Components of Gender
“As a social institution, gender is composed of:
gender statuses - the socially recognized genders in a society and the norms and expectations for their enactment behaviorally, gesturally, linguistically, and physically. How gender statuses are evaluated depends on historical development in any particular society.
gendered division of labor - the assignment of productive and domestic work to members of different gender statuses strengthens the society’s evaluation of those statuses - the higher the status, the more prestigious and valued the work and the greater its rewards.
gendered kinship - the family rights and responsibilities for each gender status. Kinship statuses reflect and reinforce the prestige and power differences of the different genders
gendered sexual scripts - the normative patterns of sexual desire and sexual behavior, as prescribed for the different gender statuses. Members of the dominant gender have more sexual prerogatives; members of a subordinate gender may be sexually exploited.
gendered social control - the formal and informal approval and reward of conforming behavior and the stigmatization, social isolation, punishment, and medical treatment of nonconforming behavior.
gender ideology - the justification of gender statuses, particularly, their differential evaluation. The dominant ideology tends to suppress criticism by making these evaluations seem natural.
gender imagery - the cultural representations of gender and embodiment of gender in symbolic language and artistic productions that reproduce and legitimate gender statuses. Culture is one of the main supports of the dominant gender ideology.
For an individual, gender is composed of:
sex category - to which the infant is assigned at birth based on appearance of genitalia. With prenatal testing and sex-typing, categorization is prenatal. Sex category may be changed later through surgery or reinspection of ambiguous genitals.
gender identity - the individual’s sense of gendered self as a worker and as a family member.
gendered process - the social practices of learning, being taught, picking up cues, enacting behavior already learned to be gender-appropriate (or inappropriate, if rebelling, testing), developing a gender identity, “doing gender” as a member of a gender status in relationships with gendered others, acting deferent or dominant.
gender belief - incorporation of or resistance to gender ideology.
gender display - presentation of self as a certain kind of gendered person through dress, cosmetics, adornments, and permanent and reversible body markers.” (Lorber pp. 30-31).
Source: Lorber, Judith. 1994. Paradoxes of Gender. New Haven: Yale University Press. (Pp. 30-31