Social Construction of Gender

Society creates categories for simplifying information, serving as institutions commonly understood and practiced within the culture. These categories include age, race, ethnicity, and gender, and one's understanding of these categories is co-constructed through social interaction. The first category a child learns is sex-linked: People are boys or girls. Early in development, children may confuse who may be placed in these categories, but the categories eventually become fixed as children come to understand that individual persons fit into only one category and their placement in that category does not change. Children then learn, from social interaction, attributes connected to these sex-linked categories: those that are characteristic of boys (males) and those that are characteristic of girls (females). Among those attributes are norms, social roles, expectations, and stereotypes. Social construction theory is a socialization theory explaining the process whereby society structures these sex-linked categories and combines them with the commonly held perceptions about the accompanying psychological, physical, and behavioral attributes associated with the gender categories. A contrasting view to the notion that gender is equivalent to observable biological sex differences, categorized into sex-linked groups, distinguishes the observable biological/physiological attributes acquired from “nature” from those acquired through socialization (that is, those acquired through “nurture”).

The study of gender from a social constructivist perspective steps beyond observation of sex [Page 348]differences from within the static categories of “male” and “female” by focusing on the influences of social interaction in the acquisition of beliefs and attitudes associated with sex role stereotypes. Persons from Western cultures commonly believe particular attributes, roles, and behaviors are linked directly to masculinity or femininity; therefore, information becomes co-constructed through persons' social interaction into dichotomously organized categories of what is typical of males or females. Gender labeling results in forcing people to think in terms of polarities (either male/masculine or female/feminine) without accounting for individual differences not attributable to gender.

People receive social reinforcement for perpetuating culturally held beliefs about males and females into gendered stereotypes. This tends to govern their templates for their own enactment of being male or female and their expectations about the gender-appropriateness of the beliefs, roles, and actions of others. They conform to societal expectations and encourage others to do so as well, thus perpetuating gender-based stereotypes. A continuous renegotiation of gender-role expectations occurs within relationships as the partners co-construct the parameters of their relationships.

In confronting social situations involving persons of ambiguous gender, many people are uncomfortable and resolve this discomfort by taking mental shortcuts that allow for the framework through which they know how to interact. Thus, it becomes easy to connect sex to gender. Categorization occurs as a means of making mental shortcuts. These shortcuts enable persons to better understand information attained in their social world. Individuals are confronted with new information routinely. Information is acquired from strangers, often gleaned from increasing amounts of interaction with an acquaintance or a close relational partner, or by receiving inconsistent information. People must make sense of each piece of newly discovered information, which must be housed into some meaningful place. What is most noticeable and simplest to categorize about a person is biological sex.

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