Doing gender

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Doing Gender ( English ) is an analytical approach in gender studies , which understands the social gender ( English gender ) as a result of performative ascriptions and thus moves away from the conventional idea of ​​the division of biological sex (sex) as a fixed and unambiguous one property to be assigned. The Doing Gender approach emphasizes a person's own share in the creation of gender identity and gender identification.

Doing Gender was based on comparative cultural studies , which found that the social categories " man " and " woman " are inconsistent and that there are few properties that intercultural be shared between the two. Accordingly, gender is for the most part no longer an internal property of a person, as is the case in socialization theories. Instead, attention is drawn to interactions in which gender is represented and perceived.

Approach to West and Zimmerman

The concept of doing gender goes back in particular to Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman , who are influenced by ethnomethodology . With the emphasis on doing or making gender, the everyday (and mostly also scientific) understanding of gender as a biologically or psychologically always given fact is criticized. So we explain z. B. Often people's behavior by simply naming their gender as the cause: "Men [resp. Women] are just like that ”. Such unscientific simplifications are based on an understanding of action in which programs, once entered, are executed again and again, as in machines. This does not do justice to the actual complexity of the deal.

In their fundamental essay Doing Gender (1987), the authors therefore do not understand gender as a naturally given or acquired personality trait that is only reflected in thinking, feeling and acting in a gender-specific identity , but rather emphasize the active creation and representation of gender in everyday life. According to this, one does not have one's gender simply by nature or only through upbringing and socialization and must therefore always behave in a gender-typical manner, but this behavior is primarily oriented towards knowing how to behave as a man or woman. It is an active performance and production of behavior that an observer can interpret as "male" or "female" behavior. The author therefore understand gender (based on ethnomethodology ) as a social construction and a characteristic of social situations instead of people.

In order to analytically capture the social construction of gender, the author differentiates between birth classification ( sex ), social assignment / attribution of gender ( sex category ) and intersubjective validation of the gender category in interaction processes ( gender ). The intersubjective validation is of particular importance: it refers to everyday processes in which we present our gender socially and assure ourselves of the gender of others (e.g. in the many rituals that stage masculinity or femininity ). Sex ( gender ) is seen as a continuous action from the gender category ( sex category ) adequate behavior: " Virtually any activity can be Assessed as to its womanly or manly nature [...], to 'do' gender [...] is to engage in behavior at the risk of gender assessment ”(emphasis in original). It should be noted that not only the production practice of “gender” stages one's own gender, but also reproduces knowledge of gender (i.e. what “male” or “female” is) at the same time as part of the interaction. In this respect, doing gender is not only an interactive production of gender, but also always a reproduction of gender.

The author knows no other side of this gender construction, that is, men or women always present their behavior as the behavior of a man or woman that is appropriate in our culture: “ doing gender is unavoidable ”. The processes of doing gender are safeguarded by a large number of institutional arrangements that define the social category "gender" through relatively vague expectations of action (ideas about being a typical man / woman) through to concrete interaction scripts ( everyday rituals such as the rules of politeness ). keep it present in everyday life. So there is a background knowledge of the gender difference and significant differences that is constantly updated and reproduced through action. In our everyday logic (and mostly also in scientific) we do not understand gender as a product of this relationship between action and knowledge, but as "always given naturally" or "once acquired in education".

Doing difference

In the concept of Doing Difference was doing-gender 1995 by Candace West and Sarah Fenstermaker next generation approach ( gender ) added two more social categories of difference that social class ( class ) and ethnicity ( race ). The core idea is that the importance of gender cannot be viewed in isolation, but rather must be recorded in its context with ethnicity and status. There is no fundamental hierarchy between the various categories; the relevance of gender , class and race depends on the respective context.

"Only when one understands the construction of gender, class and ethnicity as simultaneous processes, it becomes possible to recognize that the relevance of these patterns of order can vary depending on the interaction context."

Just as gender is actively and interactively produced in the doing gender theory, the authors of Doing Difference assume that difference arises interactively. This means that the difference is variable and is always the same only at a certain point in time and in a certain situation and can be viewed in this way.

In the differentiation category race , the authors assume that the appearance of a person, which may indicate the origin of a person, as well as the gender categorization, are intuitively assigned behaviors and characteristics that are expected of an observer in an interaction.

In the class category, there is no scientific basis for imagining what the members of different class categories look like, so the perceptions of properties and behavior in this category are more variable than in gender and race . Nonetheless, the idea persists that a person's economic status depends on their characteristics, such as personality and intelligence.

West and Fenstermaker place for the analysis of each interaction, the principle of accountability ( accountability ) basis. This principle says that a person's actions can only be understood in the context of certain expectations that are directed towards that person as a member of a gender, a social class and a certain ethnicity. Only through such a consideration can an action be fully interpreted. The expectations that are directed towards the respective person are part of comprehensive ideas of social order. Only in this way is it possible to interpret and evaluate one's own actions as well as actions of others.

Research environment

The aspects of a performative establishment of gender are difficult to recognize because we have become blind to them due to the everyday nature of our experiences. In addition, gender is a strongly essentialized property in our everyday perception . Differences once created are thus naturalized and institutionalized. A process of creating gender can therefore be observed, especially in extreme situations. Research into doing gender is based on studies on transsexuals , i.e. people who change sex in the course of their lives and in this change learn how gender is produced and perceived in interactions.

criticism

The inevitability of a constant gender construction, i.e. the assumption of a constant creation and representation of gender in all interactions, was on the one hand later relativized by the author herself (see Doing Difference ). Doing gender can therefore take a back seat to doing other affiliations (e.g. behind a doing race or ethnicity ). On the other hand, the concept of doing gender has been more fundamentally criticized in that one can assume that the gender difference is forgotten and neutralized, as was criticized by Stefan Hirschauer , for example (see also Undoing Gender ).

The Doing Difference approach has been criticized, among other things, because of the common theoretical model for gender, class and race (ethnicity). The social relationships expressed in these categories would be too different for that. Analytically, these categories would have to be viewed separately.

literature

Essays

  • Regine Gildemeister , Angelika Wetterer : How genders are made. The social construction of two-sexes and their reification in women's studies. In: Gudrun-Axeli Knapp (Hrsg.): Traditions breaks. Developments in Feminist Theory. Kore Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 1992, ISBN 3-926023-82-1 , pp. 201-254.
  • Regine Gildemeister: Doing Gender. Social practices of gender discrimination. In: Ruth Becker, Beate Kortendiek (Hrsg.): Handbook women and gender research. Theory, methods, empiricism. Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2004, ISBN 3-8100-3926-8 , pp. 132–141.
  • Erving Goffman : The Arrangement of the Sexes. In: Hubert Knoblauch (Ed.): Interaction and Gender. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 2001, ISBN 3-593-36858-7 , pp. 105-158.
  • Stefan Hirschauer : The interactive construction of gender. In: Journal of Sociology. Vol. 18, 1989, ISSN  0340-1804 , pp. 100-118.
  • Stefan Hirschauer: The social reproduction of bisexuality. In: Cologne journal for sociology and social psychology. Volume 46, 1994, ISSN  0023-2653 , pp. 668-692.
  • Stefan Hirschauer: Forgetting gender. On the praxeology of a category of social order. In: Bettina Heintz (ed.): Gender sociology. Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3-531-13753-0 , pp. 208-235.
  • Candace West, Sarah Fenstermaker: Doing Difference. In: Gender and Society. Volume 9, No. 1, 1995, doi: 10.1177 / 089124395009001002 , pp. 8–37 ( full text , PDF file, 968 kB, accessed on June 7, 2017).
  • Candace West, Don H. Zimmerman: Doing Gender. In: Gender and Society. Volume 1, No. 2, 1987, doi: 10.1177 / 0891243287001002002 , pp. 125–151 ( full text , PDF file, 818 kB, accessed on June 7, 2017).

Monographs

  • Kerstin Bronner: Unlimited normal? Negotiating gender from a practical and biographical perspective (gender studies). Transcript-Verlag, Bielefeld 2011, ISBN 978-3-8376-1643-9 (also dissertation, University of Tübingen 2011).
  • Stefan Hirschauer: The social construction of transsexuality. About medicine and gender change. 2nd Edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-518-28645-5 (first edition 1993).
  • Suzanne J. Kessler, Wendy McKenna: Gender: an ethnomethodological approach. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1985, ISBN 0-226-43206-8 (reprinted New York 1978 edition).
  • Jürgen Raithel: The stylization of gender. Adolescent lifestyles, risk behavior and the construction of gender. Juventa-Verlag, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-7799-1742-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Candace West, Don H. Zimmerman: Doing Gender. In: Gender and Society. Volume 1, No. 2, 1987, doi: 10.1177 / 0891243287001002002 , pp. 125–151, here: 131 ff. ( Full text , PDF file, 818 kB, accessed on June 7, 2017).
  2. ^ Candace West, Don H. Zimmerman: Doing Gender. In: Gender and Society. Volume 1, No. 2, 1987, doi: 10.1177 / 0891243287001002002 , pp. 125–151, here: 136 ( full text , PDF file, 818 kB, accessed on June 7, 2017).
  3. ^ Candace West, Don H. Zimmerman: Doing Gender. In: Gender and Society. Volume 1, No. 2, 1987, doi: 10.1177 / 0891243287001002002 , pp. 125–151, here: 137 ( full text , PDF file, 818 kB, accessed on June 7, 2017).
  4. ^ Regine Gildemeister: Doing Gender. Social practices of gender discrimination. In: Ruth Becker, Beate Kortendiek (Hrsg.): Handbook women and gender research. Theory, methods, empiricism. Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2004, ISBN 3-8100-3926-8 , pp. 132–141.
  5. ↑ Regine Gildemeister, Angelika Wetterer: How genders are made. The social construction of two-sexes and their reification in women's studies. In: Gudrun-Axeli Knapp (Hrsg.): Traditions breaks. Developments in Feminist Theory. Kore Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 1992, ISBN 3-926023-82-1 , pp. 201-254.
  6. ↑ a b c d Candace West, Sarah Fenstermaker: Doing Difference. In: Gender and Society. Volume 9, No. 1, 1995, doi: 10.1177 / 089124395009001002 , pp. 8–37 ( full text , PDF file, 968 kB, accessed on June 7, 2017).
  7. ^ Sarah Fenstermaker, Candace West: Doing Difference Revisited. Problems, Prospects, and Dialogue in Gender Studies. In: Bettina Heintz (ed.): Gender sociology. Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3-531-13753-0 , pp. 236–249, here: 237.
  8. ↑ Hanna Meissner: The social construction of gender - perspectives of knowledge and socio-theoretical questions. (PDF; 239 kB) In: Gender Politics Online. June 2008, accessed June 30, 2016 .
  9. ↑ Stefan Hirschauer: Forgetting the sex. On the praxeology of a category of social order. In: Bettina Heintz (ed.): Gender sociology. Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3-531-13753-0 , pp. 208-235.
  10. ^ Dorothy E. Smith: Categories Are Not Enough . In: Gender & Society . tape 23 , no. 1 , February 2009, p. 76-80 , doi : 10.1177 / 0891243208327081 .