“Doing Gender”

A major question in the sociology of work concerns why men and women have such different work experiences and outcomes. The theory of “doing gender,” introduced by Candace West and Don Zimmerman in 1987, suggests that gender is something that is continually constructed and reconstructed by individuals in social interaction. The theory argues that people “do gender” by engaging in social interactions in ways that express themselves as masculine or feminine. Individuals judge others (and are aware that they will be judged) according to how well they fit conventional notions of masculinity and femininity.

This theory distinguishes between sex, sex category, and gender. It defines sex as a biological (typically anatomical) criterion used to classify individuals as either male or female. Sex category refers to whether one is recognized by others as a man or a woman. Sex category is usually—but not always—related to one's sex: for example, individuals who have penises and are thus anatomical males sometimes pass in social settings as women. Finally, gender refers to the social activity of managing one's actions in relation to attitudes and behaviors that are culturally agreed upon as feminine or masculine.

Vihla Mehra was the first woman appointed director general of police in Arunachal Pradesh, India, in 2009. Women in law enforcement balance the need to behave as women in a socially expected way while at times being expected to behave like men to be viewed as competent officers.

A common example of how gender is “done” pertains to the division of household labor. In many families where both husband and wife have full-time jobs, wives voluntarily do more housework than their husbands, and may sometimes even prevent their husbands from doing housework. The “doing gender” perspective suggests that women behave in this way because in doing the housework, they are establishing their femininity for themselves and their husbands. When wives tell stories about the unequal division of housework (e.g., complaining about their husbands’ “inability” to do laundry and their workloads), they are also doing gender by identifying themselves as feminine in the eyes of their listeners. In not doing housework, men are also doing gender, as housework is culturally associated with femininity, not masculinity. Since its introduction, doing gender has become one of the most widely used theoretical approaches to understanding differences in men's and women's experiences. The concept of gender as something that is done represents an important advance over earlier theories of gender as natural differences emanating from biological sex, as well as theories that paint men and women as passive recipients of socialization processes. For example, if gender is a natural product of anatomical differences, why different societies have different definitions of masculinity cannot be explained; if gender is the simple product of socialization, why a woman who grew up in the same community as her mother might develop a very different approach to mothering when she has her own family cannot be explained. In contrast, understanding gender as continually constructed and reconstructed by individuals in social interaction offers tools for understanding both variation within men and women and changes over time in cultural beliefs about appropriate masculine and feminine attitudes and behaviors (e.g., how the definition of a “good” mother has changed over time).

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