Chapter Three A kind of person
Abstract
The name of the race is Man. Homo erectus became homo sapiens, the noun ‘embracing’ woman but relegating her to a sub-group, its adjectival qualification suggesting that the wisdom marking Man’s descendancy from animals is a male trait. The labelling habits of the 19th-century evolutionists were contiguous with the conventions of their culture: men represented the norm with which women were (usually invidiously) compared (Morgan, 1972).They still do. Femininity is defined in relation to masculinity, not the other way round: the media offer special programmes or features for women, but not for men, since men are the general audience at whom the bulk of media provision is aimed; in textbooks on sex roles, aggression appears first and is discussed as a positive trait, while feminine passivity comes second and is negatively valued (see, for example, Weitz, 1977); questions about inequality in patterns of female and male employment are phrased as questions about the ‘failure’ of women to make use of their opportunities, in terms of the ‘under-achievement’ of women (what about the under-achievement of men in the home?).
In a very important sense, it is normal to be a man and abnormal to be a woman. Rosenkrantz and his colleagues (1968) asked 154 people to rate 122 bipolar personal qualities (for example, ‘not at all aggressive’ versus ‘very aggressive’) in terms of their relevance to the ‘average female’ and the ‘average male’. A third of the qualities were differentiated by gender in the sample’s ratings and 71 per cent of these ‘stereotypic’ items had the masculine pole designated as more socially desirable.
Abstract
The name of the race is Man. Homo erectus became homo sapiens, the noun ‘embracing’ woman but relegating her to a sub-group, its adjectival qualification suggesting that the wisdom marking Man’s descendancy from animals is a male trait. The labelling habits of the 19th-century evolutionists were contiguous with the conventions of their culture: men represented the norm with which women were (usually invidiously) compared (Morgan, 1972).They still do. Femininity is defined in relation to masculinity, not the other way round: the media offer special programmes or features for women, but not for men, since men are the general audience at whom the bulk of media provision is aimed; in textbooks on sex roles, aggression appears first and is discussed as a positive trait, while feminine passivity comes second and is negatively valued (see, for example, Weitz, 1977); questions about inequality in patterns of female and male employment are phrased as questions about the ‘failure’ of women to make use of their opportunities, in terms of the ‘under-achievement’ of women (what about the under-achievement of men in the home?).
In a very important sense, it is normal to be a man and abnormal to be a woman. Rosenkrantz and his colleagues (1968) asked 154 people to rate 122 bipolar personal qualities (for example, ‘not at all aggressive’ versus ‘very aggressive’) in terms of their relevance to the ‘average female’ and the ‘average male’. A third of the qualities were differentiated by gender in the sample’s ratings and 71 per cent of these ‘stereotypic’ items had the masculine pole designated as more socially desirable.
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents iii
- Sources of extracts iv
- Foreword by Germaine Greer vi
- Preface ix
-
Sex and gender
- Introduction 2
- The difference between sex and gender 7
- Genes and gender 13
- A kind of person 21
- Childhood lessons 31
- Science, gender and women’s liberation 41
-
Housework and family life
- Introduction 54
- On studying housework 59
- Images of housework 63
- Work conditions 75
- Standards and routines 87
- Marriage and the division of labour 93
- Helping with baby 103
- Housework in history and culture 109
-
Childbirth, motherhood and medicine
- Introduction 118
- The agony and the ecstasy 123
- Lessons mothers learn 139
- Medical maternity cases 151
- Mistakes and mystiques of motherhood 179
-
Doing social science
- Introduction 184
- The invisible woman: sexism in sociology 189
- Reflections thirty years on 207
- On being interviewed 211
- Interviewing women: a contradiction in terms? 217
- Who’s afraid of the randomized controlled trial? Some dilemmas of the scientific method and ‘good’ research practice 233
- Paradigm wars: some thoughts on a personal and public trajectory 245
- General bibliography 251
- Bibliography of work by Ann Oakley 281
- Ann Oakley: further reading 285
- Index 295
Chapters in this book
- Front Matter i
- Contents iii
- Sources of extracts iv
- Foreword by Germaine Greer vi
- Preface ix
-
Sex and gender
- Introduction 2
- The difference between sex and gender 7
- Genes and gender 13
- A kind of person 21
- Childhood lessons 31
- Science, gender and women’s liberation 41
-
Housework and family life
- Introduction 54
- On studying housework 59
- Images of housework 63
- Work conditions 75
- Standards and routines 87
- Marriage and the division of labour 93
- Helping with baby 103
- Housework in history and culture 109
-
Childbirth, motherhood and medicine
- Introduction 118
- The agony and the ecstasy 123
- Lessons mothers learn 139
- Medical maternity cases 151
- Mistakes and mystiques of motherhood 179
-
Doing social science
- Introduction 184
- The invisible woman: sexism in sociology 189
- Reflections thirty years on 207
- On being interviewed 211
- Interviewing women: a contradiction in terms? 217
- Who’s afraid of the randomized controlled trial? Some dilemmas of the scientific method and ‘good’ research practice 233
- Paradigm wars: some thoughts on a personal and public trajectory 245
- General bibliography 251
- Bibliography of work by Ann Oakley 281
- Ann Oakley: further reading 285
- Index 295
