Doing Gender
Author(s): Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman
Reviewed work(s):
Source: Gender and Society, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Jun., 1987), pp. 125-151
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DOING GENDER
CANDACE WEST
University of California, Santa Cruz
DON H. ZIMMERMAN
University of California, Santa Barbara
The purpose of this article is to advance a new understanding of gender as a routine
accomplishment embedded in everyday interaction. To do so entails a critical
assessment of existing perspectives on sex and gender and the introduction of
important distinctions among sex, sex category, and gender. We argue that recognition
of the analytical independence of these concepts is essential for understanding the
interactional work involved in being a gendered person in society. The thrust of our
remarks is toward theoretical reconceptualization, but we consider fruitful directions
for empirical research that are indicated by our formulation.
In the beginning, there was sex and there was gender. Those of us
who taught courses in the area in the late 1960s and early 1970s were
careful to distinguish one from the other. Sex, we told students, was
what was ascribed by biology: anatomy, hormones, and physiology.
Gender, we said, was an achieved status: that which is constructed
through psychological, cultural, and social means. To introduce the
difference between the two, we drew on singular case studies of
hermaphrodites (Money 1968, 1974; Money and Ehrhardt 1972) and
anthropological investigations of "strange and exotic tribes" (Mead
1963, 1968).
Inevitably (and understandably), in the ensuing weeks of each
term, our students became confused. Sex hardly seemed a "given" in
AUTHORS' NOTE: This article is based in part on a paper presented at the Annual
Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Chicago, September 1977. For their
helpful suggestions and encouragement, we thank Lynda Ames, Bettina Aptheker,
Steven Clayman, Judith Gerson, the late Erving Goffman, Marilyn Lester, Judith
Lorber, Robin Lloyd, Wayne Mellinger, Beth E. Schneider, Barrie Thorne, Thomas P.
Wilson, and most especially, Sarah Fenstermaker Berk.
GENDER&SOCIETY,Vol. 1 No. 2, June 1987125-151
0 1987Sociologistsfor Womenin Society
125
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GENDER & SOCIETY / June 1987
the context of research that illustrated the sometimes ambiguous and
often conflicting criteria for its ascription. And gender seemed much
less an "achievement" in the context of the anthropological, psychological, and social imperatives we studied-the division of labor, the
formation of gender identities, and the social subordination of
women by men. Moreover, the received doctrine of gender socialization
theories conveyed the strong message that while gender may be
"achieved," by about age five it was certainly fixed, unvarying, and
static-much like sex.
Since about 1975, the confusion has intensified and spread far
beyond our individual classrooms. For one thing, we learned that the
relationship between biological and cultural processes was far more
complex-and reflexive-than we previously had supposed (Rossi
1984, especially pp. 10-14). For another, we discovered that certain
structural arrangements, for example, between work and family,
actually produce or enable some capacities, such as to mother, that we
formerly associated with biology (Chodorow 1978 versus Firestone
1970). In the midst of all this, the notion of gender as a recurring
achievement somehow fell by the wayside.
Our purpose in this article is to propose an ethnomethodologically
informed, and therefore distinctively sociological, understanding of
gender as a routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishment. We
contend that the "doing" of gender is undertaken by women and men
whose competence as members of society is hostage to its production.
Doing gender involves a complex of socially guided perceptual,
interactional, and micropolitical activities that cast particular pursuits as expressions of masculine and feminine "natures."
When we view gender as an accomplishment, an achieved property
of situated conduct, our attention shifts from matters internal to the
individual and focuses on interactional and, ultimately, institutional
arenas. In one sense, of course, it is individuals who "do" gender. But
it is a situated doing, carried out in the virtual or real presence of
others who are presumed to be oriented to its production. Rather than
as a property of individuals, we conceive of gender as an emergent
feature of social situations: both as an outcome of and a rationale for
various social arrangements and as a means of legitimating one of the
most fundamental divisions of society.
To advance our argument, we undertake a critical examination of
what sociologists have meant by gender, including its treatment as a
role enactment in the conventional sense and as a "display" in
Goffman's (1976) terminology. Both gender role and gender display
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focus on behavioral aspects of being a woman or a man (as opposed,
for example, to biological differences between the two). However, we
contend that the notion of gender as a role obscures the work that is
involved in producing gender in everyday activities, while the notion
of gender as a display relegates it to the periphery of interaction. We
argue instead that participants in interaction organize their various
and manifold activities to reflect or express gender, and they are
disposed to perceive the behavior of others in a similar light.
To elaborate our proposal, we suggest at the outset that important
but often overlooked distinctions be observed among sex, sex
category, and gender. Sex is a determination made through the
application of socially agreed upon biological criteria for classifying
persons as females or males.' The criteria for classification can be
genitalia at birth or chromosomal typing before birth, and they do
not necessarily agree with one another. Placement in a sex category is
achieved through application of the sex criteria, but in everyday life,
categorization is established and sustained by the socially required
identificatory displays that proclaim one's membership in one or the
other category. In this sense, one's sex category presumes one's sex
and stands as proxy for it in many situations, but sex and sex category
can vary independently; that is, it is possible to claim membership in
a sex category even when the sex criteria are lacking. Gender, in
contrast, is the activity of managing situated conduct in light of
normative conceptions of attitudes and activities appropriate for
one's sex category. Gender activities emerge from and bolster claims
to membership in a sex category.
We contend that recognition of the analytical independence of sex,
sex category, and gender is essential for understanding the relationships among these elements and the interactional work involved in
"being" a gendered person in society. While our primary aim is
theoretical, there will be occasion to discuss fruitful directions for
empirical research following from the formulation of gender that we
propose.
We begin with an assessment of the received meaning of gender,
particularly in relation to the roots of this notion in presumed
biological differences between women and men.
PERSPECTIVES ON SEX AND GENDER
In Western societies, the accepted cultural perspective on gender
views women and men as naturally and unequivocally defined
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GENDER & SOCIETY / June 1987
categories of being (Garfinkel 1967, pp. 116-18) with distinctive
psychological and behavioral propensities that can be predicted from
their reproductive functions. Competent adult members of these societies see differences between the two as fundamental and enduringdifferences seemingly supported by the division of labor into women's
and men's work and an often elaborate differentiation of feminine
and masculine attitudes and behaviors that are prominent features of
social organization. Things are the way they are by virtue of the fact
that men are men and women are women-a division perceived to be
natural and rooted in biology, producing in turn profound psychological, behavioral, and social consequences. The structural arrangements of a society are presumed to be responsive to these differences.
Analyses of sex and gender in the social sciences, though less likely
to accept uncritically the naive biological determinism of the view
just presented, often retain a conception of sex-linked behaviors and
traits as essential properties of individuals (for good reviews, see
Hochschild 1973; Tresemer 1975; Thorne 1980; Henley 1985). The
"sex differences approach" (Thore 1980) is more commonly attributed to psychologists than to sociologists, but the survey researcher
who determines the "gender" of respondents on the basis of the sound
of their voices over the telephone is also making trait-oriented
assumptions. Reducing gender to a fixed set of psychological traits or
to a unitary "variable" precludes serious consideration of the ways it
is used to structure distinct domains of social experience (Stacey and
Thorne 1985, pp. 307-8).
Taking a different tack, role theory has attended to the social
construction of gender categories, called "sex roles" or, more recently,
"gender roles" and has analyzed how these are learned and enacted.
Beginning with Linton (1936) and continuing through the works of
Parsons (Parsons 1951; Parsons and Bales 1955) and Komarovsky
(1946, 1950), role theory has emphasized the social and dynamic
aspect of role construction and enactment (Thorne 1980; Connell
1983). But at the level of face-to-face interaction, the application of
role theory to gender poses problems of its own (for good reviews and
critiques, see Connell 1983, 1985; Kessler, Ashendon, Connell, and
Dowsett 1985; Lopata and Thorne 1978; Thorne 1980; Stacey and
Thorne 1985). Roles are situated identities-assumed and relinquished as the situation demands-rather than master identities
(Hughes 1945), such as sex category, that cut across situations. Unlike
most roles, such as "nurse," "doctor," and "patient" or "professor"
and "student," gender has no specific site or organizational context.
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Moreover, many roles are already gender marked, so that special
qualifiers-such as "female doctor" or "male nurse"-must be added
to exceptions to the rule. Thorne (1980) observes that conceptualizing
gender as a role makes it difficult to assess its influence on other roles
and reduces its explanatory usefulness in discussions of power and
inequality. Drawing on Rubin (1975), Thorne calls for a reconceptualization of women and men as distinct social groups, constituted in
"concrete, historically changing-and
generally unequal-social
1980,
11).
(Thorne
p.
relationships"
We argue that gender is not a set of traits, nor a variable, nor a role,
but the product of social doings of some sort. What then is the social
doing of gender? It is more than the continuous creation of the
meaning of gender through human actions (Gerson and Peiss 1985).
We claim that gender itself is constituted through interaction.2 To
develop the implications of our claim, we turn to Goffman's (1976)
account of "gender display." Our object here is to explore how gender
might be exhibited or portrayed through interaction, and thus be seen
as "natural," while it is being produced as a socially organized
achievement.
GENDER DISPLAY
Goffman contends that when human beings interact with others in
their environment, they assume that each possesses an "essential
nature"-a nature that can be discerned through the "natural signs
given off or expressed by them" (1976, p. 75). Femininity and
masculinity are regarded as "prototypes of essential expressionsomething that can be conveyed fleetingly in any social situation and
yet something that strikes at the most basic characterization of the
individual" (1976, p. 75). The means through which we provide such
expressions are "perfunctory, conventionalized acts" (1976, p. 69),
which convey to others our regard for them, indicate our alignment in
an encounter, and tentatively establish the terms of contact for that
social situation. But they are also regarded as expressive behavior,
testimony to our "essential natures."
Goffman (1976, pp. 69-70) sees displays as highly conventionalized
behaviors structured as two-part exchanges of the statement-reply
type, in which the presence or absence of symmetry can establish
deference or dominance. These rituals are viewed as distinct from but
articulated with more consequential activities, such as performing
tasks or engaging in discourse. Hence, we have what he terms the
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"scheduling" of displays at junctures in activities, such as the
beginning or end, to avoid interfering with the activities themselves.
Goffman (1976, p. 69) formulates gender display as follows:
If gender be defined as the culturally established correlatesof sex
(whetherin consequenceof biology or learning),then genderdisplay
refersto conventionalizedportrayalsof thesecorrelates.
These gendered expressions might reveal clues to the underlying,
fundamental dimensions of the female and male, but they are, in
Goffman's view, optional performances. Masculine courtesies may or
may not be offered and, if offered, may or may not be declined (1976, p.
71). Moreover, human beings "themselves employ the term 'expression', and conduct themselves to fit their own notions of expressivity"
(1976, p. 75). Gender depictions are less a consequence of our
"essential sexual natures" than interactional portrayals of what we
would like to convey about sexual natures, using conventionalized
gestures. Our human nature gives us the ability to learn to produce
and recognize masculine and feminine gender displays-"a capacity
[we] have by virtue of being persons, not males and females" (1976, p.
76).
Upon first inspection, it would appear that Goffman's formulation
offers an engaging sociological corrective to existing formulations of
gender. In his view, gender is a socially scripted dramatization of the
culture's idealization of feminine and masculine natures, played for
an audience that is well schooled in the presentational idiom. To
continue the metaphor, there are scheduled performances presented
in special locations, and like plays, they constitute introductions to
or time out from more serious activities.
There are fundamental equivocations in this perspective. By
segregating gender display from the serious business of interaction,
Goffman obscures the effects of gender on a wide range of human
activities. Gender is not merely something that happens in the nooks
and crannies of interaction, fitted in here and there and not
interfering with the serious business of life. While it is plausible to
contend that gender displays-construed as conventionalized expressions-are optional, it does not seem plausible to say that we have the
option of being seen by others as female or male.
It is necessary to move beyond the notion of gender display to
consider what is involved in doing gender as an ongoing activity
embedded in everyday interaction. Toward this end, we return to the
distinctions among sex, sex category, and gender introduced earlier.
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SEX, SEX CATEGORY, AND GENDER
Garfinkel's (1967, pp. 118-40) case study of Agnes, a transsexual
raised as a boy who adopted a female identity at age 17 and underwent
a sex reassignment operation several years later, demonstrates how
gender is created through interaction and at the same time structures
interaction. Agnes, whom Garfinkel characterized as a "practical
methodologist," developed a number of procedures for passing as a
"normal, natural female" both prior to and after her surgery. She had
the practical task of managing the fact that she possessed male
genitalia and that she lacked the social resources a girl's biography
would presumably provide in everyday interaction. In short, she
needed to display herself as a woman, simultaneously learning what
it was to be a woman. Of necessity, this full-time pursuit took place at
a time when most people's gender would be well-accredited and
routinized. Agnes had to consciously contrive what the vast majority
of women do without thinking. She was not "faking" what "real"
women do naturally. She was obliged to analyze and figure out how
to act within socially structured circumstances and conceptions of
femininity that women born with appropriate biological credentials
come to take for granted early on. As in the case of others who must
"pass," such as transvestites, Kabuki actors, or Dustin Hoffman's
"Tootsie," Agnes's case makes visible what culture has made
invisible-the accomplishment of gender.
Garfinkel's (1967) discussion of Agnes does not explicitly separate
three analytically distinct, although empirically overlapping, concepts-sex, sex category, and gender.
Sex
Agnes did not possess the socially agreed upon biological criteria
for classification as a member of the female sex. Still, Agnes regarded
herself as a female, albeit a female with a penis, which a woman ought
not to possess. The penis, she insisted, was a "mistake" in need of
remedy (Garfinkel 1967, pp. 126-27, 131-32). Like other competent
members of our culture, Agnes honored the notion that there are
"essential" biological criteria that unequivocally distinguish females
from males. However, if we move away from the commonsense
viewpoint, we discover that the reliability of these criteria is not
beyond question (Money and Brennan 1968; Money and Erhardt
1972; Money and Ogunro 1974; Money and Tucker 1975). Moreover,
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other cultures have acknowledged the existence of "cross-genders"
(Blackwood 1984; Williams 1986) and the possibility of more than
two sexes (Hill 1935; Martin and Voorhies 1975, pp. 84-107; but see
also Cucchiari 1981, pp. 32-35).
More central to our argument is Kessler and McKenna's (1978, pp.
1-6) point that genitalia are conventionally hidden from public
inspection in everyday life; yet we continue through our social rounds
to "observe" a world of two naturally, normally sexed persons. It is
the presumption that essential criteria exist and would or should be
there if looked for that provides the basis for sex categorization.
Drawing on Garfinkel, Kessler and McKenna argue that "female"
and "male" are cultural events-products of what they term the
"gender attribution process"-rather than some collection of traits,
behaviors, or even physical attributes. Illustratively they cite the child
who, viewing a picture of someone clad in a suit and a tie, contends,
"It's a man, because he has a pee-pee" (Kessler and McKenna 1978, p.
154). Translation: "He must have a pee-pee [an essential characteristic] because I see the insignia of a suit and tie." Neither initial sex
assignment (pronouncement at birth as a female or male) nor the
actual existence of essential criteria for that assignment (possession of
a clitoris and vagina or penis and testicles) has much-if anythingto do with the identification of sex category in everyday life. There,
Kessler and McKenna note, we operate with a moral certainty of a
world of two sexes. We do not think, "Most persons with penises are
men, but some may not be" or "Most persons who dress as men have
penises." Rather, we take it for granted that sex and sex category are
congruent-that knowing the latter, we can deduce the rest.
Sex Categorization
Agnes's claim to the categorical status of female, which she
sustained by appropriate identificatory displays and other characteristics, could be discredited before her transsexual operation if her
possession of a penis became known and after by her surgically
constructed genitalia (see Raymond 1979, pp. 37, 138). In this regard,
Agnes had to be continually alert to actual or potential threats to the
security of her sex category. Her problem was not so much living up
to some prototype of essential femininity but preserving her categorization as female. This task was made easy for her by a very powerful
resource, namely, the process of commonsense categorization in
everyday life.
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The categorization of members of society into indigenous categories such as "girl" or "boy," or "woman" or "man," operates in a
distinctively social way. The act of categorization does not involve a
positive test, in the sense of a well-defined set of criteria that must be
explicitly satisfied prior to making an identification. Rather, the
application of membership categories relies on an "if-can" test in
everyday interaction (Sacks 1972, pp. 332-35). This test stipulates that
if people can be seen as members of relevant categories, then
categorize
them
that way. That is, use the category
that seems
appropriate, except in the presence of discrepant information or
obvious features that would rule out its use. This procedure is quite in
keeping with the attitude of everyday life, which has us take
appearances at face value unless we have special reason to doubt
(Schutz 1943; Garfinkel 1967, pp. 272-77; Bernstein 1986).3 It should
be added that it is precisely when we have special reason to doubt that
the issue of applying rigorous criteria arises, but it is rare, outside
legal or bureaucratic contexts, to encounter insistence on positive
tests (Garfinkel 1967, pp. 262-83; Wilson 1970).
Agnes's initial resource was the predisposition of those she
encountered to take her appearance (her figure, clothing, hair style,
and so on), as the undoubted appearance of a normal female. Her
further resource was our cultural perspective on the properties of
"natural, normally sexed persons." Garfinkel (1967, pp. 122-28) notes
that in everyday life, we live in a world of two-and only two-sexes.
This arrangement has a moral status, in that we include ourselves and
others in it as "essentially, originally, in the first place, always have
been, always will be, once and for all, in the final analysis, either
'male' or 'female"' (Garfinkel 1967, p. 122).
Consider the following case:
This issue remindsme of a visit I madeto a computerstorea couple of
years ago. The person who answered my questions was truly a
salesperson.I could not categorizehim/her as a woman or a man. What
did I look for?(1) Facial hair: She/he was smooth skinned, but some
men havelittle or no facialhair.(This variesby race,NativeAmericans
and Blacks often have none.) (2) Breasts:She/he was wearing a loose
shirt that hung from his/her shoulders. And, as many women who
sufferedthrough a 1950s'adolescenceknow to theirshame,women are
often flat-chested.(3) Shoulders:His/hers weresmall and round for a
man, broad for a woman. (4) Hands: Long and slender fingers,
knuckles a bit large for a woman, small for a man. (5) Voice: Middle
range,unexpressivefora woman, not at all the exaggeratedtonessome
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gay males affect. (6) His/her treatment of me: Gave off no signs that
would let me know if I wereof the sameor differentsex as this person.
There werenot even any signs that he/she knew his/her sex would be
difficultto categorizeand I wonderedaboutthatevenas I did my bestto
hide thesequestionsso I would not embarrasshim/her while we talked
of computerpaper.I left still not knowing the sex of my salesperson,
and was disturbedby that unansweredquestion (child of my culture
that I am). (Diane Margolis,personalcommunication)
What can this case tell us about situations such as Agnes's (cf.
Morris 1974; Richards 1983) or the process of sex categorization in
general? First, we infer from this description that the computer
salesclerk's identificatory display was ambiguous, since she or he was
not dressed or adorned in an unequivocally female or male fashion. It
is when such a display fails to provide grounds for categorization that
factors such.as facial hair or tone of voice are assessed to determine
membership in a sex category. Second, beyond the fact that this
incident could be recalled after "a couple of years," the customer was
not only "disturbed" by the ambiguity of the salesclerk's category but
also assumed that to acknowledge this ambiguity would be embarrassing to the salesclerk. Not only do we want to know the sex
category of those around us (to see it at a glance, perhaps), but we
presume that others are displaying it for us, in as decisive a fashion as
they can.
Gender
Agnes attempted to be "120 percent female" (Garfinkel 1967, p.
129), that is, unquestionably in all ways and at all times feminine. She
thought she could protect herself from disclosure before and after
surgical intervention by comporting herself in a feminine manner,
but she also could have given herself away by overdoing her
performance. Sex categorization and the accomplishment of gender
are not the same. Agnes's categorization could be secure or suspect,
but did not depend on whether or not she lived up to some ideal
conception of femininity. Women can be seen as unfemninine,but that
does not make them "unfemale." Agnes faced an ongoing task of
being a woman-something beyond style of dress (an identificatory
display) or allowing men to light her cigarette (a gender display). Her
problem was to produce configurations of behavior that would be
seen by others as normative gender behavior.
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Agnes's strategy of "secret apprenticeship," through which she
learned expected feminine decorum by carefully attending to her
fiance's criticisms of other women, was one means of masking
incompetencies and simultaneously acquiring the needed skills
(Garfinkel 1967, pp. 146-147). It was through her fianc&that Agnes
learned that sunbathing on the lawn in front of her apartment was
"offensive" (because it put her on display to other men). She also
learned from his critiques of other women that she should not insist
on having things her way and that she should not offer her opinions
or claim equality with men (Garfinkel 1967, pp. 147-148). (Like other
women in our society, Agnes learned something about power in the
course of her "education.")
Popular culture abounds with books and magazines that compile
idealized depictions of relations between women and men. Those
focused on the etiquette of dating or prevailing standards of feminine
comportment are meant to be of practical help in these matters.
However, the use of any such source as a manual of procedure
requires the assumption that doing gender merely involves making
use of discrete, well-defined bundles of behavior that can simply be
plugged into interactional situations to produce recognizable enactments of masculinity and femininity. The man "does" being
masculine by, for example, taking the woman's arm to guide her
across a street, and she "does" being feminine by consenting to be
guided and not initiating such behavior with a man.
Agnes could perhaps have used such sources as manuals, but, we
contend, doing gender is not so easily regimented (Mithers 1982;
Morris 1974). Such sources may list and describe the sorts of behaviors
that mark or display gender, but they are necessarily incomplete
(Garfinkel 1967, pp. 66-75; Wieder 1974, pp. 183-214; Zimmerman
and Wieder 1970, pp. 285-98). And to be successful, marking or
displaying gender must be finely fitted to situations and modified or
transformed as the occasion demands. Doing gender consists of
managing such occasions so that, whatever the particulars, the
outcome is seen and seeable in context as gender-appropriate or, as
the case may be, gender-inappropriate, that is, accountable.
GENDER AND ACCOUNTABILITY
As Heritage (1984, pp. 136-37) notes, members of society regularly
engage in "descriptive accountings of states of affairs to one another,"
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GENDER & SOCIETY / June 1987
and such accounts are both serious and consequential. These
descriptions name, characterize, formulate, explain, excuse, excoriate,
or merely take notice of some circumstance or activity and thus place
it within some social framework (locating it relative to other
activities, like and unlike).
Such descriptions are themselves accountable, and societal members orient to the fact that their activities are subject to comment.
Actions are often designed with an eye to their accountability, that is,
how they might look and how they might be characterized. The
notion of accountability also encompasses those actions undertaken
so that they are specifically unremarkable and thus not worthy of
more than a passing remark, because they are seen to be in accord with
culturally approved standards.
Heritage (1984, p. 179) observes that the process of rendering
something accountable is interactional in character:
[This] permits actors to design their actions in relation to their
circumstancesso as to permitothers,by methodicallytakingaccountof
circumstances,to recognizethe action for what it is.
The key word here is circumstances. One circumstance that attends
virtually all actions is the sex category of the actor. As Garfinkel
(1967, p. 118) comments:
[T]he work and socially structuredoccasions of sexual passing were
obstinatelyunyielding to [Agnes's]attemptsto routinize the grounds
of daily activities.This obstinacypoints to the omnirelevanceof sexual
statusto affairsof daily life as an invariantbut unnoticedbackground
in the textureof relevancesthatcompose the changing actualscenesof
everydaylife. (italics added)
If sex category is omnirelevant (or even approaches being so), then a
person engaged in virtually any activity may be held accountable for
performance of that activity as a woman or a man, and their incumbency in one or the other sex category can be used to legitimate or
discredit their other activities (Berger, Cohen, and Zelditch 1972;
Berger, Conner, and Fisek 1974; Berger, Fisek, Norman, and Zelditch
1977; Humphreys and Berger 1981). Accordingly, virtually any
activity can be assessed as to its womanly or manly nature. And note,
to "do" gender is not always to live up to normative conceptions of
femininity or masculinity; it is to engage in behavior at the risk of
gender assessment. While it is individuals who do gender, the
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enterprise is fundamentally interactional and institutional in character, for accountability is a feature of social relationships and its
idiom is drawn from the institutional arena in which those relationships are enacted. If this be the case, can we ever not do gender? Insofar
as a society is partitioned by "essential" differences between women
and men and placement in a sex category is both relevant and
enforced, doing gender is unavoidable.
RESOURCES FOR DOING GENDER
Doing gender means creating differences between girls and boys
and women and men, differences that are not natural, essential, or
biological. Once the differences have been constructed, they are used
to reinforce the "essentialness"of gender. In a delightful account of
the "arrangement between the sexes," Goffman (1977) observes the
creation of a variety of institutionalized frameworks through which
our "natural, normal sexedness" can be enacted. The physical
features of social setting provide one obvious resource for the
expression of our "essential" differences. For example, the sex
segregation of North American public bathrooms distinguishes
"ladies" from "gentlemen" in matters held to be fundamentally
biological, even though both "are somewhat similar in the question
of waste products and their elimination" (Goffman 1977, p. 315).
These settings are furnished with dimorphic equipment (such as
urinals for men or elaborate grooming facilities for women), even
though both sexes may achieve the same ends through the same
means (and apparently do so in the privacy of their own homes). To
be stressed here is the fact that:
The functioning of sex-differentiatedorgans is involved, but thereis
nothing in this functioning thatbiologically recommendssegregation;
that arrangementis a totally cultural matter... toilet segregationis
presentedas a naturalconsequenceof the differencebetweenthe sexclasses when in fact it is a means of honoring, if not producing, this
difference.(Goffman 1977,p. 316)
Standardized social occasions also provide stages for evocations of
the "essential female and male natures." Goffman cites organized
sports as one such institutionalized framework for the expression of
manliness. There, those qualities that ought "properly" to be
associated with masculinity, such as endurance, strength, and com-
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petitive spirit, are celebrated by all parties concerned-participants,
who may be seen to demonstrate such traits, and spectators, who
applaud their demonstrations from the safety of the sidelines (1977, p.
322).
Assortative mating practices among heterosexual couples afford
still further means to create and maintain differences between women
and men. For example, even though size, strength, and age tend to be
normally distributed among females and males (with considerable
overlap between them), selective pairing ensures couples in which
boys and men are visibly bigger, stronger, and older (if not "wiser")
than the girls and women with whom they are paired. So, should
situations emerge in which greater size, strength, or experience is
called for, boys and men will be ever ready to display it and girls and
women, to appreciate its display (Goffman 1977, p. 321; West and
Iritani 1985).
Gender may be routinely fashioned in a variety of situations that
seem conventionally expressive to begin with, such as those that
present "helpless" women next to heavy objects or flat tires. But, as
Goffman notes, heavy, messy, and precarious concerns can be
constructed from any social situation, "even though by standards set
in other settings, this may involve something that is light, clean, and
safe" (Goffman 1977, p. 324). Given these resources, it is clear that any
interactional situation sets the stage for depictions of "essential"
sexual natures. In sum, these situations "do not so much allow for the
expression of natural differences as for the production of that
difference itself" (Goffman 1977, p. 324).
Many situations are not clearly sex categorized to begin with, nor is
what transpires within them obviously gender relevant. Yet any
social encounter can be pressed into service in the interests of doing
gender. Thus, Fishman's (1978) research on casual conversations
found an asymmetrical "division of labor" in talk between heterosexual intimates. Women had to ask more questions, fill more
silences, and use more attention-getting beginnings in order to be
heard. Her conclusions are particularly pertinent here:
Since interactionalwork is relatedto what constitutesbeing a woman,
with what a woman is, the idea thatit is workis obscured.The workis
not seen as what women do, but as part of what they are. (Fishman
1978,p. 405)
We would argue that it is precisely such labor that helps to constitute
the essential nature of women as women in interactional contexts
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(West and Zimmerman 1983, pp. 109-11; but see also Kollock,
Blumstein, and Schwartz 1985).
Individuals have many social identities that may be donned or
shed, muted or made more salient, depending on the situation. One
may be a friend, spouse, professional, citizen, and many other things
to many different people-or, to the same person at different times.
But we are always women or men-unless we shift into another sex
category. What this means is that our identificatory displays will
provide an ever-available resource for doing gender under an
infinitely diverse set of circumstances.
Some occasions are organized to routinely display and celebrate
behaviors that are conventionally linked to one or the other sex
category. On such occasions, everyone knows his or her place in the
interactional scheme of things. If an individual identified as a
member of one sex category engages in behavior usually associated
with the other category, this routinization is challenged. Hughes
(1945, p. 356) provides an illustration of such a dilemma:
[A] young woman ... became part of that virile profession, engineering. The designer of an airplane is expected to go up on the
maiden flight of the first plane built accordingto the design. He [sic]
then gives a dinner to the engineersand workmenwho workedon the
new plane. The dinner is naturallya stag party.The young woman in
question designed a plane. Her co-workersurged her not to take the
risk-for which, presumably,men only arefit-of the maidenvoyage.
They were,in effect,asking her to be a ladyinsteadof an engineer.She
chose to be an engineer. She then gave the partyand paid for it like a
man. Afterfood and the first round of toasts,she left like a lady.
On this occasion, parties reached an accommodation that allowed a
woman to engage in presumptively masculine behaviors. However,
we note that in the end, this compromise permitted demonstration of
her "essential" femininity, through accountably "ladylike" behavior.
Hughes (1945, p. 357) suggests that such contradictions may be
countered by managing interactions on a very narrow basis, for
example, "keeping the relationship formal and specific." But the
heart of the matter is that even-perhaps, especially-if the relationship is a formal one, gender is still something one is accountable for.
Thus a woman physician (notice the special qualifier in her case) may
be accorded respect for her skill and even addressed by an appropriate
title. Nonetheless, she is subject to evaluation in terms of normative
conceptions of appropriate attitudes and activities for her sex
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category and under pressure to prove that she is an "essentially"
feminine being, despite appearances to the contrary (West 1984, pp.
97-101). Her sex category is used to discredit her participation in
important clinical activities (Lorber 1984, pp. 52-54), while her
involvement in medicine is used to discredit her commitment to her
responsibilities as a wife and mother (Bourne and Wikler 1978, pp.
435-37). Simultaneously, her exclusion from the physician colleague
community is maintained and her accountability as a woman is
ensured.
In this context, "role conflict" can be viewed as a dynamic aspect of
our current "arrangement between the sexes" (Goffman 1977), an
arrangement that provides for occasions on which persons of a
particular sex category can "see" quite clearly that they are out of
place and that if they were not there, their current troubles would not
exist. What is at stake is, from the standpoint of interaction, the
management of our "essential" natures, and from the standpoint of
the individual, the continuing accomplishment of gender. If, as we
have argued, sex category is omnirelevant, then any occasion,
conflicted or not, offers the resources for doing gender.
We have sought to show that sex category and gender are managed
properties of conduct that are contrived with respect to the fact that
others will judge and respond to us in particular ways. We have
claimed that a person's gender is not simply an aspect of what one is,
but, more fundamentally, it is something that one does, and does
recurrently, in interaction with others.
What are the consequences of this theoretical formulation? If, for
example, individuals strive to achieve gender in encounters with
others, how does a culture instill the need to achieve it? What is the
relationship between the production of gender at the level of
interaction and such institutional arrangements as the division of
labor in society? And, perhaps most important, how does doing
gender contribute to the subordination of women by men?
RESEARCHAGENDAS
To bring the social production of gender under empirical scrutiny,
we might begin at the beginning, with a reconsideration of the
process through which societal members acquire the requisite
categorical apparatus and other skills to become gendered human
beings.
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Recruitmentto GenderIdentities
The conventional approach to the process of becoming girls and
boys has been sex-role socialization. In recent years, recurring
problems arising from this approach have been linked to inadequacies
inherent in role theory per se-its emphasis on "consensus, stability
and continuity" (Stacey and Thorne 1985, p. 307), its ahistorical and
depoliticizing focus (Thorne 1980, p. 9; Stacey and Thorne 1985, p.
307), and the fact that its "social" dimension relies on "a general
assumption that people choose to maintain existing customs"
(Connell 1985, p. 263).
In contrast, Cahill (1982, 1986a, 1986b) analyzes the experiences of
preschool children using a social model of recruitment into normally
gendered identities. Cahill argues that categorization practices are
fundamental to learning and displaying feminine and masculine
behavior. Initially, he observes, children are primarily concerned
with distinguishing between themselves and others on the basis of
social competence. Categorically, their concern resolves itself into the
opposition of "girl/boy" classification versus "baby" classification
(the latter designating children whose social behavior is problematic
and who must be closely supervised). It is children's concern with
being seen as socially competent that evokes their initial claims to
gender identities:
During the exploratorystageof children'ssocialization ... they learn
that only two social identities are routinely available to them, the
identity of "baby," or, depending on the configuration of their external
genitalia, either "big boy" or "big girl." Moreover, others subtly
inform them that the identity of "baby" is a discrediting one. When, for
example, children engage in disapprovedbehavior,they areoften told
"You're a baby" or "Be a big boy." In effect, these typical verbal
responses to young children's behavior convey to them that they must
behaviorally choose between the discrediting identity of "baby" and
their anatomically determinedsex identity.(Cahill 1986a,p. 175)
Subsequently, little boys appropriate the gender ideal of "efficaciousness," that is, being able to affect the physical and social
environment through the exercise of physical strength or appropriate
skills. In contrast, little girls learn to value "appearance," that is,
managing themselves as ornamental objects. Both classes of children
learn that the recognition and use of sex categorization in interaction
are not optional, but mandatory (see also Bem 1983).
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Being a "girl" or a "boy" then, is not only being more competent
than a "baby," but also being competently female or male, that is,
learning to produce behavioral displays of one's "essential" female or
male identity. In this respect, the task of four- to five-year-old children
is very similar to Agnes's:
For example, the following interaction occurred on a preschool
playground A 55-month-oldboy (D) was attemptingto unfasten the
clasp of a necklacewhen a preschoolaide walkedover to him.
A: Do you want to put that on?
D: No. It's for girls.
A: You don't have to be a girl to wearthings aroundyour neck. Kings
wear things aroundtheir necks.You could pretendyou'rea king.
D: I'm not a king. I'm a boy. (Cahill 1986a,p. 176)
As Cahill notes of this example, although D may have been unclear as
to the sex status of a king's identity, he was obviously aware that
necklaces are used to announce the identity "girl." Having claimed
the identity "boy" and having developed a behavioral commitment to
it, he was leery of any display that might furnish grounds for
questioning his claim.
In this way, new members of society come to be involved in a
self-regulating process as they begin to monitor their own and others'
conduct with regard to its gender implications. The "recruitment"
process involves not only the appropriation of gender ideals (by the
valuation of those ideals as proper ways of being and behaving) but
also gender identities that are important to individuals and that they
strive to maintain. Thus gender differences, or the sociocultural
shaping of "essential female and male natures," achieve the status of
objective facts. They are rendered normal, natural features of persons
and provide the tacit rationale for differing fates of women and men
within the social order.
Additional studies of children's play activities as routine occasions
for the expression of gender-appropriate behavior can yield new
insights into how our "essential natures" are constructed. In particular, the transition from what Cahill (1986a) terms "apprentice
participation" in the sex-segregated worlds that are common among
elementary school children to "bona fide participation" in the
heterosocial world so frightening to adolescents is likely to be a
keystone in our understanding of the recruitment process (Thorne
1986; Thore and Luria 1986).
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Gender and the Division of Labor
Whenever people face issues of allocation-who is to do what, get
what, plan or execute action, direct or be directed, incumbency in
significant social categories such as "female" and "male" seems to
become pointedly relevant. How such issues are resolved conditions
the exhibition, dramatization, or celebration of one's "essential
nature" as a woman or man.
Berk (1985) offers elegant demonstration of this point in her
investigation of the allocation of household labor and the attitudes of
married couples toward the division of household tasks. Berk found
little variation in either the actual distribution of tasks or perceptions
of equity in regard to that distribution. Wives, even when employed
outside the home, do the vast majority of household and child-care
tasks. Moreover, both wives and husbands tend to perceive this as a
"fair" arrangement. Noting the failure of conventional sociological
and economic theories to explain this seeming contradiction, Berk
contends that something more complex is involved than rational
arrangements for the production of household goods and services:
Hardlya question simply of who hasmoretime,or whosetimeis worth
more, who has more skill or morepower,it is clearthat a complicated
relationship between the structure of work imperatives and the
structure of normative expectations attached to work as gendered
determines the ultimate allocation of members'time to work and
home. (Berk1985,pp. 195-96)
She notes, for example, that the most important factor influencing
wives' contribution of labor is the total amount of work demanded or
expected by the household; such demands had no bearing on
husbands' contributions. Wives reported various rationales (their
own and their husbands') that justified their level of contribution
and, as a general matter, underscored the presumption that wives are
essentially responsible for household production.
Berk (1985, p. 201) contends that it is difficult to see how people
"could rationally establish the arrangements that they do solely for
the production of household goods and services"-much less, how
people could consider them "fair." She argues that our current
arrangements for the domestic division of labor support two production processes: household goods and services (meals, clean children,
and so on) and, at the same time, gender. As she puts it:
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Simultaneously,members"do"gender,as they "do" houseworkand
child care,and what [has]beencalledthe division of laborprovidesfor
thejoint productionof householdlaborandgender;it is themechanism
by which both thematerialandsymbolicproductsof the householdare
realized.(1985,p. 201)
It is not simply that household labor is designated as "women's
work," but that for a woman to engage in it and a man not to engage
in it is to draw on and exhibit the "essential nature" of each. What is
produced and reproduced is not merely the activity and artifact of
domestic life, but the material embodiment of wifely and husbandly
roles, and derivatively, of womanly and manly conduct (see Beer 1983,
pp. 70-89). What are also frequently produced and reproduced are the
dominant and subordinate statuses of the sex categories.
How does gender get done in work settings outside the home,
where dominance and subordination are themes of overarching
importance? Hochschild's (1983) analysis of the work of flight
attendants offers some promising insights. She found that the
occupation of flight attendant consisted of something altogether
different for women than for men:
As the company's main shock absorbersagainst "mishandled"passengers, their own feelings are more frequently subjected to rough
treatment.In addition,a day'sexposureto people who resistauthority
in a woman is a different experience than it is for a man....
In this
respect,it is a disadvantageto be a woman.And in this case,theyarenot
simply women in the biological sense.They are also a highly visible
distillation of middle-class American notions of femininity. They
symbolize Woman. Insofar as the category "female" is mentally
associatedwith having less status and authority,female flight attendantsaremorereadilyclassifiedas "really"femalesthan otherfemales
are. (Hochschild 1983,p. 175)
In performing what Hochschild terms the "emotional labor" necessary to maintain airline profits, women flight attendants simultaneously produce enactments of their "essential" femininity.
Sex and Sexuality
What is the relationship between doing gender and a culture's
prescription of "obligatory heterosexuality" (Rubin 1975; Rich
1980)?As Frye (1983, p. 22) observes, the monitoring of sexual feelings
in relation to other appropriately sexed persons requires the ready
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recognition of such persons "before one can allow one's heart to beat
or one's blood to flow in erotic enjoyment of that person." The
appearance of heterosexuality is produced through emphatic and
unambiguous indicators of one's sex, layered on in ever more
conclusive fashion (Frye 1983, p. 24). Thus, lesbians and gay men
concerned with passing as heterosexuals can rely on these indicators
for camouflage; in contrast, those who would avoid the assumption
of heterosexuality may foster ambiguous indicators of their categorical status through their dress, behaviors, and style. But "ambiguous"
sex indicators are sex indicators nonetheless. If one wishes to be
recognized as a lesbian (or heterosexual woman), one must first
establish a categorical status as female. Even as popular images
portray lesbians as "females who are not feminine" (Frye 1983, p.
129), the accountability of persons for their "normal, natural
sexedness" is preserved.
Nor is accountability threatened by the existence of "sex-change
operations"-presumably, the most radical challenge to our cultural
perspective on sex and gender. Although no one coerces transsexuals
into hormone therapy, electrolysis, or surgery, the alternatives
available to them are undeniably constrained:
When the transsexual experts maintain that they use transsexual
proceduresonly with people who ask for them, and who prove that
they can "pass," they obscure the social reality. Given patriarchy's
prescriptionthatone must be eithermasculineor feminine, freechoice
is conditioned. (Raymond 1979,p. 135,italics added)
The physical reconstruction of sex criteria pays ultimate tribute to the
"essentialness" of our sexual natures-as women or as men.
GENDER, POWER, AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Let us return to the question: Can we avoid doing gender? Earlier,
we proposed that insofar as sex category is used as a fundamental
criterion for differentiation, doing gender is unavoidable. It is
unavoidable because of the social consequences of sex-category
membership: the allocation of power and resources not only in the
domestic, economic, and political domains but also in the broad
arena of interpersonal relations. In virtually any situation, one's sex
category can be relevant, and one's performance as an incumbent of
that category (i.e., gender) can be subjected to evaluation. Maintaining
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such pervasive and faithful assignment of lifetime status requires
legitimation.
But doing gender also renders the social arrangements based on sex
category accountable as normal and natural, that is, legitimate ways
of organizing social life. Differences between women and men that
are created by this process can then be portrayed as fundamental and
enduring dispositions. In this light, the institutional arrangements of
a society can be seen as responsive to the differences-the social order
being merely an accommodation to the natural order. Thus if, in
doing gender, men are also doing dominance and women are doing
deference (cf. Goffman 1967, pp. 47-95), the resultant social order,
which supposedly reflects "natural differences," is a powerful reinforcer and legitimator of hierarchical arrangements. Frye observes:
For efficient subordination, what's wanted is that the structurenot
appear to be a cultural artifact kept in place by human decision or
custom, but that it appearnatural-that it appearto be quite a direct
consequence of facts about the beast which are beyond the scope of
human manipulation ... That we are trainedto behaveso differently
as women and men, and to behave so differentlytowardwomen and
men, itself contributesmightily to the appearanceof extremedimorphism, but also, the ways we act as women and men, and the wayswe
act towardwomen and men, mold our bodies and our minds to the
shape of subordination and dominance. We do become what we
practicebeing. (Frye 1983,p. 34)
If we do gender appropriately, we simultaneously sustain, reproduce,
and render legitimate the institutional arrangements that are based
on sex category. If we fail to do gender appropriately, we as
individuals-not the institutional arrangements-may be called to
account (for our character, motives, and predispositions).
Social movements such as feminism can provide the ideology and
impetus to question existing arrangements, and the social support for
individuals to explore alternatives to them. Legislative changes, such
as that proposed by the Equal Rights Amendment, can also weaken
the accountability of conduct to sex category, thereby affording the
possibility of more widespread loosening of accountability in general.
To be sure, equality under the law does not guarantee equality in
other arenas. As Lorber (1986, p. 577) points out, assurance of
"scrupulous equality of categories of people considered essentially
different needs constant monitoring." What such proposed changes
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can do is provide the warrant for asking why, if we wish to treat
women and men as equals, there needs to be two sex categories at all
(see Lorber 1986, p. 577).
The sex category/gender relationship links the institutional and
interactional levels, a coupling that legitimates social arrangements
based on sex category and reproduces their asymmetry in face-to-face
interaction. Doing gender furnishes the interactional scaffolding of
social structure, along with a built-in mechanism of social control. In
appreciating the institutional forces that maintain distinctions
between women and men, we must not lose sight of the interactional
validation of those distinctions that confers upon them their sense of
"naturalness" and "rightness."
Social change, then, must be pursued both at the institutional and
cultural level of sex category and at the interactional level of gender.
Such a conclusion is hardly novel. Nevertheless, we suggest that it is
important to recognize that the analytical distinction between
institutional and interactional spheres does not pose an either/or
choice when it comes to the question of effecting social change.
Reconceptualizing gender not as a simple property of individuals but
as an integral dynamic of social orders implies a new perspective on
the entire network of gender relations:
[T]he social subordinationof women,and the cultural practiceswhich
help sustain it; the politics of sexualobject-choice,and particularlythe
oppression of homosexual people; the sexual division of labor, the
formation of characterand motive, so far as they are organized as
femininity and masculinity;the role of the body in social relations,
especially the politics of childbirth; and the nature of strategiesof
sexual liberationmovements.(Connell 1985,p. 261)
Gender is a powerful ideological device, which produces, reproduces, and legitimates the choices and limits that are predicated on
sex category. An understanding of how gender is produced in social
situations will afford clarification of the interactional scaffolding of
social structure and the social control processes that sustain it.
NOTES
1. This definition understates many complexities involved in the relationship
between biology and culture (Jaggar 1983, pp. 106-13). However, our point is that the
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GENDER & SOCIETY / June 1987
determination of an individual's sex classification is a social process through and
through.
2. This is not to say that gender is a singular "thing," omnipresent in the same
form historically or in every situation. Because normative conceptions of appropriate
attitudes and activities for sex categories can vary across cultures and historical
moments, the management of situated conduct in light of those expectations can take
many different forms.
3. Bernstein (1986) reports an unusual case of espionage in which a man passing as
a woman convinced a lover that he/she had given birth to "their" child, who, the lover,
thought, "looked like" him.
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& Allanheld.
Kessler, S., D. J. Ashendon, R. W. Connell, and G. W. Dowsett. 1985. "Gender
Relations in Secondary Schooling." Sociology of Education 58:34-48.
Kessler, Suzanne J., and Wendy McKenna. 1978. Gender: An Ethnomethodological
Approach. New York: Wiley.
Kollock, Peter, Philip Blumstein, and Pepper Schwartz. 1985. "Sex and Power in
Interaction." American Sociological Review 50:34-46.
Komarovsky, Mirra. 1946. "Cultural Contradictions and Sex Roles." American
Journal of Sociology 52:184-89.
"Functional Analysis of Sex Roles." American Sociological Review
---1950.
15:508-16.
Linton, Ralph. 1936. The Study of Man. New York: Appleton-Century.
Lopata, Helen Z., and Barrie Thorne. 1978. "On the Term 'Sex Roles."' Signs: Journal
of Women in Culture and Society 3:718-21.
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150
GENDER & SOCIETY / June 1987
Lorber, Judith. 1984. Women Physicians: Careers, Status and Power. New York:
Tavistock.
---1986.
"Dismantling Noah's Ark." Sex Roles 14:567-80.
Martin, M. Kay, and Barbara Voorheis. 1975. Female of the Species. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Mead, Margaret. 1963. Sex and Temperment. New York: Dell.
---1968.
Male and Female. New York: Dell.
Mithers, Carol L. 1982. "My Life as a Man." The Village Voice 27 (October 5):lff.
Money, John. 1968. Sex Errors of the Body. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.
---1974.
"Prenatal Hormones and Postnatal Sexualization in Gender Identity
Differentiation." Pp. 221-95 in Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Vol. 21,
edited by J. K. Cole and R. Dienstbier. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
---and
John G. Brennan. 1968. "Sexual Dimorphism in the Psychology of Female
Transsexuals." Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 147:487-99.
---and
Anke, A. Erhardt. 1972. Man and Woman/Boy and Girl. Baltimore: John
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---and
Charles Ogunro. 1974. "Behavioral Sexology: Ten Cases of Genetic Male
Intersexuality with Impaired Prenatal and Pubertal Androgenization," Archives of
Sexual Behavior 3:181-206.
---and
Patricia Tucker. 1975. Sexual Signatures. Boston: Little, Brown.
Morris, Jan. 1974. Conundrum. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
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---and
Robert F. Bales. 1955. Family, Socialization and Interaction Process. New
York: Free Press.
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Journal of Women in Culture and Society 5:631-60.
Richards, Renee (with John Ames). 1983. Second Serve: The Renee Richards Story.
New York: Stein and Day.
Rossi, Alice. 1984. "Gender and Parenthood." American Sociological Review 49:1-19.
Rubin, Gayle. 1975. "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the 'Political Economy' of Sex."
Pp. 157-210 in Toward an Anthropology of Women, edited by R. Reiter. New York:
Monthly Review Press.
Sacks, Harvey. 1972. "On the Analyzability of Stories by Children." Pp. 325-45 in
Directions in Sociolinguistics, edited by J. J. Gumperz and D. Hymes. New York:
Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Schutz, Alfred. 1943. "The Problem of Rationality in the Social World" Economics
10:130-49.
Stacey, Judith, and Barrie Thorne. 1985. "The Missing Feminist Revolution in
Sociology." Social Problems 32:301-16.
How Is It Best Conceptualized?" Unpublished
Thorne, Barrie. 1980. "Gender...
manuscript.
---1986.
"Girls and Boys Together... But Mostly Apart: Gender Arrangements in
Elementary Schools." Pp. 167-82 in Relationships and Development, edited by W.
Hartup and Z. Rubin. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
---and
Zella Luria. 1986. "Sexuality and Gender in Children's Daily Worlds."
Social Problems 33:176-90.
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West, Zimmerman / DOING GENDER
151
Tresemer, David. 1975. "Assumptions Made About Gender Roles." Pp. 308-39 in
Another Voice: Feminist Perspectives on Social Life and Social Science, edited by
M. Millman and R. M. Kanter. New York: Anchor/Doubleday.
West, Candace. 1984. "When the Doctor is a 'Lady': Power, Status and Gender in
Physician-Patient Encounters." Symbolic Interaction 7:87-106.
---and
Bonita Iritani. 1985. "Gender Politics in Mate Selection: The Male-Older
Norm." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological
Association, August, Washington, DC.
---and
Don H. Zimmerman. 1983. "Small Insults: A Study of Interruptions in
Conversations Between Unacquainted Persons." Pp. 102-17 in Language, Gender
and Society, edited by B. Thorne, C. Kramarae, and N. Henley. Rowley, MA:
Newbury House.
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Convict Code. The Hague: Mouton.
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Indian Culture. Boston: Beacon.
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Explanation." American Sociological Review 35:697-710.
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Problem of Order: Comment on Denzin." Pp. 287-95 in Understanding Everyday
Life, edited by J. Denzin. Chicago: Aldine.
Candace West is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California,
Santa Cruz. Her past work includes "Against Our Will: Male Interruptions of
Females in Cross-sex Conversation," "When the Doctor Is a 'Lady': Power,
Status and Gender in Physician-Patient Encounters," and "Gender, Language
and Discourse" (with Don H. Zimmerman).
Don H. Zimmerman is Professor of Sociology at the University of California,
Santa Barbara. His other work on gender, also coauthored with West, includes
"Sex Roles, Interruption and Silences," "Women's Place in Everyday Talk,"
"Small Insults: A Study of Interruptions in Cross-Sex Conversations Between
Unacquainted Persons," and "Gender, Language and Discourse."
This content downloaded on Thu, 3 Jan 2013 11:59:16 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
5 Lorber! "Night to His Day"
5
"Night to His Day":
The Social Construction of Gender
Judith Lorber .
Talking about gender for most people is the equivalent of fish talking about water.
Cender is so much the routine ground of everyday activities that questioning its
taken-far-granted assumptions and presuppositions is like thinking about whether
the sun will come up.1 Cender is so pervasive that in our society we assume it is
bred into our genes. Most people find it hard to believe that gender is constantly
created and re-created out of human interaction, out of social life, and is the texture
and order of that social life. Yet gender, like culture, is a human production that de
pends on everyone constantly "doing gender" (West and 'Zimmerman 1987)
An\~ everyone "does gender" without thinking about it. Today, on the subway, I
saw a well-dressed man with a year-old child in a stroller. Yesterday, on a bus, I saw
a man with a tiny baby ina carrier on his chest. Seeing men taking care of small
children in public is increasircgly common-at least in New York City. But both
men were quite obviously stared at-and smiled at, approvingly. Everyone was
doing gender-the men who were changing the role of fathers and the other pas
sengers, who were applauding them silently. But there was more gendering going
on that probably fewer people noticed. The baby was wearing a white crocheted
cap and white clothes. You couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl. The child in the
stroller was wearing a dark blue T-shirt and dark print pants. As they started to
leave the train, the father put a Yankee baseball cap 011 the child's head. Ah, a boy,
I thought. Then I noticed the gleam of tiny earrings in the child's ears, and as they
got off, I saw the little flowered sneakers and lace-trimmed socks. Not a boy after
all. Cender done.
Cender is such a familiar part of daily life that it usually takes a deliberate dis
ruption of our expectations of how women and men are supposed to act to pay at
tention to how it is produced. Cender signs and signals are so ubiquitous that we
usually fail to note them-unless they are missing or ambiguous. Then we are un
comfortable until we have successfully placed the other person in a gender status;
otherwise, we feel socially dislocated....
From" 'Night to His Day': The Social ComtLlction of Gender," in Paradoxes
Copyright 1994. Reprinted by permission of Yale University Press.
or Gender, pp. 13-36.
55
For the individual, gender construction starts with assignment to a sex categorYI
on the basis of what the genitalia look like at birth Z Then babies are dressed orl
adorned in a way that displays !Iw category because parents don't want to be con-,
stantly askee; whether their baby IS a girl or a boy. A sex category becomes a gender
status through naming, dress, and the use of other gender markers. Once a child's
gender is evident, others treat those in one gender differently from those in the
other, and the children respond to the different treatment by feeling different and
behaving differently. As soon as they can talk, they start to refer to themselves as
members of their gender. Sex doesn't corne into play again until puberty, but by
that time, sexual feelings and desires and practices have been shaped by gendered
norms and expectations. Adolescent boys and girls approach and avoid each other
in an elaborately scripted and gendered mating dance. Parenting is gendered, with
different expectations for mothers and for fathers, and people of different genders
work at different kinds of jobs. The work adults do as mothers ar;,1 fathers and as
low-level workers and high-level bosses, shapes women's and men's life experi
ences, and these experiences produce different feelings, consciousness, relation
ships, skills-ways of being that we call feminine or masculine 3 All of these
processes constitute the social construction of gender.
Cendered roles change-today fathers are taking care of little children, girls
and boys are wearing unisex clothing and getting the same education, women and
men are working at the same jobs. Although many traditional social groups are
quite strict about maintaining gender differences, in other socia! groups they seem
to be blurring. Then why the one-year-old's earrings? Why is it still so important to
mark a child as a girl or a boy, to make sure she is not taken for a boy or he for a
girl? What would happen if they were? They would, quite literally, have changed
places in their social world.
To explain why gendering is done from birth, constantly and by everyone, we
have to look not only at the way individuals experience gender but at gender as a so
CIal institution. As a social institution, gender is one of the major ways that human
beings organize their lives. Human society depends on a predictable division of
labor, a designated allocation of SCarce goods, assigned responsibility for children
and others who cannot care for themselves, common values and their systematic
transmission to new members, legitimate leadership, music, art, stories, garnes, and
other symbolic productions. One way of choosing people for the different tasks of
society is on the basis of their talents, motivations, and competence-their demon
strated achievements. The other way is on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity-as
cribed membership in a category of people. Although societies vary in the extent to
which they use one or the other of these ways of allocating people to work and to
carry out other responsibilities, every society uses gender and age grades. Every soci
ety classifies people as "girl and boy children," "girls and boys ready to be married,"
and "fully adult women and men," constructs similarities among them and differ
ences between them, and assigns them to different roles and responsibilities.
Personality characteristics, feelings, motivations, and ambitions flow from these
different life experiences so that the me/nbers of these different groups become
56
I The Social Construction of Difference: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality
different kinds of people. The process of gendering and its outcome are legitimated
by religion, law, science, and the society's entire set of values ....
Western society's values legitimate gendering by claiming that it all comes
from physiology-female and male procreative differences. But gender and sex are
not equivalent, and gender as a social construction does not flow automatically
from genitalia and reproductive organs, the main physiological differences of fe
males and males. In the construction of ascribed social statuses, physiological dif
ferences such as sex, stage of development, color of skin, and size are crude
marke,s. They are not the source of the social statuses of gender, age grade, and
race. Social statuses are carefully constructed through prescribed processes of
teaching, learning, emulation, and enforcement. Whatever genes, hormones, and
biological evolution contribute to human social institutions is materially as well as
qualitatively transformed by social practices. Evcry social institution has a material
base, but culture and social practices transform that base into something with qual
itatively different patterns and constraints. The economy is much more than pro
ducing food and goods and distributing them to eaters and users; family and
kinship are not the equivalent of having sex and procreating; morals and religions
cannot be equated with the fears and ecstasies of the brain; language goes far be
yond the sounds produced by tongue and larynx. No one eats "money" or "credit";
the concepts of "god" and "angels" are the subjects of theological disquisitions; not
only words but objects, such as their flag, "speak" to the citizens of a country.
Similarly, gcnder cannot be equated with biological and physiological differ
ences between human females and males. The building blocks of gender are so
cially constructed statuses. Western socIeties have only two genders, "man" and
"woman." Some societies have three genders- men, women, and berdaches or
hiiras or xaniths. Berdaches, hijras, and xaniths are biological males who behave,
dress, work, and are treated in most respects as social women; they are therefore not
men, nor are they female women; they are, in our language, "male women."4 There
are Mrican and American Indian societies that have a gender status called manly
hearted Women- biological females who work, marry, and parent as men; their so
cial status is "female men" (Amadiume 1987; Blackwood 1984). They do not have
to behave or dress as men to have the social responsibilities and prerogatives of hus
bands and fathers; what makes them men is enough wealth to buy a wife.
Modern Western societies' transsexuals and transvestites are the nearcst equiva
lent of these crossover genders, but they are not institutionalized as third genders
(Bolin 1987). Transsexuals are biological males and females who have sex-change
operations to alter their genitalia. They do so in order to bring their physical
anatomy in congruence with the way they want to live and with their own sense of
gender identity. They do not become a third gender; they change genders.
Transvestites are males who live as women and females who live as men but do not
intend to have sex-change surgery. Their dress, appearance, and mannerisms fall
within the range of what is expected from members of the opposite gender, so that
they "pass." They also change genders, sometimes temporarily, some for most of
their lives. Transvestite women have fought in wars as men soldiers as recently as
5
Lorber / "Night to His Day"
57
the nineteenth century; some married women, and others went back to being
women and married men once the war was over.' Some were discovered when
their wounds were treated; others not until they died. In order to work as a jazz
musician, a man's occupation, Billy Tipton, a woman, lived most of her life as a
man. She died recently at seventy-four, leaving a wife and three adopted sons for
whom she was husband and father, and musicians with whom she had played and
traveled, for whom she was "one of the boys" (New York Times 1989).6 There have
been many other such occurrences of women passing as men to do more presti
gious or lucrative men's work (Matthaei 1982, 192-93).7
Genders, therefore, are not attached to a biological substratum. Gender
boundaries are breachablc, and individual and socially organized shifts from one
gender to another call attention to "cultural, social, or aesthetic dissonances"
(Garber 1992, 16). These odd or deviant or third genders show us what we ordinar
ily take for granted-that people have to learn to be women and men ....
For Individuals, Gender Means Sameness
Although the possible combinations of genitalia, body shapes, clothing, manner
isms, sexuality, and roles could produce infinite varieties in human beings, the so
cial institution of gcndcr depends on the production and maintenance of a limited
number of gender statuses and of making the members of these statuses similar to
each other. Individuals are born sexed but not gendered, and they have to be
taught to be masculine or feminineS As SImone de Beauvoir saId: "One is not
born, but rather becomes, :3 woman ... ; it is civilization as a whole that produces
this creature ... which is described as feminine." (1953, 267).
Children learn to walk, talk, and gesture the way their social group says gnls
and boys should. Ray Birdwhistell, in his analysis of body motion as human com
munication, calls these learned gender displays tertiary sex characteristics and ar
gues that they are needed to distinguish genders because humans are a weakly
dimorphic species-their only sex markers are genitalia (1970, 39-46). Clothing,
paradoxically, often hides the sex but displays the gender.
In early childhood, humans develop gendered personality structures and sexual
orientations through their interactions with parents of the same and opposite gen
der. As adolescents, they conduct their sexual behavior according to gendered
scripts. Schools, parents, peers, and the mass media guide young people into gen
dered work and family roles. As adults, they take on a gendered social status in
their society's stratification system. Gender is thus both ascribed and achieved
(West and Zimmerman 1987). ..
Gender norms are inscribed in the way people move, gesture, and even eat. In
one African society, men were supposed to eat with their "whole mouth, whole
heartedly, and not, like women, just with the lips, that is halfheartedly, with reser
vation and restraint" (Bourdieu [1980] 1990, 70). Men and women in this society
learncd to walk in ways that proclaimed their different positions in the society:
51> I The Social Construction of Difference: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality
The manly man, , , stands up straight into the face of the person he approaches, or
wishes to welcome, Ever on the alert, because ever threatened, he misses nothing of
what happens around him, , , , Conversely, a well brought-up woman, , , is expected
to walk with a slight stoop, avoiding every misplaced movement of her body, her
head or her arms, looking down, keeping her eyes on the spot where she will next
put her foot, especially if she happens to have to walk past the men's assembly, (70)
, , , For human beings there is no essential femaleness or maleness, femininity
or masculinity, womanhood or manhood, but once gender is ascribed, the social
order constructs and holds individuals to strongly gendered norms and expecta
tions, Individuals may vary on many of the components of gender and may shift
genders temporarily or permanently, but they must fit into the limited number of
gender statuses their society recognizes. In the process, they re-create their society's
version of women and men: "If we do gender appropriately, we simultaneously sus
tain, reproduce, and render legitimate the institutional arrangements. , .. If we fail
to do gender appropriately, we as individuals-not the institutional arrange
ments-may be called to account (for our character, motives, and predisposi
tions)" (West and Zimmerman 1987, 146).
The gendered practices of everyday life reproduce a society's view of how
women and men should act (Bourdieu [1980] 1990). Gendered social arrange
ments are justified by religion and cultural productions and backed by law, but the
most powerful means of sustaining the moral hegemony of the dominant gender
ideology is that the process is made invisible; any possible alternatives are Virtually
unthinkable (Foucault 1972; Gramsci 1971)9
For Society, Gender Means Difference
The pervasiveness of gender as a way of structuring social life demands that gender
statuses be clearly differentiated. Varied talents, sexual preferences, identities, per
sonalities, interests, and ways of interacting fragment the individual's bodily and
social experiences. Nonetheless, these are organized in Western cultures into two
and only two socially and legally recognized gender statuses, "man" and
"woman."lO In the social construction of gender, it does not matter what men and
women actually do; it does not even matter if they do exactly the same thing. The
social institution of gender insists only that what they do is perceived as different.
If men and women are doing the same tasks, they are usually spatially segre
gated to maintain gender separation, and often the tasks are given different job ti
tles as well, such as executive secretary and administrative assistant (Reskin 1988).
If the differences between women and men begin to blur, society's "sameness
taboo" goes into action (Rubin 1975, 178). At a rock and roll dance at West Point
in 1976, the year women were admitted to the prestigious military academy for the
first time, the school's administrators "were reportedly perturbed by the sight of
mirror-image couples dancing in short hair and dress gray trousers," and a rule was
5 Lorber / "Night to His Day"
59
established that women cadets could dance at these events only if they wore skirts
(Barkalow and Raab 1990, 53).11 Women recruits in the U,S. Marine Corps are re
quired to wear makeup-at a minimum, lipstick and eye shadow-and they have
to take classes in makeup, hair care, poise, and etiquette. This feminization is part
of a deliberate policy of making them clearly distinguishable from men Marines.
Christine Williams quotes a twenty-five-year-old woman drill instructor as saying:
"A lot of the recruits who come here don't wear makeup; they're tomboyish or ath
letic. A lot of them have the preconceived idea that going into the military means
they can still be a tomboy. They don't realize that you are a Woman Marine"
(1989,76-77)12
If gender differences were genetic, physiological, or hormonal, gender bending
and gender ambiguity would occur only in hermaphrodites, who are born with
chromosomes and genitalia that are not clearly female or male. Since gender dif
ferences are socially constructed, all men and all women can enact the behavior of
the other, because they know the other's social script: " 'Man' and 'woman' are at
once empty and overflowing categories. Empty because they have no ultimate,
transcendental meaning. Overflowing because even when they appear to be fixed,
they still contain within them alternative, denied, or suppressed definitions,"
(Scott 1988,49)....
For one transsexual man-to-woman, the experience of living as a woman
changed hislher whole personality. As James, Morris had been a soldier, foreign
correspondent, and mountain climber; as Jan, Morris is a successful travel writer.
But socially, James was superior to Jan, and so Jan developed the "learned helpless
ness" that is supposed to characterize women in Western society:
We are told that the social gap between the sexes is narrowing, but I can only report
that having, in the second half of the twentieth century, experienced life in both
roles, there seems to me no aspect of existence, no moment of the day, no contact,
no arrangement, no response, which is not different for men and for women, The
very tone of voice in which I was now addressed, the very posture of the person next
in the queue, the very feel in the air when I entered a room or sat at a restaurant
table, constantly emphasized my change of status.
And if other's responses shifted, so did my own. The more I was trea ted as
woman, the more woman I became. I adapted willy-nilly. If I was assumed to be
incompetent at reversing cars, or opening bottles, oddly incompetent I found my
self becoming. If a case was thought too heavy for me, inexplicably I fouIld it so
myself,. . Women treated me with a frankness which, while it was one of the
happiest discoveries of my metamorphosis, did imply membership of a camp, a
faction, or at least a school of thought; so I found myself gravitating always towards
the female, whether in sharing a railway compartment or supporting a political
cause, Men treated me more and more as junior, , .. and so, addressed every day
of my life as an inferior, involuntarily, month by month I accepted the condition.
I discovered that even now men prefer women to be less informed, less able, less
talkative, and certainly Jess self-centered than they are themselves; so I gerrerally
obliged them. (1975,165-66)]1
I The Social Construction o(Difference: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality
5 Lorber I "Night to His Day" 61
Gender as Process, Stratification, and Structure
characteristics of these c::ltegories define the Other as that which lacks the valuable
As a social institution, gender is a process of creating distinguishable social statuses
for the assignment of rights and responsibilities. As part of a stratification system
that ranks these statuses unequally, gender is a major building block in the social
structures built on these unequal statuses.
As a process, gender creates the social differences that define "woman" and
"man." In social interaction throughout their lives, individuals learn what is ex
pected, see what is expected, act and react in expected ways, and thus simultane
ously construct and maintain the gender order: "The very injunction to be a
given gender takes place through discursive routes: to be a good mother, to be a
heterosexually desirable object, to be a fit worker, in sum, to signify a multiplicity
of guarantees in response to a variety of different demands all at once" (Butler
1990, 145). Members of a social group neither make up gender as they go along
nor exactly replicate in rote fashion what was done before. In almost every en
counter, human beings produce gender, behaving in the ways they learned were
appropriate for their status, or resisting or rebelling against these norms,
Resistance £lDd rebellion have altered gender norms, but so far they have rarely
eroded the statuses.
Gendered patterns of mteraction acquire additional layers of gendered sexual
ity, parenting, and work behaviors in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
Gendered norms and expectations are enforced through informal sanctions of
gender-inappropriate behavior by peers and by formal punishment or threat
of punishment by those in authority should behavior deviate too far from socially
imposed standards for women and men ....
As part of a stratification system, gender ranks men above women of the same
race and class. Women and men could be diffcrent but equal. [n practice, the
process of creating difference depends to a great extent on differential evaluation,
As .f';ancy Jay (1981) says: "That which is defined, separated out, isolated from all
else is A and pure. Not-A is necessarily impure, a random catchall, to which noth
ing is external except A and the principle of order that separates it from Not-A"
(45). From the individual's point of view, whichever gender is A, the other is Not
A; gender boundaries tell the individual who is like him or her, and all the rest are
unlike. From society's point of view, however, one gender is usually the touch
stone, the normal, the dominant, and the other is different, deViant, and subordi
nate, In Western society, "man" is A, "wo-man" is Not-A. (Consider what a society
would be like where woman was A and man NotA)
The further dichotomization by race and class constructs the gradations of a
heterogeneous society's stratification scheme. Thus, in the United States, white is
A, African American is Not-A; middle class is A, working class is Not-A, and
"African-American women occupy a position whereby the inferior half of a series
of these dichotomies converge" (Collins 1990, 70). The dominant categories are
the hegemonic ideals, taken so for granted as the way things should be that white is
not ordinarily thought of as a race, middle class as a class, or men as a gender. The
qualities the dominants exhibit.
In a gender-stratified society, what men do is usually v::llued more highly than
wh8t women do because men do it, even when their activities are very similar or
the same. In different regions of southern India, for example, harvesting rice is
men's work, shared work, or women's work: "Wherever a task is done by women It
is considered easy, and where it is done by [men] it is conSIdered difficult"
(Mencher 1988, 104). A gathering and hunting society's survival Llsually depends
on the nuts, grubs, ::Ind small animals brought in by the women's foraging trips,
but when the mcn's hunt is successful, it is the occasion for a celebration,
Conversely, bec::luse they are the superior group, white men do not have to do the
"dirty work," such ::IS housework; the most inferior group does it, usually poor
women of color (Palmer 1989)... ,
Societies vary in the extent of the inequality in social status of their women and
men members, but where there is inequality, the status "woman" (and its atten
dant behavior and role allocations) is usually held in lesser esteem than the status
"man," Since gender is also intertwined with a society's other constructed statuses
of differential evaluation-race, religion, occupation, class, country of origin, and
so on-men and women members of the favored groups comm::lnd more power,
more prestige, and more property than the members of thc disfavored groups
Within many social groups, however, men are advantaged over women. The more
economic resources, such as educ::ltion and job opportunities, are available to a
group, the more they tend to be monopolized by men. In poorer groups that have
few resources (such as working-c1::1ss Mrican Americans in the United States),
women and men are more nearly equ::ll, and the women may even outstrip the
men in education ::Ind occupational status (Almquist 1987).
As a structure, gender divides work in the home and in economic production,
legitimates those in authority, and organizes sexuality and emotional life (Connell
1987, 91-142). As primary parents, women significantly influence children's psy
chological development and emotiol18l attachments, in the process reproducing
gender. Emergent sexuality is shaped by heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, and
sadomasochistic patterns that are gendered -different for girls and boys, and for
women and men-so that sexual statuses reflect gender statuses.
Wnen gender is a major componcnt of structured inequality, the devalued gen
ders have less power, prestige, and economic rewards than the valued genders. In
countries that discouwge gender discrimination, many m::ljor roles are still gendered;
women still do most of the domestic labor and child rearing, even while doing full
time paid work; women and men are segregated on the job and each does work con
sidered "appropriate"; women's work is usually paid less than men's work. IvIen
dominate the positions of authority and leadership in government, the military, and
the law; cultural productions, religions, and sports reflect men's interests.
In societies that create the gre~test gender difference, such as Saudi Arabia,
women are kept out of sight behind walls or veils, have no ciVil rights, and often
cultural ::Ind emotional world of their own (Bernard 1981) But even in
60
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5
62 I The Social Construction of Difference: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality
Lorber / "Night to His Day"
63
10. Other societies recognize more than two categories, but usually no more than three
societies with less rigid gender boundaries, women and men spend much of their
time with people of their own gender because of the way work and family are orga
nized. This spatial separation of women and men reinforces gt:ndered different
ness, identity, and ways of thinking and behaving (Coser 1986),
Gender inequality-the devaluation of "women" and the social domination of
"men" -has social functions and a social history. It is not the result of sex, procre
ation, physiology, anatomy, hormones, or genetic predispositions, It is produced
and maintained by identifiable social processes and built into the general social
structure and individual identities deliberately and purposefully. The social order
as we know it in Western societies is organized around racial ethnic, class, and
gender inequality. I contend, therefore, that the continuing purpose of gender as a
modern social institution is to construct women as a group to be the subordinates
of men as a group, The life of everyone placed in the status "woman" is "night to
his day-that has forever been the fantasy, Black to his white. Shut out of his sys
tem's space, she is the repressed that ensures the system's functioning" (Cixous and
Clement [1975] 1986,67).
or four (Jacobs and Roberts 1989).
11. Carol Barkalow's book has a photograph of eleven first-year West Pointers in a math
class, who are dressed in regulation pants, shirts, and sweaters, with short haircuts. The cap
tion challenges the reader to locate the only woman in the room.
12. The taboo on males and females looking alike reflects the U.S. militJ';'s homopho
bia (Berube 1989). If you can't tell those with a penis from those with a vagina, how are you
going to determine whether their sexual interest is heterosexual or homosexual unless you
watch them having sexual relations?
13. See Bolin 1988, 149-50, for transsexual men-to-women's discovery of the dangers
of rape and sexual harassment. Devor's "gender blenders" went in the opposite direction.
Because they found that it was an advantage to be taken for men, they did not deliberately
cross-dress, but they did not feminize themselves either (1989, 126-40).
REFERENCES
Almquist, Elizabeth M, 1987. Labor market gendered inequality iC) minority groups
Gender 6 Society 1:400-14.
Amadiume, Ifi, 1987, Male daughters, female husbands: Gender and sex in an African
NOTES
I, Gender is, in Erv...
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