facet might be that wives commonly defer to husbands. 
• For the selected type or aspect of gender inequality, you will suggest five alternative explanations, each one representing a different approach to explaining such social phenomena.  The explanations should be succinct but clear.  They should also be plausible to the extent that a reasonable person might make such an argument. Plausible does not mean true, of course.  Rather, we are trying to imagine an argument that would seem plausible to people who are advocates for each of the perspectives.
• Direct biological - Devise an explanation claiming that some biological difference between the sexes produces the relevant aspect of inequality by making women and men act differently.  For example, an argument might be that men are stronger than women so men dominate women as a simple result of superior strength.  (More complex biological explanations might be derived from evolutionary psychology.)  This type of explanation is usually purely essentialist.  Note that this type of explanation can be divided further into those relying on real biological differences and those imputing fictional biological differences.  Let us stress biological differences that are at least potentially real here, leaving the fictitious ones for below.
• Indirect biological - Formulate an explanation claiming some biological difference does not directly produce the inequality, but the biological difference has important effects or implications of some sort, and those effects that make likely or unavoidable the emergence or persistence of the selected aspect of gender inequality.  For example, someone might argue that women's child bearing makes them anxious about the welfare of their children, and that anxiety makes them feel weak and in want of a protector, leading them to defer to husbands.  Or, others might suggest that women's biologically induced child rearing orientation encourages both women and men to make men responsible for warfare, and that men's resulting skill at combat, their possession of weapons, and men's organization around mutual defense leaves wives typically in their husbands' control.  The key for this type of explanation is that the relevant biological differences do not directly cause the gender inequality being explained, but have effects on social behavior and social organization that lead to gender inequality.  These types of explanations have essentialist origins in a biological difference, but the explanation as a whole may invoke mediating causal influences that reduce the essentialist quality, sometimes greatly.
•   Non-biological sex difference - Suggest how some socially constructed difference between women and men – one that is neither biological nor a direct result of biological differences – initiates or preserves the aspect of gender inequality being explained.  This will usually be an enduring individual characteristic (a difference that people carry with them, not a difference in their circumstances).  For example, one might claim that women are fearful and dependent because of socialization processes (that have no biological basis), and this psychological condition induces wives to defer to their husbands.  Or, one might argue that childhood sports available only to boys result in a higher competitive drive that accounts for adult men's greater success in business.  This type of explanation claims a real difference exists between women and men (in the society or social context where the inequality being explained occurs; the relevant sex difference need not exist in all or any other society or social context), but this difference is a social construction.  This type of explanation often becomes redundantly circular: each aspect of inequality exists as a result of inequality, and that overall inequality is constituted by the various aspects.
• Fictitious sex difference - An imputed sex difference that does not really exist is claimed to play a significant role in producing the selected facet of gender inequality.  For example, someone might suggest that although women have no better capacity for child rearing, people commonly assume they do because women bear children, and that this false expectation produces a division of labor and power favoring men.  This type of explanation focuses on the consequences of beliefs, relying on the observation that beliefs can organize behavior even if they are false beliefs.  While such fictitious differences are commonly assumed to be biological, they need not be.
• Causes independent of sex differentiation - A causal process that does not involve any difference between the sexes is argued to produce the inequality being considered.  For example, some might argue that for families to fulfill their social functions effectively, they need one spouse/parent to perform the critical emotional actions needed and the other spouse/parent to perform the practical and leadership actions (this is essentially a well-know idea of Talcott Parsons).  This role differentiation can then result in spouse inequality, as an indirect and unintended consequence.  This category includes highly diverse explanations, the one critical similarity among them being that they do not rely on a sex difference in their central causal argument.  It may be worth noting that one reason explanations based on sex differences (including all the preceding perspectives) are more common is that formulating a plausible analysis that forgoes the mechanism of sex differences is often a hard task.
• (Note, in this task we are aiming to produce explanations that those advocating each of the above types of explanation would think are reasonable.  It is often hardest to conceive good explanations from the points of view we find unconvincing or unappealing, but the capacity to do this is a valuable skill.)
• Bringing it together .  The point of this exercise is to examine how it is possible to devise a range of alternative causal explanations of gender inequality stressing some mechanism of sex differences, while developing alternative theories that do not rely on sex differences is rather hard.  The difference arguments run the full range from being directly and fully biological to relying on non-biological or fictitious differences in indirect ways.  The arguments that exclude not only biology but all dependence on sex differences commonly derive from another theoretical approach, such as functionalism or conflict theories.  The challenge with these approaches is not only to make the immediate causal process eschew differences, but to avoid relying on sex differences one or two steps earlier in the causal chain.
• Carol Gilligan. " Hearing the Difference: Theorizing Connection ."  Hypatia , Vol. 10, No. 2 (Spring, 1995), pp. 120-127
• Carol Gilligan. " Reply by Carol Gilligan ." Signs , Vol. 11, No. 2 (Winter, 1986), pp. 324-333
• Jaffee, Sara; Hyde, Janet Shibley. " Gender Differences In Moral Orientation: A Meta-Analysis ." Psychological Bulletin. Vol 126(5), Sep 2000, 703-726. [doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.126.5.703]
• Valian, Virginia. 1998. " Sex, Schemas, and Success: What's Keeping Women Back? " Academe 84(5): 50-55. (Compare Ridgeway in Section III above.)  (See Valian in Optional Readings for fuller account.)
• Uri Gneezy, Kenneth L. Leonard, And John A. List. " Gender Differences in Competition: Evidence From a Matrilineal and a Patriarchal Society ." Econometrica, Vol. 77, No. 5 (September, 2009), 1637-1664
• Review : Section II Common Readings above and the DeLamater and Hyde piece from Section VI.
• Douglas Schrock, Michael Schwalbe. " Men, Masculinity, and Manhood Acts ."  Annual Review of Sociology , Vol. 35: 277-295 (August 2009). [doi: 10.1146/annurev-soc-070308-115933]
• Janis S. Bohan. " Regarding gender: Essentialism, Constructionism, and Feminist Psychology ." Psychology of Women Quarterly , Mar 93, Vol. 17 Issue 1, p5-22 
• Matthew H. McIntyre, Carolyn Pope Edwards. " The Early Development of Gender Differences ."  Annual Review of Anthropology , Vol. 38: 83-97 (October 2009)
• Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (2002). A Cross-Cultural Analysis Of The Behavior Of Women And Men: Implications For The Origins Of Sex Differences . Psychological Bulletin, 128, 699-727. [doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.128.5.699]
• Nancy Chodorow. " Oedipal Asymmetries and Heterosexual Knots ." Social Problems , Vol. 23, No. 4, Feminist Perspectives: The Sociological Challenge (Apr., 1976), pp. 454-468
• Eagly, A. H., & Wood, W. (1999). The Origins Of Sex Differences In Human Behavior: Evolved Dispositions Versus Social Roles . American Psychologist, 54, 408-423. 
• Valian, V. (1999). The Cognitive Bases Of Gender Bias . Brooklyn Law Review, 65, 1037-1061.
• Clopton, Nancy A.; Sorell, Gwendolyn T.  " Gender differences in moral reasoning. " . Psychology of Women Quarterly, Mar93, Vol. 17 Issue 1, p85 [doi: 10.1111/j.1471-6402.1993.tb00678.x]
• Pamela L. Geller. " Identity and Difference: Complicating Gender in Archaeology ."   Annual Review of Anthropology , Vol. 38: 65-81 (October 2009) [doi: 10.1146/annurev-anthro-091908-164414]
• Barbara J. Risman, " Intimate Relationships from a Microstructural Perspective: Mothering Men ." Gender and Society 1:1 (March 1987). 
• Nancy Chodorow. " Mothering, Object-Relations, and the Female Oedipal Configuration ." Feminist Studies , Vol. 4, No. 1 (Feb., 1978), pp. 137-158 [jstor: 3177630]
• Timothy J. Biblarz & Judith Stacey. " How Does the Gender of Parents Matter? " Journal of Marriage and Family 72:1 (2010):3-22  [doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2009.00678.x]
• Adrienne Rich. 1980. " Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence ." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 5 (4): 631-660
• Judith Butler. " Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory ." Theatre Journal , Vol. 40, No. 4 (Dec., 1988), pp. 519-531. 
• Nussbaum, M. C. The Professor Of Parody [J. Butler]. The New Republic v. 220 no. 8 (February 22 1999) p. 37-45.  {Also, Nussbaum, M. C. Martha C. Nussbaum And Her Critics: An Exchange [discussion of February 22, 1999 article, The Professor Of Parody]. The New Republic v. 220 no. 16 (April 19 1999) p. 43-5}
• Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn. " Fashionable Subjects: On Judith Butler and the Causal Idioms of Postmodern Feminist Theory ."  Political Research Quarterly , Vol. 50, No. 3 (Sep., 1997), pp. 649-674
• Veronica Vasterling. " Butler's Sophisticated Constructivism: A Critical Assessment ."  Hypatia , Vol. 14, No. 3 (Summer, 1999), pp. 17-38
• Barbara F. Reskin. " Including Mechanisms in Our Models of Ascriptive Inequality ." American Sociological Review, Vol. 68, No. 1 (Feb., 2003), pp. 1-21

VII.  What is the role of sexuality?

Sexuality has been evoked in multiple ways in the study of gender inequality.  Some have considered it as a possible motivating cause for inequality, others have explored how gender inequality can mold the experience and practice of sexuality, and others have tried to theoretically incorporate sexuality as a peculiar tension between women and men that mediates both the causes and effects of gender inequality.  Essentially, everyone recognizes sexuality is critically important to gender inequality, but we lack agreement or clarity on how it matters.

• The general analytical problem .  Focusing on heterosexual behavior, it appears that men seek to have sex with women much more than women seek to have it with men, relative both to how often they have sex and with how many partners .  Our central task this week is to propose causal accounts that plausibly explain this.
• Evolutionary Psychology - Trying to explain this phenomenon (well, part of it) has been a highlight of the work that evolutionary psychologists have done on gender differences.  Provide an appropriate brief explanation of this sort, identify the fundamental assumptions it requires.  Also, consider the evidence and what might be important shortcomings.
• Indirect biological - Formulate an explanation claiming some biological difference does not directly produce the inequality, but the biological difference has important effects or implications of some sort, and those effects that make likely or unavoidable the emergence and persistence of this sexuality difference.   Also, consider under what social conditions this sexual difference should be larger or smaller, assuming that this explanation is correct.
• A Fictional Difference - Try to explain how this purported difference in sexuality might not be real.  This includes explaining why the fictional belief in this difference would arise and become prevalent.
• Secondary effect of gender inequality - Consider how this difference can arise as a result of gender inequality.   Examine what social conditions must be true for this causal sequence to occur.
• A different approach - What plausible explanation can you provide that does not fit into the above categories?
• Can you provide reasoning or evidence to show that one of the explanations is better than the others?
• Bringing it together .  In short, our aim is to construct and assess alternative basic causal arguments seeking to understand a widely accepted difference in the sexuality of women and men. In each case, try to be clear about the logic of the causal argument.  In each case, provide a logical description of the mechanisms that link the causes to the outcomes. 
• Everyone who analyzes gender inequality considers sexuality important, but they have highly varied ideas about what matters and why.  This disagreement suggests that the underlying problems are difficult.  We cannot hope to solve them in this brief effort.  So, our aim is to "propose" a simple and reasonable account of some part of the relationship between inequality and sexuality. We are not trying to develop a full, professional analysis.
• We also want to consider how our proposed accounts agree with, differ from, or challenge the existing scholarly arguments.  Again, our goal here is limited.  The aim is to give a reasonable first sense of how the proposed account fits (or does not fit).
• has a relationship to gender inequality that at least some writers think is important.  Which way it is important is wide open.  The role of the chosen sexuality characteristic relative to gender inequality may be cause, effect, catalyst, or whatever else seems causally relevant.
• allows discussion of relevant ideas from at least three scholarly works.  These may be part of the common readings, any of the other readings recommended here, or another legitimate source.  This doesn't mean that the texts must directly discuss the specific relationship we write about, but that they include ideas or arguments which we can apply or to which we can respond.
• First, we lay out the causal, explanatory problem.  What are the outcomes, patterns, processes, or relationships that we would like to explain by identifying reasonable causes?  And why is this important enough to merit attention? (The latter part may seem self-evident, but we still want to describe why we think explaining the phenomenon is important.)
• Second, we provide the causal analysis.  We want to be as complete as possible within reasonable space limits.  And, we want to be clear, simple, and direct. 
• Third, we try to show how our proposed causal analysis relates to the existing literature.  For our purposes, we can limit ourselves to considering a couple theories or perspectives that would support or compliment our approach and a couple that would be likely to question our proposed causal analysis.  (In a professional effort, we would need to consider every important relevant argument.)  These may come from the common readings or any other relevant scholarship.  When discussing those who might disagree, we want to be as specific as possible about what criticism we would expect from each of these "opponents" and how we might respond. 
• Bringing it together .  In short, our aim is to construct a basic causal argument seeking to understand how some aspect of sexuality is related to gender inequality, and to assess how that causal argument relates to the existing literature (as represented in our readings).
• David L. Weis. " The Use of Theory in Sexuality Research ". The Journal of Sex Research , Vol. 35, No. 1, The Use of Theory in Research and Scholarship on Sexuality (1998), pp. 1-9
• Letitia Anne Peplau. " Human Sexuality: How Do Men and Women Differ? "  Current Directions in Psychological Science , Vol. 12, No. 2 (Apr., 2003), pp. 37-40
• Joan Acker. " Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations "  Gender & Society 1990 4 (2): 139-158 ( stress pp. 151-4 ).
• Down So Long:   Intimate Combat: Sexuality and Gender Inequality
• Carl N. Degler. " What Ought To Be and What Was: Women's Sexuality in the Nineteenth Century ." The American Historical Review , Vol. 79, No. 5 (Dec., 1974), pp. 1467-1490 
• Catharine A. MacKinnon.  " Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory ." Signs , Vol. 7, No. 3, Feminist Theory (Spring, 1982), pp. 515-544
• John D. DeLamater and Janet Shibley Hyde. " Essentialism vs. Social Constructionism in the Study of Human Sexuality ." The Journal of Sex Research , Vol. 35, No. 1, The Use of Theory in Research and Scholarship on Sexuality (1998), pp. 10-18.
• Bem, D. J. (2000). Exotic Becomes Erotic: Interpreting the biological correlates of sexual orientation. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 29, 531-548. 
• Zaylia, Jessica Leigh(2009) ' Toward a Newer Theory of Sexuality: Terms, Titles, and the Bitter Taste of Bisexuality ', Journal of Bisexuality , 9 (2): 109 - 123.
• Crawford, M., et. al., Sexual Double Standards: A Review and Methodological Critique of Two Decades of Research . The Journal of Sex Research v. 40 no. 1 (February 2003) p. 13-26
• Dennis D. Waskul, Phillip Vannini, Desiree Wiesen.  " Women and Their Clitoris: Personal Discovery, Signification, and Use ."   Symbolic Interaction May 2007, Vol. 30, No. 2: 151-174
• Breanne Fahs.  " Compulsory Bisexuality?: The Challenges of Modern Sexual Fluidity ."     Journal of Bisexuality , Volume 9, Issue 3 & 4 July 2009 , pages 431-449
• John A. Miller, Joan Acker, Kate Barry, Miriam M. Johnson and Lois A. West. " Comments on MacKinnon's 'Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State' ." Signs , Vol. 10, No. 1 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 168-184; [jstor: 3174252; and Catharine A. MacKinnon, " Reply to Miller, Acker and Barry, Johnson, West, and Gardiner ." Signs , Vol. 10, No. 1 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 184-188 [jstor: 3174253]
•   Steven Epstein. " An Incitement to Discourse: Sociology and the History of Sexuality ."  Sociological Forum , Vol. 18, No. 3 (Sep., 2003), pp. 485-502
• Nicole Constable. " The Commodification of Intimacy: Marriage, Sex, and Reproductive Labor ."  Annual Review of Anthropology , Vol. 38: 49-64 (2009)
• Impett, E. A., & Peplau, L. A. (2003). Sexual Compliance: Gender, Motivational, And Relationship Perspectives . Journal of Sex Research, 40(1), 87-100 [doi: 10.1080/00224490309552169]
• Ronald Weitzer. " Sociology of Sex Work ."  Annual Review of Sociology , Vol. 35: 213-234 (2009)
• Pennington, Suzanne(2009) ' Bisexuals "Doing Gender" in Romantic Relationships ', Journal of Bisexuality, 9: 1, 33-69
• Lisa Duggan " From Instincts to Politics: Writing the History of Sexuality in the U.S. "  The Journal of Sex Research , Vol. 27, No. 1, Feminist Perspectives on Sexuality. Part 1 (Feb., 1990), pp. 95-109 
• Michael W. Wiederman. " The Truth Must Be in Here Somewhere: Examining the Gender Discrepancy in Self-Reported Lifetime Number of Sex Partners ." The Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 34, No. 4 (1997), pp. 375-386
• Norman R. Brown, Robert C. Sinclair. " Estimating Number of Lifetime Sexual Partners: Men and Women Do It Differently ." The Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Aug., 1999), pp. 292-297
• John Levi Martin, Matt George. " Theories of Sexual Stratification: Toward an Analytics of the Sexual Field and a Theory of Sexual Capital ." Sociological Theory, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Jun., 2006), pp. 107-132
• Judith Treas, Deirdre Giesen. " Sexual Infidelity among Married and Cohabiting Americans ." Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 62, No. 1 (Feb., 2000), pp. 48-60
• Blow, Adrian J.; Hartnett, Kelley. " Infidelity In Committed Relationships II: A Substantive Review ." Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, Volume 31, Issue 2, (2005): 217-33.
• Lever, J., Frederick, D., & Peplau, L. A. (2006). Does Size Matter? Men's And Women's Views On Penis Size Across The Life Span . Psychology of Men and Masculinity, 7(3), 129-143

VIII. What is the role of violence and intimidation in the relationships between men and women? 

Most theoretical approaches to gender inequality suggest that violence between women and men plays a role in sustaining inequality; some also point toward violence as an initial cause.  A recurring issue concerns the degree to which violence is an expression or result of gender inequality or, alternatively, is a cause of inequality.  The separate roles of rape, harassment, and domestic violence, and their relationships to each other are another critical question.  Much research and argument has also been focused on the question of women's aggressive impulses and actions. 

• Analytical Task : Try to develop a reasonable explanation for why women do not engage in sexual harassment or sexual violence at rates similar to those of men.  Here, our strategy is to reverse the usual way people approach the problem of gender violence, aiming to explain the (suppressed) rates for women rather than the (elevated) rates for men.
• In addition to the reading materials, consider carefully the pointers below in the sections on Thinking Tools and Well Formed Causal Arguments
• In short , taking into account the pointers below and the ideas in the materials we have read up to this point, you want to develop a reasonable explanation why women do not engage in harassment or violence toward men at the rates that men do toward women.
• To pursue this task, we need to consider what we mean by violence or aggression.  When people refer to the patterns of violence between women and men (in modern societies), they are usually referring to several kinds of aggressive behavior, particularly: (1) sexual violence (especially rape), (2) sexual harassment, and (3) intimate partner violence (which includes wife battering).  
• These three categories implicitly distinguish patterns of aggression based on several criteria: (1) the degree to which the aggressive acts involve sexuality, (2) the severity of the aggressive acts, and (3) the existing relationship between the relevant men and women. 
• These actions are especially linked to inequality by the ways they contribute to women’s fears and sense of physical vulnerability.  That fear is crucial.  For it is the prospect of possible violence that induces women to restrict their behavior, to seek male protectors, and to heed men’s wishes.  The fear of violence is commonly a more prevalent and effective mechanism of control than the experience of violence.
• Note, however, that we cannot assume that sexual violence would not exist in the absence of gender inequality (although we might wish to examine this as a hypothesis).  We know, for example, that partner violence occurs in gay male and lesbian couples at rates comparable to those of heterosexual couples.  To put it differently, we have good evidence for inferring that gender inequality is a contributory cause for sexual violence, but not for the claim that it is a necessary cause.  Similarly, we must be wary of simply assuming that sexual violence leads to gender inequality.
• To simplify our task, we will set aside the question of intimate partner violence and focus on the other two kinds mentioned above, sexual violence and sexual harassment.  So, our goal is to explain why women, seemingly, indulge less often in sexual violence and harassment toward men than the reverse .
• Women and men may resort to violence and harassment at different rates under comparable circumstances.  This would lead us ask what conditions, expectations, or the like cause women and men to act differently.
• Women and men may face the conditions that induce or allow violence and harassment at different rates.  This would lead us to ask how and why women and men find themselves at different rates in circumstances that promote aggression toward the other sex.
• [Both men and women vary greatly, so we must decide if we will abstract away all that variation (and thus talk of "men" or "women" in the most generic or abstract possible manner) or if we feel that some variations (e.g. wealth or age) require consideration for the analysis.  Remember that you can restrict the scope of your analysis.]
• Try to approach the problem of defining potential causes as systematically as you can.  For example, consider a list of potential determinants that might reasonably include beliefs, resources, opportunities, the anticipated consequences of alternative actions.  Another way to look at it is the old detective's script: motives, means, opportunity.  The key here is to avoid randomly attaching yourself to one or two possible causes, just because they happen to be what you first think about.  You want to think seriously about what you might have neglected.
• It is often useful to start this kind of analytic reasoning concretely, concentrating on circumstances we know best.  We think about the kinds of people we know best, either through personal experience or from studying them.  We ask ourselves why the women in these circumstances or groups do not engage in sexual harassment or sexual violence toward men as much as do men toward women.  If we can gain an explanatory foothold in these familiar circumstances, we have a starting point for developing a more general explanation.
• Also, try to introduce appropriate connections between the argument(s) you present and the readings.  Consider not only the common readings from this week, but also past readings and optional ones from this week that seem particularly relevant.
• The causal arguments should try to conform to the standards for a good causal argument that we have read about and discussed.  Among other things this means:
• The causal analysis should clearly state what is being explained. 
• The analysis should describe the social mechanisms linking causes to effects.  It should show what happens in the world that produces the outcomes, what kinds of people or organizations behave in manner, what circumstances arise that induce the relevant behavior, and so forth.  This may be abstract at the level of the causal model.
• The analysis should consider why the decisive causes exist and take the form that they do.  That is, the causal analysis should push back at least one step past the causes being invoked to ask what causes them.
• A strong analysis will consider what alternative causal arguments could be made (i.e., how the causal processes could be different from what you describe) and show what evidence or logic favors the argument you have presented.  A thorough causal analysis will recognize that other causal models might be considered plausible, and try to compare the causal model being promoted to the alternatives.
• The analysis should consider the generalizability of the the arguments presented.  It should consider to what periods, places, types of societies, parts of society, kinds of social relationships or interactions do the arguments apply? 
• Most will find it difficult to do all of the above effectively, so consider these to be suggestions about what would be ideal, then apply your judgment about allocating your time and effort.
• Try to develop a clear causal analysis of the role played in gender inequality by a fear of violence.
• Women's fears vs. men's fears
• The circumstances under which women experience greater fear and those where they feel safe
• Differences in the amount of fear typical amongst groups or categories of women according to their age, affluence, location, companions, or any other relevant social condition
• Differences in the distribution of fear across societies distinguished by such conditions as forms of economic and political organization, degree of development, prevailing religious or cultural institutions and the like
• This analysis should also include a causal explanation of the consequences for gender inequality of the distribution of fears of violence.  In what ways do fears of violence influence the behavior of women or the relationships between women and men?  Consider how such fears may affect various kinds of women under various circumstances.  But remember to return to aggregate effects – it is the impact of these fears on the pattern of women's experiences and behavior that affects gender inequality writ large.
• Avoid the analytic temptation to argue as if equality might imply an absence of discord and aggression.  Realistically, equality between two groups by itself only leads us to expect that acts of aggression will occur with equal frequency and effect between members of the two groups.  Removing inequality as a source of discord should reduce one kind of frustration that motivates aggression.  Other sources of discord still exist, however, and some forms of aggression that could be suppressed by inequality might even rise.
• Claudia Garcia-Moreno, Lori Heise, Henrica A. F. M. Jansen, Mary Ellsberg and Charlotte Watts. " Violence against Women ."  Science, New Series, Vol. 310, No. 5752 (Nov. 25, 2005), pp. 1282-1283  [data brief] [doi: 10.1126/science.1121400]
• Michael P. Johnson. " Domestic Violence: It's Not about Gender: Or Is It? ." Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 67, No. 5 (Dec., 2005), pp. 1126-1130
• Amy Holtzworth-Munroe. " Male Versus Female Intimate Partner Violence: Putting Controversial Findings Into Context ." Journal of Marriage and Family, Volume 67, Issue 5 (p 1120-1125) [doi: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2005.00203.x]
• David M. Fergusson, L. John Horwood, Elizabeth M. Ridder. " Rejoinder ." Journal of Marriage and Family, Volume 67, Issue 5 (p 1131-1136)
• Down So Long:   Intimate Combat: Violence and Intimidation
• Download Article :   Thomae, Manuela, and Afroditi Pina. " Sexist Humor and Social Identity: The Role of Sexist Humor in Men’s In-Group Cohesion, Sexual Harassment, Rape Proclivity, and Victim Blame ." HUMOR 28, no. 2 (2015): 187. [read: 190-196 on In-Group Cohesion & Sexual Harassment]
• Download Article :   McLaughlin, Heather, Christopher Uggen, and Amy Blackstone. " Sexual Harassment, Workplace Authority, and the Paradox of Power ." American Sociological Review 77, no. 4 (2012): 625-47. [read: 626-27, 635-39]
• Review Robert Sapolsky,  " Testosterone Rules " from section III above.
• Thompson, Carleen M., Susan M. Dennison, and Anna Stewart. " Are Female Stalkers More Violent Than Male Stalkers? Understanding Gender Differences in Stalking Violence Using Contemporary Sociocultural Beliefs ." Sex Roles 66, no. 5 (2012): 351-65. [read: 351-354]
• Little, Betsi, and Cheryl Terrance. " Perceptions of Domestic Violence in Lesbian Relationships: Stereotypes and Gender Role Expectations ." Journal of Homosexuality 57, no. 3 (2010): 429-40. [read: 429-432]
• Archer, J. (2002). Sex Differences In Physically Aggressive Acts Between Heterosexual Partners: A Metaanalytic Review . Aggression & Violent Behavior, 7(4), 313-351. [doi: 10.1016/S1359-1789(01)00061-1]
• Saguy, Abigail C. " Employment Discrimination or Sexual Violence?: Defining Sexual Harassment in American and French Law ." Law & Society Review. 34:4 (2000):1091-1128. also see Saguy, Abigail C. " What is Sexual Harassment? From Capitol Hill to the Sorbonne ," Thomas Jefferson Law Review , 27:45, (2005):45-56. 
• Manuel Eisner.  " Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime . " Crime and Justice , Vol. 30, (2003), pp. 83-142
• Malcolm M. Feeley, Deborah L. Little.  " The Vanishing Female: The Decline of Women in the Criminal Process, 1687-1912 ."  Law & Society Review , Vol. 25, No. 4 (1991), pp. 719-758 
• Quinn, Beth A. " Sexual Harassment and Masculinity: The Power and Meaning of 'Girl Watching.' "  Gender & Society , vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 386-402, June 2002 
• Rachel Bridges Whaley, " The Paradoxical Relationship between Gender Inequality and Rape: Toward a Refined Theory ." Gender & Society , vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 531-555, Aug 2001  [doi: 10.1177/089124301015004003]
• Murray A. Straus.  2008. " Dominance and symmetry in partner violence by male and female university students in 32 nations ." Children and Youth Services Review 30(3):252-275.
•   Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (2002). A cross-cultural analysis of the behavior of women and men: Implications for the origins of sex differences . Psychological Bulletin, 128, 699-727. [note: also recommended for previous section] 
• Sarah K. Murnen, Carrie Wright, and Gretchen Kaluzny.  " If 'Boys Will Be Boys,' Then Girls Will Be Victims? A Meta-Analytic Review of the Research That Relates Masculine Ideology to Sexual Aggression ."  Sex Roles Volume 46, Numbers 11-12 / June, 2002
• Peggy Reeves Sanday. " Rape-Prone Versus Rape-Free Campus Cultures ." Violence Against Women, Vol. 2, No. 2, 191-208 (1996)    [doi: 10.1177/1077801296002002006]
• Quinn, Beth A. " Sexual Harassment and Masculinity: The Power and Meaning of "Girl Watching" ." Gender & Society 16, no. 3 (2002): 386-402. [doi:10.1177/0891243202016003007]
• Linda Gordon. " Family Violence, Feminism, and Social Control ." Feminist Studies, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Autumn, 1986), pp. 453-478
• Christopher Uggen & Amy Blackstone. " Sexual Harrasment as a Gendered Expression of Power ."  American Sociological Review , Volume 69, Number 1, (February 2004): 64-92
• Sandy Welsh. " Gender And Sexual Harassment ." Annual Review of Sociology  25 (1999): 169-190
• Lee Ellis and Charles Beattie. " The Feminist Explanation for Rape: An Empirical Test. " T he Journal of Sex Research , Vol. 19, No. 1 (Feb., 1983), pp. 74-93 
• Kimberly Martin, Lynne M. Vieraitis and Sarah Britto. " Gender Equality and Women's Absolute Status: A Test of the Feminist Models of Rape. "  Violence Against Women . 12 (4) 2006: 321-339
• Gwen Hunnicutt. " Varieties of Patriarchy and Violence Against Women Resurrecting "Patriarchy" as a Theoretical Tool ."  Violence Against Women . 15 (5) 2009: 553 - 573    [doi: 10.1177/1077801208331246]
• Tom W. Smith. " The Polls: Gender and Attitudes Toward Violence ." The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Spring, 1984), pp. 384-396 [jstor: 2748632]
• Richard C. Eichenberg. " Gender Differences In Public Attitudes Toward The Use Of Force By The United States, 1990-2003 ." International Security 28.1 (2003) 110-141
• Jon Hurwitz and Shannon Smithey, " Gender Differences on Crime and Punishment ." Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 51, No. 1 (Mar., 1998), pp. 89-115
• Joan B. Kelly & Michael P. Johnson. " Differentiation Among Types Of Intimate Partner Violence: Research Update And Implications For Interventions ." Family Court Review, Volume 46, Issue 3, 2008 (p 476-499)   [doi: 10.1111/j.1744-1617.2008.00215.x]
• Richard B. Felson, Alison C. Cares. " Gender and the Seriousness of Assaults on Intimate Partners and Other Victims ." Journal of Marriage and Family, Volume 67, Issue 5 (2005):1182-1195
• Murray A. Straus and Ignacio Luis Ramirez. 2007. " Gender Symmetry In Prevalence, Severity, And Chronicity Of Physical Aggression Against Dating Partners By University Students In Mexico And USA ." Aggressive Behavior 33:281-290.  [doi: 10.1002/ab.20199]
• Russell P. Dobash and R. Emerson Dobash. " Women's Violence to Men in Intimate Relationships. " The British Journal of Criminology 44 (2004): 324-349    [doi: 10.1093/bjc/azh026]

IX.  How has the economy influenced men's and women's positions in society?

Analyses of gender inequality attribute great importance to the economy.  Gender inequality appears everywhere embedded in economic inequality, in the sense that a critical aspect of gender inequality involves unequal access to economic resources and positions.  This relationship becomes clearer in more "advanced" societies where economic organization has become institutionally differentiated from kinship and political organization.  Sometimes this unequal economic access is understood as an expression of gender inequality, sometimes a cause of gender inequality, sometimes a result. Many analyses consider it all three.

• The first table shows the 2012 earnings gap in the 20 occupational categories that have the largest number of females.  These have been sorted by the proportion female.  The numbers in dark red show the earnings gap where women also account for two-thirds or more of the those in the occupational category.
• The second table shows the same kind of data as the first, but is for the 20 occupational categories that have the largest number of males.  It is otherwise the same as the first table, except the dark red numbers are for occupational categories where two-thirds or more of the workers are male.
• The third table shows the changing proportion of married couples where the wife earns more than the husband over the 25 years up to 2011.
• Preliminary to developing an analysis, the first task is, of course, to interpret what the data in the tables tell us about economic inequality between women and men.  It is recommended that you focus on the dark red numbers of all the tables.  The first two tables are meant to be interpreted as one. 
• The main task is to develop a background analysis of gender inequality in the economy, as it exists today and how it has changed over the past several decades.  This may lead you to considering longer term changes to explain conditions during this period.
• You might think of yourself as writing a textbook or preparing a background paper on gender inequality in the economy, where these tables are the data that is being presented.  Your goal is to offer an understanding of these tables. 
• Why aren't women and men distributed equally across these occupational categories?
• Why are women's earnings lower?
• Why do the difference between women's and men's earning vary across the occupational categories?
• Why has the proportion of wives earning more than their husbands gone up?  
• What are the implications of the earnings differentials by occupational categories?
• What are the implications of the data on wives' earnings?
• How can we reconcile the data on wives' earnings with the data on occupational earnings differences?
• In short, we are aiming at a brief explanation of women's vs. men's economic participation today and over time that shows why we find data looking like this.
• Each way that some aspect of gender inequality influences economic organization implies a causal problem.  Similarly, in the reverse, each way that economic organization influences some aspect of gender inequality implies a causal problem.  For example, women used to have no access to most high-status positions in the American economy and are now still under represented in them.  In either direction we might consider the intensity or degree of gender inequality, rather than some aspect of gender inequality, as that which influences or is influenced by economic organization.  For each observation or claim about economic inequality between women and men, we can ask "why?" or "how?"  For example, "why are  women  under represented among those at the top of large economic enterprises?" or "how does women's relative absence from positions great economic power influence the persistence of gender inequality?"
• Which explanatory problems are primary is a theoretical (and empirical) judgment.  A primary causal process is one without which the relationship between the economy and gender inequality would look and work differently .  Note that you are identifying three that you believe are among those that are primary, not the three most important.
• For each of the three selected, primary, explanatory problems, do the following: State clearly what is the explanatory problem and why it is a primary or important one .  Think carefully about what makes some causal processes more important than others when we are trying to understand a social phenomenon (her the relationship between gender inequality and economic organization). 
• Briefly describe what stand out as the possible causal processes that could account for the relationship or condition that is the focus of the explanatory problem.  For example, what might be  the causal processes that account for few women being in positions of high economic power?  These are the competing or alternative explanations for the problem.  These may include the causes or explanations explicitly suggested in the literature concerning the problem, or explanations derived from applying a more general theoretical orientation (e.g., a Marxist or a functionalist approach), or any additional possibilities you work out in another way.
• Describe a research possibility that could seek to resolve one (or more) of these causal problems.  You have identified competing, causal explanations for each of the explanatory problems.  For one of these, consider how we might hope to learn which causal explanation is more valid by doing relevant research.  To do this, we usually want to think about the circumstances under which the competing theories suggest that something in the world should look or work differently. 
• To summarize, the analytical task involves (1) identifying three primary, explanatory problems relating gender inequality and economic organization, providing a careful description for each of those explanatory problems, stating why it is important, (2) for one explanatory problem, exploring competing explanations that could solve the problem, and describing a research design that could, hypothetically, discover which explanation is better.
• Barbara F. Reskin. " Bringing the Men Back in: Sex Differentiation and the Devaluation of Women's Work ." Gender and Society, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Mar., 1988), pp. 58-81
• Destined for Equality : Employment: Gaining Equality from the Economy
• Christine L. Williams. " The Glass Escalator: Hidden Advantages for Men in the "Female" Professions, " Social Problems , Vol. 39, No. 3 (Aug., 1992), pp. 253-267
• Eagly, Alice H., and Linda L. Carli. " Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership. " Harvard Business Review 85, no. 9 (September 2007): 63-71.
• England, Paula. " Gender Inequality in Labor Markets: The Role of Motherhood and Segregation ." Social Politics 12 (2005):264-288.
• Francine D. Blau. " Trends in the Well-Being of American Women, 1970-1995 ." Journal of Economic Literature , Vol. 36, No. 1 (Mar., 1998), pp. 112-165  
• Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn. " The Gender Pay Gap: Have Women Gone as Far as They Can? " Academy of Management Perspectives 21 (February 2007): 7-23.  [Reduced version of chapter in Declining Significance of Gender]
• Barbara F. Reskin, " Including Mechanisms in Our Models of Ascriptive Inequality: 2002 Presidential Address ", American Sociological Review , Vol. 68, No. 1 (Feb., 2003), pp. 1-21
• Michelle J Budig. " Male Advantage And The Gender Composition Of Jobs: Who Rides The Glass Escalator? " Social Problems . May 2002. Vol. 49, Iss. 2; p. 258 
• Elizabeth H. Gorman and Julie A. Kmec. " Hierarchical Rank and Women's Organizational Mobility: Glass Ceilings in Corporate Law Firms ." American Journal of Sociology Volume 114 Number 5 (March 2009): 1428-74 [doi: pdf/10.1086/595950]
• Christine E. Bose, Philip L. Bereano and Mary Malloy. " Household Technology and the Social Construction of Housework ." Technology and Culture , Vol. 25, No. 1 (Jan., 1984), pp. 53-82 
• Maria Charles. " Deciphering Sex Segregation: Vertical and Horizontal Inequalities in Ten National Labor Markets ." Acta Sociologica , Vol. 46, No. 4 (Dec., 2003), pp. 267-287 
• Shelley J. Correll, Stephen Benard, In Paik. " Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty? " American Journal of Sociology , Vol. 112, No. 5 (Mar., 2007), pp. 1297-1338 
• Louise Marie Roth. Women on Wall Street: Despite Diversity Measures, Wall Street Remains Vulnerable to Sex Discrimination Charges . Academy of Management Perspectives , Feb 2007, Vol. 21  [doi: 10.5465/AMP.2007.24286162]
• Judge, Timothy A.; Livingston, Beth A. " Is The Gap More Than Gender? A Longitudinal Analysis Of Gender, Gender Role Orientation, And Earnings ."  Journal of Applied Psychology . Vol 93(5), Sep 2008, 994-1012. 
• Claudia Goldin. " The Changing Economic Role of Women: A Quantitative Approach ." Journal of Interdisciplinary History , Vol. 13, No. 4, The Measure of American History (Spring, 1983), pp. 707-733  [jstor: 203887]
• Claudia Goldin. " The Quiet Revolution That Transformed Women's Employment, Education, and Family ." The American Economic Review , Vol. 96, No. 2 (May, 2006), pp. 1-21
• Valerie Kincade Oppenheimer. " Demographic Influence on Female Employment and the Status of Women ."  American Journal of Sociology , Vol. 78, No. 4, Changing Women in a Changing Society (Jan., 1973), pp. 946-961; see also Valerie K. Oppenheimer. " The Interaction of Demand and Supply and its Effect on the Female Labour Force in the United States ." Population Studies , Vol. 21, No. 3 (Nov., 1967), pp. 239-259 
• England, Paula, Paul Allison, and Yuxiao Wu. " Does Feminization Lower Wages, Do Declines in Wages Cause Feminization, and How Can We Tell From Longitudinal Data? " Social Science Research 36(3) (2007): 1237-56. [doi: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2006.08.003]
• Trond Petersen, Vemund Snartland, Eva M. Meyersson Milgrom.  " Are female workers less productive than male workers? "  Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 25(1) (2007): 13-37. 
• Claudia Goldin, Lawrence F. Katz, Ilyana Kuziemko. " The Homecoming of American College Women: The Reversal of the College Gender Gap ." The Journal of Economic Perspectives , Vol. 20, No. 4 (Fall, 2006), pp. 133-156
• Jerry A. Jacobs. " Gender Inequality and Higher Education ."  Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 22 (1996): 153-185 [doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.22.1.153]
• Claudia Buchmann, Thomas A. DiPrete, Anne McDaniel.  " Gender Inequalities in Education. "  Annual Review of Sociology , Vol. 34 (2008): 319-337 [doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.34.040507.134719]
• England, Paula and Su Li. " Desegregation Stalled: The Changing Gender Composition of College Majors, 1971-2002. " Gender & Society 20(5) (2006):657-677.
• M. Evertsson, P. England, I. Mooi-Reci, J. Hermsen, J. de Bruijn, D. Cotter. " Is Gender Inequality Greater at Lower or Higher Educational Levels? Common Patterns in the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States ." Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 16(2):210-241 (2009) [doi: 10.1093/sp/jxp008]
• Eagly, A. H., Johannesen-Schmidt, M. C., & van Engen, M. L. (2003). Transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles: A meta-analysis comparing women and men . Psychological Bulletin, 129(4), 569-591.
• Eckel, Catherine; de Oliveira, Angela C. M.; Grossman, Philip J.  " Gender and Negotiation in the Small: Are Women (Perceived to Be) More Cooperative than Men? " Negotiation Journal , Volume 24, Issue 4, 2008: 429 [doi: 10.1111/j.1571-9979.2008.00196.x] ; Kolb, Deborah M.  " Too Bad for the Women or Does It Have to Be? Gender and Negotiation Research over the Past Twenty-Five Years ." Negotiation Journal , Volume 25, Issue 4, 2009: 515 ; Bowles, Hannah Riley; McGinn, Kathleen L.  " Gender in Job Negotiations: A Two-Level Game. "  Negotiation Journal , Volume 24, Issue 4, 2008: 393 [doi: 10.1111/j.1571-9979.2008.00194.x]
• Sue Bowden, Avner Offer. " Household Appliances and the Use of Time: The United States and Britain Since the 1920s ." The Economic History Review , New Series, Vol. 47, No. 4 (Nov., 1994), pp. 725-748 
• Graciela Chichilnisky.  " The Gender Gap ." Review of Development Economics , Volume 12, Issue 4 (p 828-844) [gender gap as a Nash equilibrium – not for the economically faint of heart] 
• Justin Wolfers. " Diagnosing Discrimination: Stock Returns and Ceo Gender "  Journal of the European Economic Association , Vol. 4, No. 2/3, Papers and Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Congress of the European Economic Association (Apr. - May, 2006), pp. 531-541 
• Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn. " The Gender Pay Gap ," The Economists' Voice (June 2007). [doi: 10.2202/1553-3832.1190]
• Claudia Goldin. " The Long Road to the Fast Track: Career and Family. " The Annals Of The American Academy Of Political And Social Science . 2004 596 (2004): 20-35.  [doi: 10.1177/0002716204267959]
• Claudia D. Goldin. " The Role of World War II in the Rise of Women's Employment. " The American Economic Review , Vol. 81, No. 4 (Sep., 1991), pp. 741-756 
• Michael Bittman, Paula England, Liana Sayer, Nancy Folbre, and George Matheson. " When Does Gender Trump Money?: Bargaining and Time in Household Work ." American Journal of Sociology 109 (2003):186-214. 

X. What role does ideology play in determining the relations between men and women?

Ideology is near the center of almost all efforts to explain gender inequalities.  People's conceptions of masculinity and femininity, ideas concerning the fairness of differential treatment  or expectations of women and men, internalized schema that evoke different judgments of women's and men's actions, rules about proper male and female behavior applied to children – all these and more concern the influence of ideology on gender identities, differential treatment of women and men, and the organization and persistence of gender inequality.  Conversely, each ideological belief that symbolizes, legitimates, invokes, guides, induces, or helps sustain gender inequality is itself a product of gender inequality.  To untangle these complex causal interdependencies, we must always attend carefully to two kinds of distinctions.  First, we must consistently recognize differences in levels of social organization, including, among others, societal structures and culture, organizations, social networks, social processes, and individual actors.  While it is tempting to treat ideological beliefs as diffuse entities unconnected to identifiable people, organizations, or structures, the analytical results are poor.  Second, we must consistently distinguish between contemporaneous causes (e.g., the ways that internalized schema can influence interactions) and asynchronous or historical causes (e.g., the ways that changes in domestic production  induce different ideas about women's place).  Causal arguments about ideology consider it as both an effect of gender inequality and a cause of gender inequality, although it is ideology's potential role as a contributing cause that stands out as more theoretically important.

• The general analytical problem . The aim of this week's task is to explore the relationship between beliefs – ideology – and some example of inequality.  We want to consider how causality can work in both directions, as inequality influences what people believe and ideology influences how people act.
• To begin, choose one aspect or component of gender inequality.   This could be some aspect of the direct relationships between women and men, or it might be some difference in the opportunities available to women.  Examples include the way that women overall select less prestigious fields of study than men in college, that higher education used to be restricted for women, that women are objects of sex trafficking, that male professional sports have much higher status, or the different kinds of restaurants that use male vs. female waiters.  You might try to be a bit creative. It can be helpful to focus your discussion using a concrete instance of that type of inequality with which you are familiar. 
• As always, remember to give the basic characteristics and principal patterns of the inequality as you understand it.  Among other possibilities, this will normally include: (1) describe what is unequal; (2) describe what this inequality looks like, how it is experienced, or how it has its impact in social life; (3) assess how the distribution appears or is manifest in the world, how we would recognize the differences between more or less of it, and how it is currently distributed).
• The goal is to ensure the reader (and you) clearly understand what makes up or defines the inequality you are focused on, and what specific examples of that inequality you will use in your analysis. 
• While identifying the relevant beliefs is obviously crucial, it can also be difficult.  The range of potentially relevant beliefs may be very large, so we have to exercise judgment about which are most important
• It may help to distinguish beliefs that motivate the practice of this aspect of gender inequality from those that legitimate it. Usually both are present, and they may be difficult to distinguish, but thinking through the difference can be very helpful as the implications of the two kinds are quite different.
• It is crucial to consider the actions and ideas of both men and women .  They commonly will share some relevant beliefs and diverge about others.  Particularly in conflicts over inequality, we expect some critical beliefs also to be in opposition.
• Consider also whether different beliefs motivate or legitimate this type of inequality in different times, places, or circumstances.   That is, you want to decide what characteristics of the beliefs connected to this inequality are fairly consistent across various concrete instances of this type of inequality and what sort of beliefs differ across instances.  For example, the beliefs that motivated male resistance to women entering "male" occupations may have varied by the status of the occupation and by the time period women began to enter.
• Consider how much people agree about the important beliefs.  When is the consensus high or low, what causes it to be high or low, and what difference does the degree of agreement make?  In particular, do people dispute some aspects of the beliefs relevant to this type of inequality, such that the dispute affects the inequality or informs us about it?  Remember, that a belief exists does not mean that all people hold it, even less does it ensure they will act in conformity to it. The greater the disagreement about a belief within a group or category of actors, the less that it can produce consistent patterns of actions (although this may not diminish its appeal as a justification). 
• Beliefs have a variety of other variable characteristics that can be important to analyzing their significance. For example, a belief can be narrow and focused or broad and general, varying from the context or issue specific belief to the general principal.  A belief can be so salient and closely held that people refer to it all the time or so insignificant and loosely held that it plays a role only when forced to the forefront.
• Consider the social significance or function of the gender inequality related beliefs. We can try to judge the effects of beliefs by comparing how people would behave if beliefs were different, using either real or hypothetical alternatives. 
• Although beliefs exist only by being held by individuals, we generally want to think of beliefs as cultural phenomena. The beliefs that concern us are those preserved and imposed by cultures or acquired as the common effect of shared or parallel experiences. People are prone to all kinds of idiosyncratic beliefs, but only shared beliefs have social effect.
• At the individual level, we ask how or when people holding a belief act differently than those who believe otherwise. At the social level, we ask how the presence of those beliefs in a group or circumstance has social consequences -- such as influencing the structure of organizations, the prevailing legal system, or direction of historical changes.
• What kind of effect and how much effect we attribute to a belief will depend in part on what we choose as the alternate beliefs for comparison.   Reasonable alternatives might include: beliefs observed to exist in more egalitarian (or more unequal) circumstances, reversal of beliefs about women and men (such as believing women are better at math - often implausible in reality, but potentially clarifying as an imaginary experiment), the absence of any such beliefs (that is, people have no expectations about something, such as whether men or women will be more nurturing), or the presence of some reasonable hypothetical alternative beliefs.
• As usual, we want to give some thought to both women and men - considering how each sex is affected, considering beliefs about both sexes, and considering what each sex believes.  Typically, we expect to find women and men share many beliefs, but are sharply divided on others.    We also want to consider how the effects of the beliefs might vary depending on the context or other mediating influences.
• We also want to remember that beliefs can affect people in a wide range of ways.  Beliefs can affect judgments, motives, aspirations, quality of experience, and so forth.  Again, the point is not to include everything.  Instead, we want to recognize that deciding what is important is an analytical judgment; it should not simply be to talk about whatever we happened to think about first. We are trying to figure out what beliefs really make a difference to the strength, durability, or form of gender inequality.
• Thus, for the example of inequality being examined, we are in part trying to explain how beliefs or ideas might arise as a result of the presence of the inequality that they legitimate and motivate.  This is our central goal, and it is difficult.  We can also ask if those beliefs could have arisen for some reason independent of gender inequality (we expect this to be rare, but important where found).
• It can help to do a hypothetical experiment.  Consider an imaginary circumstance (which might have a real historical counterpart) where the relevant aspect of gender inequality did not exist, nor did the related beliefs – then at some point in time this type of gender inequality came into existence.  Then try to think through how ideas would change as a result of the emergence of this facet of gender inequality.  Consider what issues might arise if this type of inequality came to exist, but the beliefs still did not, and how might the response to such issues lead to new beliefs. Think about both women and men trying to make sense of the unequal circumstances, and trying to mold the perception of reality and justice to fit their circumstances.
• To make the analysis more concrete, see if you can provide evidence or observations about real circumstances where this type of inequality is minimal (different cultures, different historical periods, different parts of society).  Assess how the beliefs under minimal inequality compare to those where it is high.
• It is a good idea to consider under what conditions, if any, would the beliefs associated with a facet of gender inequality exist without the presence of this facet of gender inequality. That is, could similar or analogous beliefs appear with different kinds of inequality or under conditions of little inequality.  The first possibility is critical, because it suggests beliefs due to the presence of inequality per se, not dependent on the type of inequality.  The second possibility suggests the prospect of beliefs hijacked from conditions distinct from inequality, then converted to some service to reinforce or challenge inequality.  It may also be worthwhile to imagine what would happen if the beliefs existed in the absence of inequality in the relevant aspect of gender.  Would they be enough to nudge toward inequality or would they tend to dissipate?
• It is also a good idea to consider how people acquire the relevant beliefs.  Are they part of general cultural expectations, are the transferred in specific contexts, or do people generate them from experience rather than learning them from others?  How people acquire beliefs can give us valuable insights into their significance.
• Finally, ask what happens if some people question or reject the beliefs? This question applies to both women and men.  The mechanisms to ensure acceptance and conformity are crucial to the preservation and effectiveness of beliefs.
• 5 Finally, after completing the steps in the analysis above, try to give an overall assessment about the significance of ideology to the facet of gender inequality you are considering. 
• Throughout, be careful to distinguish between empirical claims and moral claims.  Both kinds of beliefs are important.  And they may be confused or overlapping rather than neatly distinguished in real life.  Still, they are crucially different.  Similarly, distinguish between the explanation of beliefs and the justification of beliefs.
• Do try to introduce appropriate connections between the argument(s) you present and the readings.  Consider not only the common readings from this week, but also past readings and optional ones from this week that seem particularly relevant. 
• Ridgeway, Cecilia L., and Shelley J. Correll. " Unpacking the Gender System: A Theoretical Perspective on Gender Beliefs and Social Relations ." Gender & Society 18, no. 4 (2004): 510-31.
• Down So Long:   Disputed Ideals: Ideologies of Domesticity and Feminist Rebellion
• Paula England. " The Gender Revolution: Uneven and Stalled. " Gender & Society 2010 24 (2): 149-166
• Francesca M. Cancian. " The Feminization of Love. " Signs , Vol. 11, No. 4 (Summer, 1986), pp. 692-709
• Robert Max Jackson. Destined for Equality : Ch. 4 - " Institutional Individualism "
• Döring, Nicola, Anne Reif, and Sandra Poeschl. " How Gender-Stereotypical Are Selfies? A Content Analysis and Comparison with Magazine Adverts ." Computers in Human Behavior 55, Part B (2016): 955-62. [doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.10.001] [read: 955-57, 61; look at photos throughout]
• Young, Isaac F., and Daniel Sullivan. " Competitive Victimhood: A Review of the Theoretical and Empirical Literature ." Current Opinion in Psychology 11 (2016): 30-34. [doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2016.04.004]
• Nakamura, Mayumi, and Mito Akiyoshi. " What Determines the Perception of Fairness Regarding Household Division of Labor between Spouses? ." Plos One 10, no. 7 (Jul 2015). [doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0132608]
• Davis, Shannon N., and Theodore N. Greenstein. " Gender Ideology: Components, Predictors, and Consequences ." Annual Review of Sociology 35, no. 1 (2009): 87-105. [doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-070308-115920]
• Judith Lorber. " Believing is Seeing: Biology as Ideology ." Gender and Society , Vol. 7, No. 4 (Dec., 1993), pp. 568-581
• Faye Ginsburg. " Procreation Stories: Reproduction, Nurturance, and Procreation in Life Narratives of Abortion Activists ." American Ethnologist, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Nov., 1987), pp. 623-636
• Kristin Luker. " Contraceptive Risk Taking and Abortion: Results and Implications of a San Francisco Bay Area Study ." Studies in Family Planning , Vol. 8, No. 8 (Aug., 1977), pp. 190-196; and " The War Between the Women ." Family Planning Perspectives , Vol. 16, No. 3 (Mar. - Apr., 1984), pp. 105-110
• Clem Brooks and Catherine Bolzendahl. " The Transformation of US Gender Role Attitudes: Cohort Replacement, Social-Structural Change, and Ideological Learning ."  Social Science Research Volume:  33  Issue:  1  (2004 Mar):  106 - 133
• Catherine I Bolzendahl, Daniel J Myers.. " Feminist Attitudes and Support for Gender Equality: Opinion Change in Women and Men, 1974-1998 ." Social Forces , vol. 83, no. 2 (Dec 2004): 759-789
• Thornton, Arland; Young-DeMarco, Linda, " Four Decades of Trends in Attitudes toward Family Issues in the United States: The 1960s through the 1990s. " Journal of Marriage and the Family , vol. 63, no. 4, pp. 1009-1037, Nov 2001 
• Emily W. Kane, Mimi Schippers. " Men's and Women's Beliefs about Gender and Sexuality ." Gender and Society, Vol. 10, No. 5 (Oct., 1996), pp. 650-665
• Eric D. Widmer, Judith Treas, Robert Newcomb. " Attitudes toward Nonmarital Sex in 24 Countries ." The Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Nov., 1998), pp. 349-358... [jstor: 3813111]
• Bem, S, L, (1994) Defending The Lenses of Gender . Psychological Inquiry, 5, 97-101.
• Frable, D. E., & Bem, S. L. (1985). If You Are Gender Schematic, All Members Of The Opposite Sex Look Alike . Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 459-468. [doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.49.2.459]

XI.   How can we make sense of feminism's fate and role in contemporary U.S.?

Today, feminism is both extolled and condemned, often by people whose orientations toward feminism seem to defy their interests.  Both the popular press and scholarship have devoted a lot of effort seeking to make sense of people's beliefs about feminism and equality, but these efforts have done little to reduce the disagreements.

• The goal of this task is to explore what young people think about feminism today and to attempt to explain these beliefs.
• Use your own judgment about who to interview and how many.  You are trying to get enough "data" to serve as the basis for your analysis.
• Also use your own judgment about how to conduct your interviews and what to ask.  However, at a minimum try to include: 1) how they would define feminism, 2) what kinds of the people they know do they consider feminist, 3) what they think is true about gender inequality/equality today, 4) whether or not they consider themselves feminist and why, 5) whether or not they consider themselves committed to gender equality.
• Based on these interviews and your pre-existing observations, write a descriptive assessment of young, educated American's orientation toward feminism.
• Prepare a provisional causal analysis of these current attitudes toward feminism and gender equality in your reference population. Try to do a reasoned analysis, taking into account the readings for this topic.
• Causal analyses always hinge on the choice of comparison.  Among others, you might consider: 1) the differences between now and the past, 2) the differences between women and men, 3) the differences between those who identify as feminist and those who do not, 3) the difference between people like you and people unlike you
• Destined for Equality : Women's Rejection of Subordination
• Nancy Burns and Katherine Gallagher.  " Public Opinion on Gender Issues: The Politics of Equity and Roles ." Annual Review of Political Science, 2010, Vol. 13: 425-443 [doi: 10.1146/annurev.polisci.12.040507.142213]
• Jo Freeman. " Political Organization in the Feminist Movement ." Acta Sociologica , Vol. 18, No. 2/3 (1975), pp. 222-244 
• Marshall, Susan E. " Ladies against Women: Mobilization Dilemmas of Antifeminist Movements ." Social Problems 32, no. 4 (1985): 348-62. [doi:10.1525/sp.1985.32.4.03a00040]
•  Susan J. Douglas. " Girls Gone Anti-Feminist"
• Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett and Holly Baxter. " The Five Main Issues Facing Modern Feminism "
• Hanna Rosin. " The Patriarchy Is Dead. Feminists, accept it ."
• Liza Mundy. " Why Do Some Feminists Get Uneasy When Women Make Progress? "
• Alexandra Petri.  " Feminism is dead! Long live feminism! "
• Carl N. Degler. " Charlotte Perkins Gilman on the Theory and Practice of Feminism ." American Quarterly , Vol. 8, No. 1 (Spring, 1956), pp. 21-39   
• Emily Stoper, Roberta Ann Johnson. " The Weaker Sex & the Better Half: The Idea of Women's Moral Superiority in the American Feminist Movement ." Polity , Vol. 10, No. 2 (Winter, 1977), pp. 192-217  [jstor: 3234258]
• Holly J. McCammon, Courtney Sanders Muse, Harmony D. Newman, and Teresa M. Terrell. " Movement Framing and Discursive Opportunity Structures: The Political Successes of the U.S. Women's Jury Movements ." American Sociological Review 2007 72(5): 725-749.   
• Elsie Clews Parsons. " Feminism and Conventionality ." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science , Vol. 56, Women in Public Life (Nov., 1914), pp. 47-53 
• Catherine Hakim. " Five Feminist Myths about Women's Employment ." The British Journal of Sociology , Vol. 46, No. 3 (Sep., 1995), pp. 429-455

XII.   How have political processes and structures sustained men's and women's relative status?

States or governments have power. Through the military and police, a state can enforce conformity to its rules, repel and punish challenges from the scale of individual acts to collective rebellions, and by threat, implicit or explicit, deter rebellions from appearing. Through the law, regulations, and bureaucratic policies, a state can define what constitutes acceptable or legitimate behavior at all levels of social organization. Through economic policies of taxation, expenditures, and redistributions (such as welfare policies or agricultural supports), a state influences the relative economic status of different groups.

By acting differently toward groups with regard to any of these aspects of government power, a state can create, reinforce, or exacerbate social inequalities. Analogously, a state can, in theory, obstruct, destabilize, or diminish social inequality by using its power in ways that are inconsistent with social inequalities. States determine, influence, legitimize, and sanction rights and opportunities; they may do so in more or less egalitarian ways.

When significant, enduring, social inequality exists, those privileged by that form of inequality will normally have more influence over the state than do those disadvantaged by the inequality, and the overall effect of state policies will reinforce the exercise and persistence of the inequality. A fundamental problem for all state theories is who or what decides state policies and actions. To some degree, those "in" the state (elected, appointed, hired, or appropriated) make decisions based on their interests and outlooks as members of the state apparatus. To some degree, state actors respond to the influence of power brokers outside the state, such as the economically powerful. In either case, when making policy or strategic planning decisions, those influencing state actions are in part responding to what they perceive will be the responses of all actors in the nation affected by those decisions.  States, or the political actors who comprise the government, also have their own interests, most notably preserving their power, and these interests are not automatically consistent with the interests of dominant social groups.

These political processes may support and enforce gender inequality, passively permit it, or oppose gender inequality (as is true with any form of social inequality). They may do any combination of these with respect to different aspects of gender inequality.  Sustaining influence over political processes is a fundamental feature and goal of socially dominant groups and the long monopoly of men over political power has both demonstrated and sustained gender inequality.  Yet, government actions have also contributed to the decline of gender inquality over the past two centuries.

• You have been hired by the newly elected President of the United States (or the analogous top political position in another country that you prefer to examine).  One of the new President’s main goals for her years in office is to use government power to improve gender inequality and the status of women.  Your job is to recommend toward what specific goals she should focus her efforts.
• You may recommend new legislation (or the removal of old), new administrative strategies such as who gets appointed, new executive policies (for example, rules for the military) that are within the President’s power without legislation, concerted efforts to influence public opinion or state level governance.  In short, you can consider the entire range of actions available to a President.
• You should propose at least three distinct initiatives that you believe could serve this purpose.
• At what aspects of gender inequality is the policy aimed? 
• Include a brief analysis of this inequality that explains what is unequal, how great is the inequality, who does it effect, how widely is it recognized, how it has (or has not) changed over time, and what seem to be the principal causes.
• Describe how have government actions (or inaction) influenced this inequality in the past.
• Show why we should expect that it will be easy or hard to carry out the strategy and how the possible difficulties reflect the influence or effects of gender inequality.
• Explain how the proposed strategy can be expected to alleviate gender inequality.  This explanation should connect directly to the causal explanation of the inequality being diminished.
• In short, you should propose several strategies by which a government could promote greater gender equality, then provide an analytic appraisal of the strategy you deem best.  This appraisal should stress the causes of relevant facets of gender inequality, how the proposed strategy will affect that causal process, and how gender inequality has a causal influence on government policy that must be countered to implement the policy.  Do not forget to provide a historical context.
• Destined for Equality : Citizenship: Gaining Equality from the State
• Joyce Gelb, Marian Lief Palley. " Women and Interest Group Politics: A Comparative Analysis of Federal Decision-Making. " The Journal of Politics , Vol. 41, No. 2 (May, 1979), pp. 362-392. [doi: 10.2307/2129770]
• Pamela Paxton, Sheri Kunovich, Melanie M. Hughes. " Gender in Politics ." Annual Review of Sociology 2007 33, 263-284
• Down So Long:   The Reproduction of Economic and Political Power
• Lynne Haney. " Homeboys, Babies, Men in Suits: The State and the Reproduction of Male Dominance ." American Sociological Review , Vol. 61, No. 5 (Oct., 1996), pp. 759-778
• Deniz Kandiyoti, " Bargaining with Patriarchy ." Gender and Society ," Vol. 2, No. 3 (Sep., 1988), pp. 274-290
• Torben Iversen, Frances Rosenbluth. " The Political Economy of Gender: Explaining Cross-National Variation in the Gender Division of Labor and the Gender Voting Gap ."    American Journal of Political Science , Vol. 50, No. 1 (Jan., 2006), pp. 1-19 [doi: 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00166.x]
• Vicky Randall. " Legislative Gender Quotas and Indian Exceptionalism: The Travails of the Women's Reservation Bill ."   Comparative Politics , Vol. 39, No. 1 (Oct., 2006), pp. 63-82 [jstor: 20434021]
• Guillaume R. Fréchette, Francois Maniquet, Massimo Morelli. " Incumbents' Interests and Gender Quotas ." American Journal of Political Science , Vol. 52, No. 4 (Oct., 2008), pp. 891-909 [jstor: 25193856]
• Lynne A. Haney. " Feminist State Theory: Applications to Jurisprudence, Criminology, and the Welfare State ." Annual Review of Sociology 26:641-666 (2000) [doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.641]
• Richard L. Fox, Jennifer L. Lawless. " Entering the Arena? Gender and the Decision to Run for Office ." American Journal of Political Science , Vol. 48, No. 2 (Apr., 2004), pp. 264-280 [jstor: 1519882] .

XIIb.   How do the media influence or reflect gender inequality?

Commentators often point toward media influence when they try to explain contemporary gender inequality. Theories of media alert us that we must always consider reciprocal causal processes. While any individual may appear only to be the object of media influence, the content and impact of media depend greatly on the existing culture and social structure. The relationship of the media to the collective market effect of consumers may be compared to the relationship between elected public officials and voters. Also, consumers have considerable freedom to choose which media outlets to give their attention and people selectively interpret and judge the media to which they are exposed. All of this makes the relationship between what is portrayed in the media and what occur in the "real" world rather complex.

• Select one kind of popular/mass media, such as magazines or the cinema, or, alternatively, a form of popular culture thought to have an analogous impact, such as popular music.
• Choose a small, reasonable sample from the two periods.  For example, the samples might be advertisements from three magazines present in both periods, or the female and male protagonists of top earning movies, or the lyrics of the highest rated songs.
• Using the dimensions or characteristics identified in the readings, (or analogous ones that better fit the media you are assessing), characterize the differences in the ways women and men are portrayed in the two periods.
• Given the results of your comparisons, show how the data you observe might be explained by (1) theories stressing the influence of the media on gender expectations, evaluations, and behavior, or (2) theories stressing the media as reflecting gender inequality, or (3) theories stressing market segmentation (audiences choose among media offerings and media makers aim at audience segments.
• Prepare a simple, reasonable response to the questions, "What is the basic causal relationship between mass media and gender inequality?" and "How is the correspondence between media portrayals and real-life gender inequality sustained over time as gender inequality changes?
• Julia T. Wood.  " Gendered Media: The Influence of Media on Views of Gender ." From Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture by Julie Wood.
• Mee-Eun Kang. " The Portrayal Of Women’s Images In Magazine Advertisements: Goffman’s Gender Analysis Revisited. "  Vol 37, no. 11-12  (Dec 1997: , Volume 37, Issue 11-12, pp 979-996)
• P. Dahlgren.  " Mass Media: Introduction and Schools of Thought ." International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
• How Gender-Stereotypical Are Selfies? A Content Analysis and Comparison with Magazine Adverts ." Computers in Human Behavior 55, Part B (2// 2016): 955-62. [read: 955-57, 61; look at photos throughout]

XIII.   What does the future hold?

Where do we go from here? Predicting the future is the ultimate challenge for causal analyses.  To have any potential to see into the future, we need a sound and thorough causal theory, one that can encompass the range of possible influences simultaneously.  We also need to cope with the unpredictable potential effects of processes and events that are outside the boundaries of our theories.  These are extremely difficult conditions to meet.  But the need to make some sense of the future weighs on us.  Will gender inquality continue to decline, and greater gender equality spread throughout the world?  Are some aspects of gender inquality particularly resistant to reduction, and if so why?  Could change stagnate?  Behind such concerns are two principal questions.  What has caused the long-term pattern of declining gender inequality?  And what has preserved aspects of gender inequality in the face of these accumulating changes?  Combining the answers to these two questions with an effort to project the relevant influences into the future, is the basis for trying to understand the possibilities for the future.  Behind this also lies another analytical question with moral overtones: what does gender equality really mean?

• for each of these two types, describe what is the inequality (how are women and men unequal, which women and men experience it, how do things differ when this inequality is high from when it is low)
• describe the evidence and logic that suggests one type is declining relatively quickly and the other relatively slowly
• For each, consider what processes, conditions, interests, and the like propel the movement toward greater equality
• For each, consider what circumstances, activities, and the like obstruct the movement toward greater equality
• Try to explain how and why the balance between the causes propelling greater equality and the causes sustaining existing inequality differ between the two types of gender inequality
• The general analytical problem .  Using two plausible future scenarios about gender inequality, assess what processes or conditions will decide which future alternative comes to pass.
• Select two of three alternatives to use for the analysis: highest conceivable level of equality, highest possibility of in equality, most likely conditions.  Essentially this means that we compare the two extreme possibilities, or we compare what we think most likely with one of the extreme possibilities.
• For each of the two selected alternatives, give a clear description of what the expected level of gender inequality means.  How severe will be major components of gender inequality, how consistent will different aspects of gender inequality be with each other, how consistent will these patterns be in society, and so on.  (It might help to look back over the range of topics covered above.)
• The center of the analysis will be to provide a causal argument about what causal conditions and sequence of developments could lead to each of the two alternatives.  To this end, we must consider the full range of causal influences that we have examined previously.
• For our purposes, let us set the future to be about one and two generations, that is when your children are your current age, and then when their children reach a similar age.  The key tradeoff with setting the distance into the future is simple: the further we go into the future the more interesting and significant are the social changes but equally the more obscure become the realistic possibilities.
• Let us focus on our own society as a whole, referencing distinctive social categories as needed. 
• Similarly, let us assume that the cultural, political, and economic environments are reasonably stable, with the expectation that existing long term trends will continue into the future.  We will ignore the potential for significant structural changes and historical "shocks" such as economic recessions and wars.  Of course, the further we look into the future, the more speculative and fallible such assumptions become, but our purpose is not to predict the actual future.
• Looking forward, the future is always uncertain, however well we may explain it once it becomes the past.  One way to make the future more amenable to analysis is to simplify it into what we believe are the principal alternative futures that matter to us.  Probably the simplest technique it to focus on one characteristic and consider the most extreme plausible possibilities.
• First, the highest level of gender equality that we can imagine.  This might be the current state of inequality, or it might be the highest level of inequality now seen in any comparable society, or it might be a much higher level of inequality.  The problem here is to imagine what is the greatest amount of future inequality we can
• Second, the highest level of gender in equality that we can imagine.
• And, third, the most likely level of gender inequality that we expect.  This could coincide with either one of the previous, but will commonly be somewhere between them.
• For deciding the plausibility of any future circumstances, we want to remember that there are two kinds of limiting conditions we must consider.  First, functional plausibility , asking if that level of inequality is feasible in the context of what we perceive to be the relevant surrounding circumstances.  For a simple example, a social custom of leaving all property to sons is largely unworkable in a society with a low reproduction rate because so many families have no sons.  Second, transition plausibility , asking if a conceivable historical path of development could lead from present circumstances to the future scenario.  For a simple example, it might be possible to conceive how American society could have functioned with full gender equality in 1900, but it would extremely difficult to suggest any plausible way that condition could have emerged under any conceivable historical sequence from the social organization of American society in 1850. 
• Bringing it together .  Our goal here is not to predict the future of gender inequality, but to examine what sequence of causal conditions seem likely determinants of that future.  We are trying to discover defensible " if, then " arguments.  To do this, we are starting by imagining possible futures, then working backwards from them to find paths from the present to those futures,  then asserting what else must occur for those paths to materialize.  We should not forget, there may be more than one path to an imagined future and more than one set of causal conditions that could lead us there. For each alternative being considered, we want to analyze why and how it might reasonably occur. As an optional extra, you can offer an analysis of which alternative seems more likely and why.
• Paula England.  " Toward Gender Equality: Progress and Bottlenecks ," in Declining Significance of Gender? , (ed. Francine Blau, Mary Brinton, David Grusky), 2007; also Paula England. " The Gender Revolution: Uneven and Stalled. " Gender & Society 2010 24: 149-166.  [doi: 10.1177/0891243210361475]
• Cecilia L. Ridgeway.  " Gender as an Organizing Force in Social Relations: Implications for the Future of Inequality ," in Declining Significance of Gender? , (ed. Francine Blau, Mary Brinton, David Grusky), 2007
• Robert Max Jackson.  "Opposing Forces: How, Why, and When Will Gender Inequality Disappear? ," in Declining Significance of Gender? , (ed. Francine Blau, Mary Brinton, David Grusky), 2007
• Maria Charles and Karen Bradley.  " Indulging Our Gendered Selves? Sex Segregation by Field of Study in 44 Countries ."  American Journal of Sociology 114:4 (2009), 924-976  [doi: pdf/10.1086/595942]
• Richard Breen and Lynn Prince Cooke. " The Persistence of the Gendered Division of Domestic Labour. "  European Sociological Review 2005 21(1): 43-57 [doi: 10.1093/esr/jci003]
• Luisa Escriche, Gonzalo Olcina, and Rosario Sánchez. " Gender Discrimination And Intergenerational Transmission Of Preferences ." Oxford Economic Papers (2004) 56(3): 485-511
• Gerda Neyer and Dorothea Rieck. " Moving Towards Gender Equality. " Ch. 7 in How Generations and Gender Shape Demographic Change United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. Conference "How Generations and Gender Shape Demographic Change," 14 to 16 May 2008 at the Palais des Nations in Geneva 

Possible additional sections ...

Xii.   how have women's and men's actions obstructed or furthered change, taking into account the changing institutional context.

      Both women and men have acted in every possible way towards gender inequality.  What we want to understand are the circumstances in which they predictably act in ways that either reinforce or erode inequality.  People's actions are complex results of their interests, ideologies, circumstances, opportunities, and constraints.  While theories of gender inequality invoke all kinds of abstract causal processes, in real life inequality is sustained and changed by the actions of women and men.  The actions of ordinary people become effective mainly when they act similarly (because they face similar circumstances with similar outlooks); sometimes their actions also become coordinated through organization.  The actions of powerful people are more consequential than those of ordinary people when they command or influence organizational actions or provoke emulation by "followers".  Even unique political actions may have great effect by altering laws, policies, or the balance of power, although even in these cases the institutionalization of changes generally depends on dispersed acceptance; in the economic realm, even organizational actions typically become effective only when multiple organizations pursue parallel policies (governmental controls over an economy would be an exception). 

• "Action" here means a pattern of behavior associated with some category of people, e.g. the tendency to take or not take advantage of educational opportunities by women of some type in some period.  The relevant actions are those that were one typical result either of being either in certain enduring categories of women or men (for example, single women with higher education) or in certain recurring circumstances (for example, married women whose husbands lost their jobs for long periods).  The category could include all women or all men.
• To say that actions reinforce gender inequality means that they either bolster the stability of gender inequality or help to make it more severe;  alternatively, if those actions became rare and  were not replaced by alternative actions with similar effects, then either the degree of gender inequality experienced by some people would decline or the persistence of gender inequality would become more problematic.  (by the identified group in the identified conditions)
• Analogously, to say that actions challenge gender inequality means that those actions, if taken by enough people, result in reducing the amount of gender inequality or they erode the stability of gender inequality making it more vulnerable to future challenges.
• Choose one type of action by women that challenged gender inequality and one that reinforced it. 
• Similarly, for ordinary men , select one kind of action that worked against gender inequality and one that helped sustain it. 
• Finally, do the same for men with power . 
• Identify what kind of women or men were likely to perform this action and under what circumstances. 
• Describe the action, including an assessment of its effects on gender inequality.  This may include consideration of reasons why its effects might vary (e.g., the number acting might have to surpass a threshold before there are widespread effects, the effects might be contingent on other conditions, the effects might happen after a delay, and so on).
• Try to specify the reasons why this type of action occurred.  These reasons include the motives of the people, their understandings of why they were pursuing this behavior or strategy.  The reasons also include the social and cultural conditions that induce the actions and make them seem necessary, sensible, and just.  The reasons may also include triggering events.
• To summarize: Pick six kinds of behavior that have made a difference to the persistence of gender inequality, one reinforcing and one challenging for each of the three categories: women, ordinary men, powerful men.  Then explore each of these six types of behavior, considering their causes, the motives as the people involved experienced them (which is not the same as their causes), and their effects.
• Destined for Equality : Surrendering the Heritage of Male Dominance
• Laura L. Miller. " Not Just Weapons of the Weak: Gender Harassment as a Form of Protest for Army Men ." Social Psychology Quarterly , Vol. 60, No. 1 (Mar., 1997), pp. 32-51
• Declining Significance of Gender : Toward Gender Equality: Progress and Bottlenecks , Paula England ; also Paula England. " The Gender Revolution: Uneven and Stalled. " Gender & Society 2010 24: 149-166. [doi: 10.1177/0891243210361475]
• Declining Significance of Gender : Gender as an Organizing Force in Social Relations: Implications for the Future of Inequality , Cecilia L. Ridgeway
• Declining Significance of Gender : Opposing Forces: How, Why, and When Will Gender Inequality Disappear? ,  Robert Max Jackson
• Noah P. Mark, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and Cecilia L. Ridgeway. " Why Do Nominal Characteristics Acquire Status Value? A Minimal Explanation for Status Construction ." AJS Volume 115 Number 3 (November 2009): 832-62 .... [doi: pdf/10.1086/606142]
• Kirsten Dellinger. " Masculinities in "Safe" and "Embattled" Organizations: Accounting for Pornographic and Feminist Magazines ." Gender & Society , vol. 18, no. 5, pp. 545-566, Oct 2004...
• Ann-Dorte Christensen and Jørgen Elm Larsen. " Gender, Class, and Family: Men and Gender Equality in a Danish Context . Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 2008 15(1):53-78 
• Linda Thompson, Alexis J. Walker. " Gender in Families: Women and Men in Marriage, Work, and Parenthood ." Journal of Marriage and the Family , Vol. 51, No. 4 (Nov., 1989), pp. 845-871  [jstor: 353201]

XII.   How have political processes and structures sustained men's and women's relative status? [original version with alternate task & readings]

As structure and as actor, the state has been unavoidably central to ongoing practice of gender inequality, to its persistence, and to changes in the form and amount of gender inequality.

When significant, enduring, social inequality exists, those privileged by that form of inequality will normally have more influence over the state than do those disadvantaged by the inequality, and the overall effect of state policies will reinforce the exercise and persistence of the inequality. A fundamental problem for all state theories is who or what decides state policies and actions. To some degree, those "in" the state (elected, appointed, hired, or appropriated) make decisions based on their interests and outlooks as members of the state apparatus. To some degree, state actors respond to the influence of power brokers outside the state, such as the economically powerful. In either case, when making policy or strategic planning decisions, those influencing state actions are in part responding to what they perceive will be the responses of all actors in the nation affected by those decisions.

• Task summary: Assess the most important ways the American state (or some other) has influenced and been influenced by gender inequality over the past two hundred years.  Try to keep in mind that this always concerns the accumulation and exercise of social power.
• Consider how and why the state treated women and men differently
• Consider ways that the state helped gender inequality operate smoothly
• Consider how the state helped gender inequality to persist
• How and why has the state promoted gender equality by reducing the differences in its treatment of women?  How has the state How and why has the state made it difficult (and irrational) for many to continue practices that disadvantage women?
• How and why have the relevant government actions changed over time? 
• While developing the analysis for this task, it can be helpful to examine how the relationship between the state and gender inequality resembled or differed from the state's relationships to other kinds of inequality.
• Ann Shola Orloff. " Gendering the Comparative Analysis of Welfare States: An Unfinished Agenda ." Sociological Theory 27(3):317-343 (2009) [doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9558.2009.01350.x]
• Karen Beckwith. " Women's Movements At Century's End: Excavation and Advances in Political Science ." Annual Review of Political Science 2001 4, 371-390 [doi: 10.1146/annurev.polisci.4.1.371]
• Torben Iversen, Frances Rosenbluth. " The Political Economy of Gender: Explaining Cross-National Variation in the Gender Division of Labor and the Gender Voting Gap ."  American Journal of Political Science , Vol. 50, No. 1 (Jan., 2006), pp. 1-19 [doi: 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00166.x]
• Karen Beckwith. " The Comparative Politics of Women's Movements ." Perspectives on Politics , Vol. 3, No. 3 (Sep., 2005), pp. 583-596 
• Vicky Randall. " Legislative Gender Quotas and Indian Exceptionalism: The Travails of the Women's Reservation Bill ." Comparative Politics , Vol. 39, No. 1 (Oct., 2006), pp. 63-82
• Guillaume R. Fréchette, Francois Maniquet, Massimo Morelli. " Incumbents' Interests and Gender Quotas ." American Journal of Political Science , Vol. 52, No. 4 (Oct., 2008), pp. 891-909
• Richard L. Fox, Jennifer L. Lawless. " Entering the Arena? Gender and the Decision to Run for Office ." American Journal of Political Science , Vol. 48, No. 2 (Apr., 2004), pp. 264-280
• Kira Sanbonmatsu. " Gender Stereotypes and Vote Choice ." American Journal of Political Science , Vol. 46, No. 1 (Jan., 2002), pp. 20-34.
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(rev: 9/27/18, 10/25/20)

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Twenty years of gender equality research: A scoping review based on a new semantic indicator

Paola belingheri.

1 Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Energia, dei Sistemi, del Territorio e delle Costruzioni, Università degli Studi di Pisa, Largo L. Lazzarino, Pisa, Italy

Filippo Chiarello

Andrea fronzetti colladon.

2 Department of Engineering, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy

3 Department of Management, Kozminski University, Warsaw, Poland

Paola Rovelli

4 Faculty of Economics and Management, Centre for Family Business Management, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bozen-Bolzano, Italy

Associated Data

All relevant data are within the manuscript and its supporting information files. The only exception is the text of the abstracts (over 15,000) that we have downloaded from Scopus. These abstracts can be retrieved from Scopus, but we do not have permission to redistribute them.

Gender equality is a major problem that places women at a disadvantage thereby stymieing economic growth and societal advancement. In the last two decades, extensive research has been conducted on gender related issues, studying both their antecedents and consequences. However, existing literature reviews fail to provide a comprehensive and clear picture of what has been studied so far, which could guide scholars in their future research. Our paper offers a scoping review of a large portion of the research that has been published over the last 22 years, on gender equality and related issues, with a specific focus on business and economics studies. Combining innovative methods drawn from both network analysis and text mining, we provide a synthesis of 15,465 scientific articles. We identify 27 main research topics, we measure their relevance from a semantic point of view and the relationships among them, highlighting the importance of each topic in the overall gender discourse. We find that prominent research topics mostly relate to women in the workforce–e.g., concerning compensation, role, education, decision-making and career progression. However, some of them are losing momentum, and some other research trends–for example related to female entrepreneurship, leadership and participation in the board of directors–are on the rise. Besides introducing a novel methodology to review broad literature streams, our paper offers a map of the main gender-research trends and presents the most popular and the emerging themes, as well as their intersections, outlining important avenues for future research.

Introduction

The persistent gender inequalities that currently exist across the developed and developing world are receiving increasing attention from economists, policymakers, and the general public [e.g., 1 – 3 ]. Economic studies have indicated that women’s education and entry into the workforce contributes to social and economic well-being [e.g., 4 , 5 ], while their exclusion from the labor market and from managerial positions has an impact on overall labor productivity and income per capita [ 6 , 7 ]. The United Nations selected gender equality, with an emphasis on female education, as part of the Millennium Development Goals [ 8 ], and gender equality at-large as one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030 [ 9 ]. These latter objectives involve not only developing nations, but rather all countries, to achieve economic, social and environmental well-being.

As is the case with many SDGs, gender equality is still far from being achieved and persists across education, access to opportunities, or presence in decision-making positions [ 7 , 10 , 11 ]. As we enter the last decade for the SDGs’ implementation, and while we are battling a global health pandemic, effective and efficient action becomes paramount to reach this ambitious goal.

Scholars have dedicated a massive effort towards understanding gender equality, its determinants, its consequences for women and society, and the appropriate actions and policies to advance women’s equality. Many topics have been covered, ranging from women’s education and human capital [ 12 , 13 ] and their role in society [e.g., 14 , 15 ], to their appointment in firms’ top ranked positions [e.g., 16 , 17 ] and performance implications [e.g., 18 , 19 ]. Despite some attempts, extant literature reviews provide a narrow view on these issues, restricted to specific topics–e.g., female students’ presence in STEM fields [ 20 ], educational gender inequality [ 5 ], the gender pay gap [ 21 ], the glass ceiling effect [ 22 ], leadership [ 23 ], entrepreneurship [ 24 ], women’s presence on the board of directors [ 25 , 26 ], diversity management [ 27 ], gender stereotypes in advertisement [ 28 ], or specific professions [ 29 ]. A comprehensive view on gender-related research, taking stock of key findings and under-studied topics is thus lacking.

Extant literature has also highlighted that gender issues, and their economic and social ramifications, are complex topics that involve a large number of possible antecedents and outcomes [ 7 ]. Indeed, gender equality actions are most effective when implemented in unison with other SDGs (e.g., with SDG 8, see [ 30 ]) in a synergetic perspective [ 10 ]. Many bodies of literature (e.g., business, economics, development studies, sociology and psychology) approach the problem of achieving gender equality from different perspectives–often addressing specific and narrow aspects. This sometimes leads to a lack of clarity about how different issues, circumstances, and solutions may be related in precipitating or mitigating gender inequality or its effects. As the number of papers grows at an increasing pace, this issue is exacerbated and there is a need to step back and survey the body of gender equality literature as a whole. There is also a need to examine synergies between different topics and approaches, as well as gaps in our understanding of how different problems and solutions work together. Considering the important topic of women’s economic and social empowerment, this paper aims to fill this gap by answering the following research question: what are the most relevant findings in the literature on gender equality and how do they relate to each other ?

To do so, we conduct a scoping review [ 31 ], providing a synthesis of 15,465 articles dealing with gender equity related issues published in the last twenty-two years, covering both the periods of the MDGs and the SDGs (i.e., 2000 to mid 2021) in all the journals indexed in the Academic Journal Guide’s 2018 ranking of business and economics journals. Given the huge amount of research conducted on the topic, we adopt an innovative methodology, which relies on social network analysis and text mining. These techniques are increasingly adopted when surveying large bodies of text. Recently, they were applied to perform analysis of online gender communication differences [ 32 ] and gender behaviors in online technology communities [ 33 ], to identify and classify sexual harassment instances in academia [ 34 ], and to evaluate the gender inclusivity of disaster management policies [ 35 ].

Applied to the title, abstracts and keywords of the articles in our sample, this methodology allows us to identify a set of 27 recurrent topics within which we automatically classify the papers. Introducing additional novelty, by means of the Semantic Brand Score (SBS) indicator [ 36 ] and the SBS BI app [ 37 ], we assess the importance of each topic in the overall gender equality discourse and its relationships with the other topics, as well as trends over time, with a more accurate description than that offered by traditional literature reviews relying solely on the number of papers presented in each topic.

This methodology, applied to gender equality research spanning the past twenty-two years, enables two key contributions. First, we extract the main message that each document is conveying and how this is connected to other themes in literature, providing a rich picture of the topics that are at the center of the discourse, as well as of the emerging topics. Second, by examining the semantic relationship between topics and how tightly their discourses are linked, we can identify the key relationships and connections between different topics. This semi-automatic methodology is also highly reproducible with minimum effort.

This literature review is organized as follows. In the next section, we present how we selected relevant papers and how we analyzed them through text mining and social network analysis. We then illustrate the importance of 27 selected research topics, measured by means of the SBS indicator. In the results section, we present an overview of the literature based on the SBS results–followed by an in-depth narrative analysis of the top 10 topics (i.e., those with the highest SBS) and their connections. Subsequently, we highlight a series of under-studied connections between the topics where there is potential for future research. Through this analysis, we build a map of the main gender-research trends in the last twenty-two years–presenting the most popular themes. We conclude by highlighting key areas on which research should focused in the future.

Our aim is to map a broad topic, gender equality research, that has been approached through a host of different angles and through different disciplines. Scoping reviews are the most appropriate as they provide the freedom to map different themes and identify literature gaps, thereby guiding the recommendation of new research agendas [ 38 ].

Several practical approaches have been proposed to identify and assess the underlying topics of a specific field using big data [ 39 – 41 ], but many of them fail without proper paper retrieval and text preprocessing. This is specifically true for a research field such as the gender-related one, which comprises the work of scholars from different backgrounds. In this section, we illustrate a novel approach for the analysis of scientific (gender-related) papers that relies on methods and tools of social network analysis and text mining. Our procedure has four main steps: (1) data collection, (2) text preprocessing, (3) keywords extraction and classification, and (4) evaluation of semantic importance and image.

Data collection

In this study, we analyze 22 years of literature on gender-related research. Following established practice for scoping reviews [ 42 ], our data collection consisted of two main steps, which we summarize here below.

Firstly, we retrieved from the Scopus database all the articles written in English that contained the term “gender” in their title, abstract or keywords and were published in a journal listed in the Academic Journal Guide 2018 ranking of the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS) ( https://charteredabs.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/AJG2018-Methodology.pdf ), considering the time period from Jan 2000 to May 2021. We used this information considering that abstracts, titles and keywords represent the most informative part of a paper, while using the full-text would increase the signal-to-noise ratio for information extraction. Indeed, these textual elements already demonstrated to be reliable sources of information for the task of domain lexicon extraction [ 43 , 44 ]. We chose Scopus as source of literature because of its popularity, its update rate, and because it offers an API to ease the querying process. Indeed, while it does not allow to retrieve the full text of scientific articles, the Scopus API offers access to titles, abstracts, citation information and metadata for all its indexed scholarly journals. Moreover, we decided to focus on the journals listed in the AJG 2018 ranking because we were interested in reviewing business and economics related gender studies only. The AJG is indeed widely used by universities and business schools as a reference point for journal and research rigor and quality. This first step, executed in June 2021, returned more than 55,000 papers.

In the second step–because a look at the papers showed very sparse results, many of which were not in line with the topic of this literature review (e.g., papers dealing with health care or medical issues, where the word gender indicates the gender of the patients)–we applied further inclusion criteria to make the sample more focused on the topic of this literature review (i.e., women’s gender equality issues). Specifically, we only retained those papers mentioning, in their title and/or abstract, both gender-related keywords (e.g., daughter, female, mother) and keywords referring to bias and equality issues (e.g., equality, bias, diversity, inclusion). After text pre-processing (see next section), keywords were first identified from a frequency-weighted list of words found in the titles, abstracts and keywords in the initial list of papers, extracted through text mining (following the same approach as [ 43 ]). They were selected by two of the co-authors independently, following respectively a bottom up and a top-down approach. The bottom-up approach consisted of examining the words found in the frequency-weighted list and classifying those related to gender and equality. The top-down approach consisted in searching in the word list for notable gender and equality-related words. Table 1 reports the sets of keywords we considered, together with some examples of words that were used to search for their presence in the dataset (a full list is provided in the S1 Text ). At end of this second step, we obtained a final sample of 15,465 relevant papers.

Text processing and keyword extraction

Text preprocessing aims at structuring text into a form that can be analyzed by statistical models. In the present section, we describe the preprocessing steps we applied to paper titles and abstracts, which, as explained below, partially follow a standard text preprocessing pipeline [ 45 ]. These activities have been performed using the R package udpipe [ 46 ].

The first step is n-gram extraction (i.e., a sequence of words from a given text sample) to identify which n-grams are important in the analysis, since domain-specific lexicons are often composed by bi-grams and tri-grams [ 47 ]. Multi-word extraction is usually implemented with statistics and linguistic rules, thus using the statistical properties of n-grams or machine learning approaches [ 48 ]. However, for the present paper, we used Scopus metadata in order to have a more effective and efficient n-grams collection approach [ 49 ]. We used the keywords of each paper in order to tag n-grams with their associated keywords automatically. Using this greedy approach, it was possible to collect all the keywords listed by the authors of the papers. From this list, we extracted only keywords composed by two, three and four words, we removed all the acronyms and rare keywords (i.e., appearing in less than 1% of papers), and we clustered keywords showing a high orthographic similarity–measured using a Levenshtein distance [ 50 ] lower than 2, considering these groups of keywords as representing same concepts, but expressed with different spelling. After tagging the n-grams in the abstracts, we followed a common data preparation pipeline that consists of the following steps: (i) tokenization, that splits the text into tokens (i.e., single words and previously tagged multi-words); (ii) removal of stop-words (i.e. those words that add little meaning to the text, usually being very common and short functional words–such as “and”, “or”, or “of”); (iii) parts-of-speech tagging, that is providing information concerning the morphological role of a word and its morphosyntactic context (e.g., if the token is a determiner, the next token is a noun or an adjective with very high confidence, [ 51 ]); and (iv) lemmatization, which consists in substituting each word with its dictionary form (or lemma). The output of the latter step allows grouping together the inflected forms of a word. For example, the verbs “am”, “are”, and “is” have the shared lemma “be”, or the nouns “cat” and “cats” both share the lemma “cat”. We preferred lemmatization over stemming [ 52 ] in order to obtain more interpretable results.

In addition, we identified a further set of keywords (with respect to those listed in the “keywords” field) by applying a series of automatic words unification and removal steps, as suggested in past research [ 53 , 54 ]. We removed: sparse terms (i.e., occurring in less than 0.1% of all documents), common terms (i.e., occurring in more than 10% of all documents) and retained only nouns and adjectives. It is relevant to notice that no document was lost due to these steps. We then used the TF-IDF function [ 55 ] to produce a new list of keywords. We additionally tested other approaches for the identification and clustering of keywords–such as TextRank [ 56 ] or Latent Dirichlet Allocation [ 57 ]–without obtaining more informative results.

Classification of research topics

To guide the literature analysis, two experts met regularly to examine the sample of collected papers and to identify the main topics and trends in gender research. Initially, they conducted brainstorming sessions on the topics they expected to find, due to their knowledge of the literature. This led to an initial list of topics. Subsequently, the experts worked independently, also supported by the keywords in paper titles and abstracts extracted with the procedure described above.

Considering all this information, each expert identified and clustered relevant keywords into topics. At the end of the process, the two assignments were compared and exhibited a 92% agreement. Another meeting was held to discuss discordant cases and reach a consensus. This resulted in a list of 27 topics, briefly introduced in Table 2 and subsequently detailed in the following sections.

Evaluation of semantic importance

Working on the lemmatized corpus of the 15,465 papers included in our sample, we proceeded with the evaluation of semantic importance trends for each topic and with the analysis of their connections and prevalent textual associations. To this aim, we used the Semantic Brand Score indicator [ 36 ], calculated through the SBS BI webapp [ 37 ] that also produced a brand image report for each topic. For this study we relied on the computing resources of the ENEA/CRESCO infrastructure [ 58 ].

The Semantic Brand Score (SBS) is a measure of semantic importance that combines methods of social network analysis and text mining. It is usually applied for the analysis of (big) textual data to evaluate the importance of one or more brands, names, words, or sets of keywords [ 36 ]. Indeed, the concept of “brand” is intended in a flexible way and goes beyond products or commercial brands. In this study, we evaluate the SBS time-trends of the keywords defining the research topics discussed in the previous section. Semantic importance comprises the three dimensions of topic prevalence, diversity and connectivity. Prevalence measures how frequently a research topic is used in the discourse. The more a topic is mentioned by scientific articles, the more the research community will be aware of it, with possible increase of future studies; this construct is partly related to that of brand awareness [ 59 ]. This effect is even stronger, considering that we are analyzing the title, abstract and keywords of the papers, i.e. the parts that have the highest visibility. A very important characteristic of the SBS is that it considers the relationships among words in a text. Topic importance is not just a matter of how frequently a topic is mentioned, but also of the associations a topic has in the text. Specifically, texts are transformed into networks of co-occurring words, and relationships are studied through social network analysis [ 60 ]. This step is necessary to calculate the other two dimensions of our semantic importance indicator. Accordingly, a social network of words is generated for each time period considered in the analysis–i.e., a graph made of n nodes (words) and E edges weighted by co-occurrence frequency, with W being the set of edge weights. The keywords representing each topic were clustered into single nodes.

The construct of diversity relates to that of brand image [ 59 ], in the sense that it considers the richness and distinctiveness of textual (topic) associations. Considering the above-mentioned networks, we calculated diversity using the distinctiveness centrality metric–as in the formula presented by Fronzetti Colladon and Naldi [ 61 ].

Lastly, connectivity was measured as the weighted betweenness centrality [ 62 , 63 ] of each research topic node. We used the formula presented by Wasserman and Faust [ 60 ]. The dimension of connectivity represents the “brokerage power” of each research topic–i.e., how much it can serve as a bridge to connect other terms (and ultimately topics) in the discourse [ 36 ].

The SBS is the final composite indicator obtained by summing the standardized scores of prevalence, diversity and connectivity. Standardization was carried out considering all the words in the corpus, for each specific timeframe.

This methodology, applied to a large and heterogeneous body of text, enables to automatically identify two important sets of information that add value to the literature review. Firstly, the relevance of each topic in literature is measured through a composite indicator of semantic importance, rather than simply looking at word frequencies. This provides a much richer picture of the topics that are at the center of the discourse, as well as of the topics that are emerging in the literature. Secondly, it enables to examine the extent of the semantic relationship between topics, looking at how tightly their discourses are linked. In a field such as gender equality, where many topics are closely linked to each other and present overlaps in issues and solutions, this methodology offers a novel perspective with respect to traditional literature reviews. In addition, it ensures reproducibility over time and the possibility to semi-automatically update the analysis, as new papers become available.

Overview of main topics

In terms of descriptive textual statistics, our corpus is made of 15,465 text documents, consisting of a total of 2,685,893 lemmatized tokens (words) and 32,279 types. As a result, the type-token ratio is 1.2%. The number of hapaxes is 12,141, with a hapax-token ratio of 37.61%.

Fig 1 shows the list of 27 topics by decreasing SBS. The most researched topic is compensation , exceeding all others in prevalence, diversity, and connectivity. This means it is not only mentioned more often than other topics, but it is also connected to a greater number of other topics and is central to the discourse on gender equality. The next four topics are, in order of SBS, role , education , decision-making , and career progression . These topics, except for education , all concern women in the workforce. Between these first five topics and the following ones there is a clear drop in SBS scores. In particular, the topics that follow have a lower connectivity than the first five. They are hiring , performance , behavior , organization , and human capital . Again, except for behavior and human capital , the other three topics are purely related to women in the workforce. After another drop-off, the following topics deal prevalently with women in society. This trend highlights that research on gender in business journals has so far mainly paid attention to the conditions that women experience in business contexts, while also devoting some attention to women in society.

Fig 2 shows the SBS time series of the top 10 topics. While there has been a general increase in the number of Scopus-indexed publications in the last decade, we notice that some SBS trends remain steady, or even decrease. In particular, we observe that the main topic of the last twenty-two years, compensation , is losing momentum. Since 2016, it has been surpassed by decision-making , education and role , which may indicate that literature is increasingly attempting to identify root causes of compensation inequalities. Moreover, in the last two years, the topics of hiring , performance , and organization are experiencing the largest importance increase.

Fig 3 shows the SBS time trends of the remaining 17 topics (i.e., those not in the top 10). As we can see from the graph, there are some that maintain a steady trend–such as reputation , management , networks and governance , which also seem to have little importance. More relevant topics with average stationary trends (except for the last two years) are culture , family , and parenting . The feminine topic is among the most important here, and one of those that exhibit the larger variations over time (similarly to leadership ). On the other hand, the are some topics that, even if not among the most important, show increasing SBS trends; therefore, they could be considered as emerging topics and could become popular in the near future. These are entrepreneurship , leadership , board of directors , and sustainability . These emerging topics are also interesting to anticipate future trends in gender equality research that are conducive to overall equality in society.

In addition to the SBS score of the different topics, the network of terms they are associated to enables to gauge the extent to which their images (textual associations) overlap or differ ( Fig 4 ).

There is a central cluster of topics with high similarity, which are all connected with women in the workforce. The cluster includes topics such as organization , decision-making , performance , hiring , human capital , education and compensation . In addition, the topic of well-being is found within this cluster, suggesting that women’s equality in the workforce is associated to well-being considerations. The emerging topics of entrepreneurship and leadership are also closely connected with each other, possibly implying that leadership is a much-researched quality in female entrepreneurship. Topics that are relatively more distant include personality , politics , feminine , empowerment , management , board of directors , reputation , governance , parenting , masculine and network .

The following sections describe the top 10 topics and their main associations in literature (see Table 3 ), while providing a brief overview of the emerging topics.

Compensation

The topic of compensation is related to the topics of role , hiring , education and career progression , however, also sees a very high association with the words gap and inequality . Indeed, a well-known debate in degrowth economics centers around whether and how to adequately compensate women for their childbearing, childrearing, caregiver and household work [e.g., 30 ].

Even in paid work, women continue being offered lower compensations than their male counterparts who have the same job or cover the same role [ 64 – 67 ]. This severe inequality has been widely studied by scholars over the last twenty-two years. Dealing with this topic, some specific roles have been addressed. Specifically, research highlighted differences in compensation between female and male CEOs [e.g., 68 ], top executives [e.g., 69 ], and boards’ directors [e.g., 70 ]. Scholars investigated the determinants of these gaps, such as the gender composition of the board [e.g., 71 – 73 ] or women’s individual characteristics [e.g., 71 , 74 ].

Among these individual characteristics, education plays a relevant role [ 75 ]. Education is indeed presented as the solution for women, not only to achieve top executive roles, but also to reduce wage inequality [e.g., 76 , 77 ]. Past research has highlighted education influences on gender wage gaps, specifically referring to gender differences in skills [e.g., 78 ], college majors [e.g., 79 ], and college selectivity [e.g., 80 ].

Finally, the wage gap issue is strictly interrelated with hiring –e.g., looking at whether being a mother affects hiring and compensation [e.g., 65 , 81 ] or relating compensation to unemployment [e.g., 82 ]–and career progression –for instance looking at meritocracy [ 83 , 84 ] or the characteristics of the boss for whom women work [e.g., 85 ].

The roles covered by women have been deeply investigated. Scholars have focused on the role of women in their families and the society as a whole [e.g., 14 , 15 ], and, more widely, in business contexts [e.g., 18 , 81 ]. Indeed, despite still lagging behind their male counterparts [e.g., 86 , 87 ], in the last decade there has been an increase in top ranked positions achieved by women [e.g., 88 , 89 ]. Following this phenomenon, scholars have posed greater attention towards the presence of women in the board of directors [e.g., 16 , 18 , 90 , 91 ], given the increasing pressure to appoint female directors that firms, especially listed ones, have experienced. Other scholars have focused on the presence of women covering the role of CEO [e.g., 17 , 92 ] or being part of the top management team [e.g., 93 ]. Irrespectively of the level of analysis, all these studies tried to uncover the antecedents of women’s presence among top managers [e.g., 92 , 94 ] and the consequences of having a them involved in the firm’s decision-making –e.g., on performance [e.g., 19 , 95 , 96 ], risk [e.g., 97 , 98 ], and corporate social responsibility [e.g., 99 , 100 ].

Besides studying the difficulties and discriminations faced by women in getting a job [ 81 , 101 ], and, more specifically in the hiring , appointment, or career progression to these apical roles [e.g., 70 , 83 ], the majority of research of women’s roles dealt with compensation issues. Specifically, scholars highlight the pay-gap that still exists between women and men, both in general [e.g., 64 , 65 ], as well as referring to boards’ directors [e.g., 70 , 102 ], CEOs and executives [e.g., 69 , 103 , 104 ].

Finally, other scholars focused on the behavior of women when dealing with business. In this sense, particular attention has been paid to leadership and entrepreneurial behaviors. The former quite overlaps with dealing with the roles mentioned above, but also includes aspects such as leaders being stereotyped as masculine [e.g., 105 ], the need for greater exposure to female leaders to reduce biases [e.g., 106 ], or female leaders acting as queen bees [e.g., 107 ]. Regarding entrepreneurship , scholars mainly investigated women’s entrepreneurial entry [e.g., 108 , 109 ], differences between female and male entrepreneurs in the evaluations and funding received from investors [e.g., 110 , 111 ], and their performance gap [e.g., 112 , 113 ].

Education has long been recognized as key to social advancement and economic stability [ 114 ], for job progression and also a barrier to gender equality, especially in STEM-related fields. Research on education and gender equality is mostly linked with the topics of compensation , human capital , career progression , hiring , parenting and decision-making .

Education contributes to a higher human capital [ 115 ] and constitutes an investment on the part of women towards their future. In this context, literature points to the gender gap in educational attainment, and the consequences for women from a social, economic, personal and professional standpoint. Women are found to have less access to formal education and information, especially in emerging countries, which in turn may cause them to lose social and economic opportunities [e.g., 12 , 116 – 119 ]. Education in local and rural communities is also paramount to communicate the benefits of female empowerment , contributing to overall societal well-being [e.g., 120 ].

Once women access education, the image they have of the world and their place in society (i.e., habitus) affects their education performance [ 13 ] and is passed on to their children. These situations reinforce gender stereotypes, which become self-fulfilling prophecies that may negatively affect female students’ performance by lowering their confidence and heightening their anxiety [ 121 , 122 ]. Besides formal education, also the information that women are exposed to on a daily basis contributes to their human capital . Digital inequalities, for instance, stems from men spending more time online and acquiring higher digital skills than women [ 123 ].

Education is also a factor that should boost employability of candidates and thus hiring , career progression and compensation , however the relationship between these factors is not straightforward [ 115 ]. First, educational choices ( decision-making ) are influenced by variables such as self-efficacy and the presence of barriers, irrespectively of the career opportunities they offer, especially in STEM [ 124 ]. This brings additional difficulties to women’s enrollment and persistence in scientific and technical fields of study due to stereotypes and biases [ 125 , 126 ]. Moreover, access to education does not automatically translate into job opportunities for women and minority groups [ 127 , 128 ] or into female access to managerial positions [ 129 ].

Finally, parenting is reported as an antecedent of education [e.g., 130 ], with much of the literature focusing on the role of parents’ education on the opportunities afforded to children to enroll in education [ 131 – 134 ] and the role of parenting in their offspring’s perception of study fields and attitudes towards learning [ 135 – 138 ]. Parental education is also a predictor of the other related topics, namely human capital and compensation [ 139 ].

Decision-making

This literature mainly points to the fact that women are thought to make decisions differently than men. Women have indeed different priorities, such as they care more about people’s well-being, working with people or helping others, rather than maximizing their personal (or their firm’s) gain [ 140 ]. In other words, women typically present more communal than agentic behaviors, which are instead more frequent among men [ 141 ]. These different attitude, behavior and preferences in turn affect the decisions they make [e.g., 142 ] and the decision-making of the firm in which they work [e.g., 143 ].

At the individual level, gender affects, for instance, career aspirations [e.g., 144 ] and choices [e.g., 142 , 145 ], or the decision of creating a venture [e.g., 108 , 109 , 146 ]. Moreover, in everyday life, women and men make different decisions regarding partners [e.g., 147 ], childcare [e.g., 148 ], education [e.g., 149 ], attention to the environment [e.g., 150 ] and politics [e.g., 151 ].

At the firm level, scholars highlighted, for example, how the presence of women in the board affects corporate decisions [e.g., 152 , 153 ], that female CEOs are more conservative in accounting decisions [e.g., 154 ], or that female CFOs tend to make more conservative decisions regarding the firm’s financial reporting [e.g., 155 ]. Nevertheless, firm level research also investigated decisions that, influenced by gender bias, affect women, such as those pertaining hiring [e.g., 156 , 157 ], compensation [e.g., 73 , 158 ], or the empowerment of women once appointed [ 159 ].

Career progression

Once women have entered the workforce, the key aspect to achieve gender equality becomes career progression , including efforts toward overcoming the glass ceiling. Indeed, according to the SBS analysis, career progression is highly related to words such as work, social issues and equality. The topic with which it has the highest semantic overlap is role , followed by decision-making , hiring , education , compensation , leadership , human capital , and family .

Career progression implies an advancement in the hierarchical ladder of the firm, assigning managerial roles to women. Coherently, much of the literature has focused on identifying rationales for a greater female participation in the top management team and board of directors [e.g., 95 ] as well as the best criteria to ensure that the decision-makers promote the most valuable employees irrespectively of their individual characteristics, such as gender [e.g., 84 ]. The link between career progression , role and compensation is often provided in practice by performance appraisal exercises, frequently rooted in a culture of meritocracy that guides bonuses, salary increases and promotions. However, performance appraisals can actually mask gender-biased decisions where women are held to higher standards than their male colleagues [e.g., 83 , 84 , 95 , 160 , 161 ]. Women often have less opportunities to gain leadership experience and are less visible than their male colleagues, which constitute barriers to career advancement [e.g., 162 ]. Therefore, transparency and accountability, together with procedures that discourage discretionary choices, are paramount to achieve a fair career progression [e.g., 84 ], together with the relaxation of strict job boundaries in favor of cross-functional and self-directed tasks [e.g., 163 ].

In addition, a series of stereotypes about the type of leadership characteristics that are required for top management positions, which fit better with typical male and agentic attributes, are another key barrier to career advancement for women [e.g., 92 , 160 ].

Hiring is the entrance gateway for women into the workforce. Therefore, it is related to other workforce topics such as compensation , role , career progression , decision-making , human capital , performance , organization and education .

A first stream of literature focuses on the process leading up to candidates’ job applications, demonstrating that bias exists before positions are even opened, and it is perpetuated both by men and women through networking and gatekeeping practices [e.g., 164 , 165 ].

The hiring process itself is also subject to biases [ 166 ], for example gender-congruity bias that leads to men being preferred candidates in male-dominated sectors [e.g., 167 ], women being hired in positions with higher risk of failure [e.g., 168 ] and limited transparency and accountability afforded by written processes and procedures [e.g., 164 ] that all contribute to ascriptive inequality. In addition, providing incentives for evaluators to hire women may actually work to this end; however, this is not the case when supporting female candidates endangers higher-ranking male ones [ 169 ].

Another interesting perspective, instead, looks at top management teams’ composition and the effects on hiring practices, indicating that firms with more women in top management are less likely to lay off staff [e.g., 152 ].

Performance

Several scholars posed their attention towards women’s performance, its consequences [e.g., 170 , 171 ] and the implications of having women in decision-making positions [e.g., 18 , 19 ].

At the individual level, research focused on differences in educational and academic performance between women and men, especially referring to the gender gap in STEM fields [e.g., 171 ]. The presence of stereotype threats–that is the expectation that the members of a social group (e.g., women) “must deal with the possibility of being judged or treated stereotypically, or of doing something that would confirm the stereotype” [ 172 ]–affects women’s interested in STEM [e.g., 173 ], as well as their cognitive ability tests, penalizing them [e.g., 174 ]. A stronger gender identification enhances this gap [e.g., 175 ], whereas mentoring and role models can be used as solutions to this problem [e.g., 121 ]. Despite the negative effect of stereotype threats on girls’ performance [ 176 ], female and male students perform equally in mathematics and related subjects [e.g., 177 ]. Moreover, while individuals’ performance at school and university generally affects their achievements and the field in which they end up working, evidence reveals that performance in math or other scientific subjects does not explain why fewer women enter STEM working fields; rather this gap depends on other aspects, such as culture, past working experiences, or self-efficacy [e.g., 170 ]. Finally, scholars have highlighted the penalization that women face for their positive performance, for instance when they succeed in traditionally male areas [e.g., 178 ]. This penalization is explained by the violation of gender-stereotypic prescriptions [e.g., 179 , 180 ], that is having women well performing in agentic areas, which are typical associated to men. Performance penalization can thus be overcome by clearly conveying communal characteristics and behaviors [ 178 ].

Evidence has been provided on how the involvement of women in boards of directors and decision-making positions affects firms’ performance. Nevertheless, results are mixed, with some studies showing positive effects on financial [ 19 , 181 , 182 ] and corporate social performance [ 99 , 182 , 183 ]. Other studies maintain a negative association [e.g., 18 ], and other again mixed [e.g., 184 ] or non-significant association [e.g., 185 ]. Also with respect to the presence of a female CEO, mixed results emerged so far, with some researches demonstrating a positive effect on firm’s performance [e.g., 96 , 186 ], while other obtaining only a limited evidence of this relationship [e.g., 103 ] or a negative one [e.g., 187 ].

Finally, some studies have investigated whether and how women’s performance affects their hiring [e.g., 101 ] and career progression [e.g., 83 , 160 ]. For instance, academic performance leads to different returns in hiring for women and men. Specifically, high-achieving men are called back significantly more often than high-achieving women, which are penalized when they have a major in mathematics; this result depends on employers’ gendered standards for applicants [e.g., 101 ]. Once appointed, performance ratings are more strongly related to promotions for women than men, and promoted women typically show higher past performance ratings than those of promoted men. This suggesting that women are subject to stricter standards for promotion [e.g., 160 ].

Behavioral aspects related to gender follow two main streams of literature. The first examines female personality and behavior in the workplace, and their alignment with cultural expectations or stereotypes [e.g., 188 ] as well as their impacts on equality. There is a common bias that depicts women as less agentic than males. Certain characteristics, such as those more congruent with male behaviors–e.g., self-promotion [e.g., 189 ], negotiation skills [e.g., 190 ] and general agentic behavior [e.g., 191 ]–, are less accepted in women. However, characteristics such as individualism in women have been found to promote greater gender equality in society [ 192 ]. In addition, behaviors such as display of emotions [e.g., 193 ], which are stereotypically female, work against women’s acceptance in the workplace, requiring women to carefully moderate their behavior to avoid exclusion. A counter-intuitive result is that women and minorities, which are more marginalized in the workplace, tend to be better problem-solvers in innovation competitions due to their different knowledge bases [ 194 ].

The other side of the coin is examined in a parallel literature stream on behavior towards women in the workplace. As a result of biases, prejudices and stereotypes, women may experience adverse behavior from their colleagues, such as incivility and harassment, which undermine their well-being [e.g., 195 , 196 ]. Biases that go beyond gender, such as for overweight people, are also more strongly applied to women [ 197 ].

Organization

The role of women and gender bias in organizations has been studied from different perspectives, which mirror those presented in detail in the following sections. Specifically, most research highlighted the stereotypical view of leaders [e.g., 105 ] and the roles played by women within firms, for instance referring to presence in the board of directors [e.g., 18 , 90 , 91 ], appointment as CEOs [e.g., 16 ], or top executives [e.g., 93 ].

Scholars have investigated antecedents and consequences of the presence of women in these apical roles. On the one side they looked at hiring and career progression [e.g., 83 , 92 , 160 , 168 , 198 ], finding women typically disadvantaged with respect to their male counterparts. On the other side, they studied women’s leadership styles and influence on the firm’s decision-making [e.g., 152 , 154 , 155 , 199 ], with implications for performance [e.g., 18 , 19 , 96 ].

Human capital

Human capital is a transverse topic that touches upon many different aspects of female gender equality. As such, it has the most associations with other topics, starting with education as mentioned above, with career-related topics such as role , decision-making , hiring , career progression , performance , compensation , leadership and organization . Another topic with which there is a close connection is behavior . In general, human capital is approached both from the education standpoint but also from the perspective of social capital.

The behavioral aspect in human capital comprises research related to gender differences for example in cultural and religious beliefs that influence women’s attitudes and perceptions towards STEM subjects [ 142 , 200 – 202 ], towards employment [ 203 ] or towards environmental issues [ 150 , 204 ]. These cultural differences also emerge in the context of globalization which may accelerate gender equality in the workforce [ 205 , 206 ]. Gender differences also appear in behaviors such as motivation [ 207 ], and in negotiation [ 190 ], and have repercussions on women’s decision-making related to their careers. The so-called gender equality paradox sees women in countries with lower gender equality more likely to pursue studies and careers in STEM fields, whereas the gap in STEM enrollment widens as countries achieve greater equality in society [ 171 ].

Career progression is modeled by literature as a choice-process where personal preferences, culture and decision-making affect the chosen path and the outcomes. Some literature highlights how women tend to self-select into different professions than men, often due to stereotypes rather than actual ability to perform in these professions [ 142 , 144 ]. These stereotypes also affect the perceptions of female performance or the amount of human capital required to equal male performance [ 110 , 193 , 208 ], particularly for mothers [ 81 ]. It is therefore often assumed that women are better suited to less visible and less leadership -oriented roles [ 209 ]. Women also express differing preferences towards work-family balance, which affect whether and how they pursue human capital gains [ 210 ], and ultimately their career progression and salary .

On the other hand, men are often unaware of gendered processes and behaviors that they carry forward in their interactions and decision-making [ 211 , 212 ]. Therefore, initiatives aimed at increasing managers’ human capital –by raising awareness of gender disparities in their organizations and engaging them in diversity promotion–are essential steps to counter gender bias and segregation [ 213 ].

Emerging topics: Leadership and entrepreneurship

Among the emerging topics, the most pervasive one is women reaching leadership positions in the workforce and in society. This is still a rare occurrence for two main types of factors, on the one hand, bias and discrimination make it harder for women to access leadership positions [e.g., 214 – 216 ], on the other hand, the competitive nature and high pressure associated with leadership positions, coupled with the lack of women currently represented, reduce women’s desire to achieve them [e.g., 209 , 217 ]. Women are more effective leaders when they have access to education, resources and a diverse environment with representation [e.g., 218 , 219 ].

One sector where there is potential for women to carve out a leadership role is entrepreneurship . Although at the start of the millennium the discourse on entrepreneurship was found to be “discriminatory, gender-biased, ethnocentrically determined and ideologically controlled” [ 220 ], an increasing body of literature is studying how to stimulate female entrepreneurship as an alternative pathway to wealth, leadership and empowerment [e.g., 221 ]. Many barriers exist for women to access entrepreneurship, including the institutional and legal environment, social and cultural factors, access to knowledge and resources, and individual behavior [e.g., 222 , 223 ]. Education has been found to raise women’s entrepreneurial intentions [e.g., 224 ], although this effect is smaller than for men [e.g., 109 ]. In addition, increasing self-efficacy and risk-taking behavior constitute important success factors [e.g., 225 ].

Finally, the topic of sustainability is worth mentioning, as it is the primary objective of the SDGs and is closely associated with societal well-being. As society grapples with the effects of climate change and increasing depletion of natural resources, a narrative has emerged on women and their greater link to the environment [ 226 ]. Studies in developed countries have found some support for women leaders’ attention to sustainability issues in firms [e.g., 227 – 229 ], and smaller resource consumption by women [ 230 ]. At the same time, women will likely be more affected by the consequences of climate change [e.g., 230 ] but often lack the decision-making power to influence local decision-making on resource management and environmental policies [e.g., 231 ].

Research gaps and conclusions

Research on gender equality has advanced rapidly in the past decades, with a steady increase in publications, both in mainstream topics related to women in education and the workforce, and in emerging topics. Through a novel approach combining methods of text mining and social network analysis, we examined a comprehensive body of literature comprising 15,465 papers published between 2000 and mid 2021 on topics related to gender equality. We identified a set of 27 topics addressed by the literature and examined their connections.

At the highest level of abstraction, it is worth noting that papers abound on the identification of issues related to gender inequalities and imbalances in the workforce and in society. Literature has thoroughly examined the (unconscious) biases, barriers, stereotypes, and discriminatory behaviors that women are facing as a result of their gender. Instead, there are much fewer papers that discuss or demonstrate effective solutions to overcome gender bias [e.g., 121 , 143 , 145 , 163 , 194 , 213 , 232 ]. This is partly due to the relative ease in studying the status quo, as opposed to studying changes in the status quo. However, we observed a shift in the more recent years towards solution seeking in this domain, which we strongly encourage future researchers to focus on. In the future, we may focus on collecting and mapping pro-active contributions to gender studies, using additional Natural Language Processing techniques, able to measure the sentiment of scientific papers [ 43 ].

All of the mainstream topics identified in our literature review are closely related, and there is a wealth of insights looking at the intersection between issues such as education and career progression or human capital and role . However, emerging topics are worthy of being furtherly explored. It would be interesting to see more work on the topic of female entrepreneurship , exploring aspects such as education , personality , governance , management and leadership . For instance, how can education support female entrepreneurship? How can self-efficacy and risk-taking behaviors be taught or enhanced? What are the differences in managerial and governance styles of female entrepreneurs? Which personality traits are associated with successful entrepreneurs? Which traits are preferred by venture capitalists and funding bodies?

The emerging topic of sustainability also deserves further attention, as our society struggles with climate change and its consequences. It would be interesting to see more research on the intersection between sustainability and entrepreneurship , looking at how female entrepreneurs are tackling sustainability issues, examining both their business models and their company governance . In addition, scholars are suggested to dig deeper into the relationship between family values and behaviors.

Moreover, it would be relevant to understand how women’s networks (social capital), or the composition and structure of social networks involving both women and men, enable them to increase their remuneration and reach top corporate positions, participate in key decision-making bodies, and have a voice in communities. Furthermore, the achievement of gender equality might significantly change firm networks and ecosystems, with important implications for their performance and survival.

Similarly, research at the nexus of (corporate) governance , career progression , compensation and female empowerment could yield useful insights–for example discussing how enterprises, institutions and countries are managed and the impact for women and other minorities. Are there specific governance structures that favor diversity and inclusion?

Lastly, we foresee an emerging stream of research pertaining how the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic challenged women, especially in the workforce, by making gender biases more evident.

For our analysis, we considered a set of 15,465 articles downloaded from the Scopus database (which is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature). As we were interested in reviewing business and economics related gender studies, we only considered those papers published in journals listed in the Academic Journal Guide (AJG) 2018 ranking of the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS). All the journals listed in this ranking are also indexed by Scopus. Therefore, looking at a single database (i.e., Scopus) should not be considered a limitation of our study. However, future research could consider different databases and inclusion criteria.

With our literature review, we offer researchers a comprehensive map of major gender-related research trends over the past twenty-two years. This can serve as a lens to look to the future, contributing to the achievement of SDG5. Researchers may use our study as a starting point to identify key themes addressed in the literature. In addition, our methodological approach–based on the use of the Semantic Brand Score and its webapp–could support scholars interested in reviewing other areas of research.

Supporting information

Acknowledgments.

The computing resources and the related technical support used for this work have been provided by CRESCO/ENEAGRID High Performance Computing infrastructure and its staff. CRESCO/ENEAGRID High Performance Computing infrastructure is funded by ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development and by Italian and European research programmes (see http://www.cresco.enea.it/english for information).

Funding Statement

P.B and F.C.: Grant of the Department of Energy, Systems, Territory and Construction of the University of Pisa (DESTEC) for the project “Measuring Gender Bias with Semantic Analysis: The Development of an Assessment Tool and its Application in the European Space Industry. P.B., F.C., A.F.C., P.R.: Grant of the Italian Association of Management Engineering (AiIG), “Misure di sostegno ai soci giovani AiIG” 2020, for the project “Gender Equality Through Data Intelligence (GEDI)”. F.C.: EU project ASSETs+ Project (Alliance for Strategic Skills addressing Emerging Technologies in Defence) EAC/A03/2018 - Erasmus+ programme, Sector Skills Alliances, Lot 3: Sector Skills Alliance for implementing a new strategic approach (Blueprint) to sectoral cooperation on skills G.A. NUMBER: 612678-EPP-1-2019-1-IT-EPPKA2-SSA-B.

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Gender Discrimination

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This chapter provides a bird’s eye view of the literature on gender discrimination. The presentation of studies is grouped into five parts. Part 1 presents evidence of gender discrimination measured via various dimensions in various countries and contexts. Part 2 discusses in detail the gender wage gap – one of the most important measures of gender discrimination – as well as gender segregation and its origins. Part 3 discusses the close relationship between female empowerment and violence, and the experience of women of color. Part 4 covers gender behavioral differences. Part 5 presents studies on the experience of women trying to break the glass ceiling, as well as the differential effects of education on boys and girls.

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Acknowledgments

Responsible section editor: Klaus F. Zimmermann.

The article has benefited from the valuable comments of the editor, and Peter Kuhn and Jacquelyn Zhang. No financial support is received for this work. There is no conflict of interest.

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Klaus F. Zimmermann

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Shen, K. (2022). Gender Discrimination. In: Zimmermann, K.F. (eds) Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_304-1

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_304-1

Received : 26 November 2021

Accepted : 09 December 2021

Published : 28 January 2022

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-319-57365-6

Online ISBN : 978-3-319-57365-6

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