Gender, Social Constructionism, And Interpersonal Interaction

Doing Gender: Gender, social-constructionism, and interpersonal interaction

West and Zimmerman’s (1987) iconic piece attends to the notion of gender as a process that is accomplished in everyday interaction. Contrary to theoretical approaches that would afford a primacy to socialisation or to an understanding of gender as gender roles, it is argued that gender is an activity that is done by individuals in situated contexts, through which a management of conduct takes place against a backdrop of normative conscriptions of what it means to be either masculine or feminine. Conceptualising gender involves an analytical distinction between gender, sex, and sex category. The authors propose that this is necessary if we are to account for the
What is at stake also is one’s legibility as a meaningful and worthwhile individual. From the perspective of doing gender, the doing of norms in everyday interaction, whilst it is not an indicator of an identity that is an internal property of individuals, it signals for others around us precisely this. The doing of gender frames us as more or less legible and realisable subjects. The stakes of doing gender, thus, speak to the issue of what we take as reality; who exactly makes sense to us and counts as a viable subject within the political sphere; who is considered to be human and what kinds of truths do we ask of bodies to render themselves as such. These are important points for the project of “dismantling the gender system to create real equality (for more than) men and women” (Deutsch 2007:123, my
The reason for this is that at least two of her examples of workplace gendering concern sexuality. Clearly, the example of Tom’s policy of dining only with male co-workers relates here and Yancey Martin does draw attention to the sexual component behind Tom’s thinking, although she does so framing sexuality under the rubric of gender rather than treating it as more distinct. I wondered if an example she offers of “subtle, interactional, nonintentional masculinity practices by men” (2003:360) could be understood with reference to sexuality also: how men in meetings acknowledge women minimally but engage other men more extensively and talk predominantly with them. As other theorists have pointed out (Acker 1990, Sydie 1994), undergirding workplace logics in industrial capitalism is an understanding of the need to restrict, in the public sphere of work, the normative sexual and affective instincts of men. Industrial capitalism needs this for the production of a diligent and dutiful workforce employed within the confines of a structure based on rational calculation and differentiation. Further, normative sexual instincts are assumed as heterosexually informed; men are assumed as