The Social Construction Of Difference And Inequality Pdf

[Shawna Erholm]

Genderrefers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviours and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time.

Gender is hierarchical and produces inequalities that intersect with other social and economic inequalities. Gender-based discrimination intersects with other factors of discrimination, such as ethnicity, socioeconomic status, disability, age, geographic location, gender identity and sexual orientation, among others. This is referred to as intersectionality.

Gender inequality and discrimination faced by women and girls puts their health and well-being at risk. Women and girls often face greater barriers than men and boys to accessing health information and services. These barriers include restrictions on mobility; lack of access to decision-making power; lower literacy rates; discriminatory attitudes of communities and healthcare providers; and lack of training and awareness amongst healthcare providers and health systems of the specific health needs and challenges of women and girls.

Consequently, women and girls face greater risks of unintended pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections including HIV, cervical cancer, malnutrition, lower vision, respiratory infections, malnutrition and elder abuse, amongst others. Women and girls also face unacceptably high levels of violence rooted in gender inequality and are at grave risk of harmful practices such as female genital mutilation, and child, early and forced marriage. WHO figures show that about 1 in 3 women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.

Rigid gender norms also negatively affect people with diverse gender identities, who often face violence, stigma and discrimination as a result, including in healthcare settings. Consequently, they are at higher risk of HIV and mental health problems, including suicide.

The work of WHO is aligned with and supports the advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages, and SDG 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. The Organization is committed to non-discrimination and to leaving no-one behind. It seeks to ensure that every person, regardless of gender or sex, can live a healthy life.

WHO develops norms, standards and guidelines on gender-responsive health service provision and delivery, and commissions research on issues focusing on gender equality, human rights and health equity. WHO also supports country-level action to strengthen health sector response to gender-based violence, as well as to address gender equality in health workforce development and gender-related barriers to health services.

What are the implications of a social constructionist approach to understanding the world? Because social constructionist analyses examine categories of difference as fluid, dynamic, and changing according to historical and geographical context, a social constructionist perspective suggests that existing inequalities are neither inevitable nor immutable. This perspective is especially useful for the activist and emancipatory aims of feminist movements and theories. By centering the processes through which inequality and power relations produce racialized, sexualized, and gendered difference, social constructionist analyses challenge the pathologization of minorities who have been thought to be essentially or inherently inferior to privileged groups. Additionally, social constructionist analyses destabilize the categories that organize people into hierarchically ordered groups through uncovering the historical, cultural, and/or institutional origins of the groups under study. In this way, social constructionist analyses challenge the categorical underpinnings of inequalities by revealing their production and reproduction through unequal systems of knowledge and power.

Introduction to Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies by Miliann Kang, Donovan Lessard, Laura Heston, Sonny Nordmarken is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

The social construction of gender is a theory in the humanities and social sciences about the manifestation of cultural origins, mechanisms, and corollaries of gender perception and expression in the context of interpersonal and group social interaction. Specifically, the social construction of gender theory stipulates that gender roles are an achieved "status" in a social environment, which implicitly and explicitly categorize people and therefore motivate social behaviors.[1][2]

Social constructionism is a theory of knowledge that explores the interplay between reality and human perception, asserting that reality is shaped by social interactions and perceptions. This theory contrasts with objectivism, particularly in rejecting the notion that empirical facts alone define reality. Social constructionism emphasizes the role of social perceptions in creating reality, often relating to power structures and hierarchies.

Gender, a key concept in social constructionism, distinguishes between biological sex and socialized gender roles. Feminist theory views gender as an achieved status, shaped by social interactions and normative beliefs. The World Health Organization highlights that gender intersects with social and economic inequalities, a concept known as intersectionality. Gender roles are socially constructed and vary across cultures and contexts, with empirical studies indicating more similarities than differences between genders. Judith Butler's distinction between gender performativity and gender roles underscores the performative aspect of gender, influenced by societal norms and individual expression.

Gender identity refers to an individual's internal sense of their own gender, influenced by social contexts and personal experiences. This identity intersects with other social identities, such as race and class, affecting how individuals navigate societal expectations. The accountability for gender performance is omnirelevant, meaning it is constantly judged in social interactions. Studies show that gender roles and expectations are learned from early childhood and reinforced throughout life, impacting areas like the workplace, where gender dynamics and discrimination are evident.

In education and media, gender construction plays a significant role in shaping individuals' identities and societal expectations. Teachers and media representations influence how gender roles are perceived and enacted, often perpetuating stereotypes. The concept of gender performativity suggests that gender is an ongoing performance shaped by societal norms, rather than a fixed trait. This performative view of gender challenges traditional binary understandings and opens up discussions on the fluidity of gender and the impact of socialization on gender identity.

Social constructionism is a theory of knowledge which describes the relationship between the objectivity of reality and the capacity of human senses and cognition. Specifically it asserts that reality exists as the summation of social perceptions and expression; and that the reality which is perceived is the only reality worth consideration. This is accompanied by the corollaries that any perceived reality is valid, that reality is subject to manipulation via control over social perceptions and expressions.

The social constructionist movement emerged in relation to both criticism and rejection of Objectivism developed by Russian-American writer Ayn Rand. Specifically, in the assumption of a positivist basis for knowledge; which is to say that social constructionism rejects the notion that empirical facts can be known about reality, where as objectivism is defined by it. Though not explicitly reliant on it, much literature on the subject of social constructionism focuses on its relationship in many facets to hierarchy and power. This intimacy demonstrates the close inspirational source of Marxist doctrine, as utilized in the works of Foucault and his writings on discourse.[3]

The work The Blank Slate of Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, argues for the existence of socially constructed categories such as "money, tenure, citizenship, decorations for bravery, and the presidency of the United States." which "exist only because people tacitly agree to act as if they exist." However they are not in support of social constructionism as the sole means of understanding reality, rather as a specific context for specific phenomena, and support the consideration of empirical scientific data in our understanding of the nature of human existence.[4] In this manner, Pinker explicitly contradicts social constructionist scholars Marecek, Crawford & Popp who in "On the Construction of Gender, Sex, and Sexualities", argue against the idea that socially organized patterns can emerge from isolated origins and favor instead the theory of Tabula rasa, which states that knowledge and meaning are generated exclusively as a collective effort and that the individual is incapable of doing so independently. In essence, the creation of meaning is a shared effort even when achieved by an individual in solitary conditions, because individuality is an illusion found at the intersection of myriad external influences being filtered through Id, Ego, and Super-ego.

They also argue that both the materialist and discursive theories of social construction of gender can be either essentialist or non-essentialist. This means that some of these theories assume a clear biological division between women and men when considering the social creation of masculinity and femininity, while other contest the assumption of the biological division between the sexes as independent of social construction.

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