Talk:Introduction to Sociology/Gender

Bias worries

The defintion of gender implies that things like differences in levels of aggression are caused by nurture and not nature ( surely by the percieved projection of masculine or femmine traits things like aggression, extroversion etc are meant). There's a wealth of evidence that this is false. As someone with Asperger's I can confirm that not all personality differences are due to nurture. ( Asperger's is genetic, has major effects on personality, and only one out of ten cases are in females.)

In the gender socialization section, the last sentence

"Greenberger and Steinberg attribute the differences to gender socialization and differential opportunities for boys and girls."

is not a sentence
 * Actually, it is. Attribute is the verb.  Read it this way, "The differences between boys and girls are, according to Greenberger and Steinberg, attributed to gender socialization and differential opportuniities for boys and girls."

Remember that doctor who tried changing the sex of boy's at birth? They had some condition, I forget the name, which meant that there biological sex was somewhat ambiguous. As they grew, many spontaneously declared that they were boys, despite the fact that they had been socialised as girls? Could we have some reference to that in the article, it's too interesting to ignore.

When you mention Doctor's degrees do you mean PhD's, MD's, or both?
 * just PhDs; i'll clarify

Should include the two theories for gender differences in the workforce: Two theories: Findings are mixed but indicate both can influence the outcome.
 * Individual characteristics
 * Differences in qualifications (experience, education, skills, etc.)
 * Less motivation
 * Socialization
 * Structural characteristics
 * Discrimination
 * Non-family friendly policies

Education
I take offense as the passage underneath "Education," as it is completely subjective, and should either be removed, or reorganized so as to reflect an analytic approach to the distinction, instead of one which seems to be included purely as added backing for the unavoiable feminist perspective of this article, but not out of any scientific obligation.

"Progress in this regard, however, should be tempered by the fact that while women are entering college at higher rates and even earning more degrees, the degrees are in less prestigious areas (e.g., social sciences and humanities compared to physical sciences) and women with degrees still earn less than do men with comparable degrees (Jacobs 1996)."

Defining "prestige" and whether or not the social sciences are in fact somehow more important or useful to society is quite a large task, and is not appropriate as supporting evidence in this article. This is not an acceptable level of neutrality.


 * All the author is claiming is that hard science degree's are percieved as more prestigious  * then soft science degree's by the general public, as someone who get's laughed at every time * I say I want to be a philosopher when I go to uni, I can personally confirm this is true!

Offensive POV
It's more than just the Education section. The whole thing is dripping with the foul idea that homemaking and childrearing is unvaluable, worthless, demeaning, etc. I suspect this originates from very male sexist values about what occupations are worthwhile and how we should judge things. Must we all rate ourselves by how much money we earn? If so, that's really sad. AlbertCahalan 02:25, 22 October 2005 (UTC)