9 1 gender (2) 11m 18s - end

Even if you don't do gender,
as I explained,

society will do it for you in some way.

Uh, I-- I can't remember

if I've talked in this class
about the Baby X experiment,

so if I have, bear with me,
I don't think I have, though.

I know I haven't in this lecture.

But when I was
teaching a child development class,

I remember specifically
one of the research projects

that was talked about
is called the Baby X experiment,

and in this experiment,

they have people
come into the research lab,

and these people are given a baby
they need to take care of.

And in some cases,
the baby is dressed as a male

and, you know, blue clothing

and maybe a little baseball cap,

and in some cases,
the baby is dressed as a female

in a dress with a bow in its hair.

And in some cases, the baby is dressed

in very gender neutral clothing

without any anything that can be used

to identify the gender of the child.

Now, when the--

I think the interesting thing
about this study

is that it's the same baby,
so whether people

are given the baby dressed in blue

or the baby dressed in pink,

or dressed in a gender neutral manner,

they're given the same baby,
yet people interact very differently

with this baby depending on

what they perceive the gender
of the child to be.

And maybe you could step back
for a minute

and think about
how people interact differently

with a baby girl versus a baby boy.

And I also find it very interesting

that if the people didn't know
what the gender of the baby was,

they would often actually
check in the diaper

to see how to interact with the baby.

Now, babies have very specific needs.

They need to be fed, they need
to be diapered, they need to be

held and loved and cared for.

So you shouldn't really need
to know the gender

or the sex of a child
to know how to interact with it.

Yet, because of our social expectations
regarding gender,

people interact very differently
with babies

depending on their perceived gender.

We see gender socialization happen
in families,

where parents will play more
with a child

and interact more with the child

if that child is playing with toys

that the parent sees
as gender appropriate.

We see parents provide toys
and clothing

and bedroom decor that matches

with the parent's perceived gender
of the child.

In the educational system,
teachers interact differently

with children depending on their gender,

where they're more likely
to talk to girls about interrupting

or allow boys to interrupt.

We see boys called on more
in the classroom.

Within peer groups, we've talked
about the book "Gender Play"

in class before,

but this book, "Gender Play,"

is a research project that looked

at how peers
monitor each other's genders

as young as kindergarten.

And then, of course,
we see gender socialization

in the mass media with an expectation
of what we would expect men

or women or non-binary individuals
to act like.

We see very little representation

of gender non-binary within the media.

And we see a lot of misrepresentation
of women within the media,

with high and unacceptable gender norms

for things like body shape or weight

and, um, cultural beauty.

So there's a great documentary
that was done several years ago

called "Misrepresentation."

If you're not familiar with it,

it's really good at looking at how women

are often misrepresented
within the media,

and I highly recommend watching this

if it's something you're interested
in learning more about.

Because of the way that
we live in a patriarchal society,

and that men and women are
treated differently in our society,

we do see a lot of discrimination
happen towards women,

towards gender non-binary individuals,

and towards individuals

who are not cisgender.

So transgender individuals

would also experience
quite a lot of discrimination.

We see institutional discrimination
in the education system.

Title IX was was created

to address this inequality
within the educational system,

but there are still problems that exist.

We see sex segregated jobs,

where maybe it's no longer legal

to say that you can't work

in a certain position
because of your gender.

We still see expectations
that certain genders

would be filling certain jobs
more often than others.

We have a huge wage gap.

The most recent data I could find
was from 2022,

where overall women
earn $0.80 to the dollar

that men earn.

We see intersections here
of race and ethnicity, though,

where Black women only earn
about 70% what men earn,

Latina women earn 65% of what men earn,

Asian women earn
about 93% of what men earn,

and white women earn about 83%
of what white men earn.

So, these are huge differences in pay,

where Latinas are only paid
about two thirds

what we see white men paid.

This wage gap exists within all fields,

even in the highest educated fields,

like that of medical doctor.

We see wage gaps exist where men
tend to be paid more than women.

Education just doesn't equal
more pay for women

to the same extent that it does for men.

Within our culture,
part of this is because

we have cultural expectations
of care work

that place women at a disadvantage.

When you're expected to do more

to take care of home and family,

and when you're expected
in the workplace

to also do more of the tasks

associated with taking notes
and meeting,

cleaning up break rooms,
or providing snacks

for, you know, parties or get togethers,

then this creates a lot of inequality,

even within the workplace,

and within our culture,
where women have less time

to devote to careers
because of these cultural expectations,

we see huge inequalities still

in home and unpaid labor.

In politics, women find it hard
to enter politics

and very hard to advance in politics

because of gendered expectations
of leadership.

Within the criminal justice system,
we see that

there are differences
in sentencing for crimes

like rape or domestic violence,

if it's a partner versus
if it's a stranger.

And we also
see individual discrimination

where, in the workplace
and other places in our society,

we still see a lot of sexist jokes,

sexual harassment and sexual violence.

Just a few examples of stratification
and inequality.

Before 1809, women
couldn't be executors of a will.

Before 1840,
women were considered property

and couldn't own their own property.

Before 1920, women couldn't vote.

Before 1963, employers
could still legally pay women less

for the same work.

While we still see gender wage gap,

it's much more hidden today
than in the past,

where employers could outright
pay women less instead.

Today, we see employers ask
about pay at previous workplaces,

we see employers offer women
less pay to begin with

and other differences
that create this wage gap.

In 1972, Title IX
did make sex discrimination

in education illegal,

but we still see issues
happen with gender expectations

in classrooms that create differences.

In 1994, the Violence Against Women Act
was first passed,

which was a federal act to protect women

from violence in families.

But we still see-- [coughs] excuse me,

that there are exceptions
for marital rape in many states,

and we still see that there
is a very low level of prosecution

for women who are victims of domestic violence

for the perpetrators.

In '23, the military ban against women

in combat positions was removed.

But we still have...

the big overhanging issue today

is that before 1973
and since since 2022,

women really lack the bodily autonomy

to make reproductive decisions
for themselves,

or have a safe and legal abortion.

The big issue--
there's a lot of big issues here,

and we could spend an entire semester talking

about issues of reproductive rights,

but, in the United States,

you cannot legally
be forced to donate blood

or donate your organs
or do anything with your body,

whether you're dead or alive.

If you die, you can't be forced
to donate your organs,

even if they'd help others.

Even if you have a blood type
that would really be beneficial

for others who are going to die
without that blood type,

you can't be forced
to donate your blood.

Yet women lack this bodily autonomy

that even dead people have,

because they're not able
to make decisions about their own bodies

in the same way that even dead people
without their consent

cannot be forced to donate organs.

This is such a complicated issue,

and it's one that we could
really spend a lot of time discussing.

But one of the big problems
is that today,

with the changes
to safe and legal abortion,

we see also that
we're having more maternal care deserts.

And actually, I'm going to stop

because I don't like that term "desert."

So even though it's used
in some situations

to describe an area where
there's not maternal care available,

I think we need to be coming up
with a better term for this.

We see areas, particularly rural areas,

where there
are not maternal care providers

because providers are often
in more urban areas,

but also because many rural counties
and areas

might have already
had kind of a low number

of maternal care providers

because they're less likely
to be in rural areas.

But with the change
of Roe vs. Wade being reversed,

many providers in, um,

states that are passing
restrictive abortion bans

are moving to other areas

where they're not at risk
of being prosecuted

for providing basic medical service
to women

who are having miscarriages,
or to women who, for other reasons,

are seeking safe
and legal abortion services.

Providers don't want to live in an area

where they could risk being jailed,

or where they can't practice medicine

in the way
that is best for women's health.

So they move to other areas,

which leaves large numbers
of rural areas

and counties in red states
with strict abortion bans

not having maternal care.

This is problematic for women

who are seeking
to have a healthy pregnancy,

along with women who are seeking

to have healthy
or safe abortion services.

We've seen also a huge rise
in hate crimes

against transgender
and gender non-conforming Americans.

It was the highest rate
in 2020 and 2021, respectively,

but you can still see this huge climb

and this huge number of hate crimes

towards transgender individuals

who are treated badly in our society

and are the victims
of hate crimes because of their gender.

When we look at outliers,

many of the themes
there can also be applied to

what we see
for gender stratification in the US.

So when we look at the 10,000 hour rule,

we see that women have less free time

because they're spending
more time on unpaid labor.

This means if you're trying
to spend 10,000 hours

on something to get good at it,

you just don't have that 10,000 hours

because of other responsibilities
that are culturally expected.

When we look at the chapter
on trouble with geniuses,

women are expected to act
and behave in certain ways.

We see that females who are...

more assertive
are called names like "bitchy"

rather than assertiveness
seen as a positive thing.

We see that men who are leaders

are referred to as a strong leader,

where women
who have strong leadership capabilities

are seen as bossy.

We also see that being intellectual
doesn't have the same payout

for men and women.

We see, when we relate
to the chapter about plane crashes,

that women are often balancing
too many things.

There's this unequal division of labor.

And for individuals
who are transgender or non-binary,

we see discrimination,
stress and hate crimes

lead to a lot more stress
that makes it harder

to balance and manage everything.

With this, I'm going
to end our discussion of gender,

and we'll move in the next sector

to a discussion about sexuality.