SOC 333 Gender and Society

Overview of Course

This course explores beliefs about and practices of gender around the world. We will investigate the relationship between gender and sex assignment; looking to understand the many ways that gender is a performance of masculinity, femininity, non-binarity that is both connected to but separate from physiology (i.e., genitalia, chromosomes, and hormones). We will use sociological frameworks such as social constructionism to unpack the role that institutions and cultural scripts play in shaping individuals’ beliefs and values around gender, as well as their own personal gender expression. Whether people are traditional or non-conforming; cisgendered or transgendered; nearly everyone embodies some level of allegiance and also some level of resistance to the gender ideals imposed on them. Our choices come with consequences, as gender is layered with privilege and oppression. We will further investigate the relationship between gender and sexual identities and how that relationship matters for family formation in different ways for different societies around the globe. Laws, customs, and norms around marriage, childrearing, and the social institution of family more broadly vary widely across cultural and political contexts.