Chafetz, Janet

Among the gender theorists, Janet Saltzman Chafetz (b. 1942) has not only been a commentator on existing approaches (Chafetz 1988), she has also sought to develop a scientific theory of gender dynamics (Chafetz 1984, 1990). Before entering sociology, Chaftez majored in modern European intellectual history, receiving her BA at Cornell University (1963) and MA at the University of Connecticut (1965). This study of history gave Chafetz a sense of the long duration of social processes as she pursued the study of sociology at the University of Texas, receiving her PhD in 1968. She was influenced by Marxist ideas on class, conflict, and change, as well as by feminist anthropologists writing in the 1970s and 1980s. In pursuing her doctoral work, she specialized in social stratification and social theory; and after initially approaching the topic of gender stratification from a social psychological perspective, she returned to her intellectual roots in the 1980s and began to examine gender as a form of stratification from a more macroperspective, where Gerhard Lenski's (1964) macroevolutionary theory of stratification exerted some influence. This rededication to a macrolevel analysis has produced her most important works, which have sought to explain the conditions that either maintain or change gender stratification.

Turning first to the conditions maintaining gender stratification, Chafetz argues that there are two types of forces sustaining gender inequality: coercive and voluntary. Coercive forces revolve around the extent to which males have resource advantages over women at the macrolevel of social organization and are able to use this advantage to control microencounters among men and women, to control elite positions in the broader society, to regulate the opportunities for work for men and women, to define the labor of women in negative terms, and to generate a system of gender ideologies, gender norms, and gender stereotypes that favor men's attributes over those of women. Voluntary forces follow from these coercive forces because once a system favoring males exists, it constrains the options that women have. When ideologies, norms, and stereotypes portray men and women differentially, socialization will tend to reinforce these cultural definitions, with the result that women will “voluntarily” act in ways that perpetuate these definitions. When adult roles are gendered, the role models for women will also be gendered, with the consequence that women will tend to “choose” female roles and hence sustain the gendered division of labor inside and outside of the family.

When a system of gender stratification is in place, it tends to be self-perpetuating unless other conditions are present. Change in this system can come about as a result of unintended processes revolving around demographic, technological, structural, and political transformations, as well as intended processes stemming from deliberate efforts to alter gender definitions and roles. Unintended change processes that help women include demographic alterations increasing opportunities for women to move out of gendered roles; technological innovations reducing strength and mobility requirements for jobs, while freeing women from domestic activities, that allow women to overcome gendered definitions and roles; and structural changes, such as an economic growth, that create new opportunities for women. Other unintended processes that work against women include deskilling of jobs, as these increase female unemployment, and political conflicts, as these harden gender definitions. These unintended effects simply occur as a result of demographic, economic, technological, and political processes, but much change in gender definitions (stereotypes, ideologies, and norms) and roles (in the division of labor) is intentional, revolving around targeted efforts to alter a system of gender stratification.

...