“How do sociologists construct gender in their analysis on social inequality?” (2022)
Sociologists do not take gender as a natural given. They build it as an analytical category, and the way it is built decides which inequalities become visible. The concept has moved through five stages: from difference to role, to structure, to practice, and finally to intersection.
1. Gender as distinct from sex
- Ann Oakley’s Sex, Gender and Society (1972) separated biological sex from the social expectations attached to it.
- Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex, 1949) wrote that one is not born but becomes a woman.
- Margaret Mead’s Sex and Temperament (1935) found gentle men and women among the Arapesh and assertive women among the Tchambuli. Gender traits vary, so inequality is social and can be changed.
2. Gender as role
Talcott Parsons cast men in “instrumental” and women in “expressive” family roles, which are learnt through socialisation. This made difference look complementary and functional. Critics argued that it hides power: roles are ranked, not simply different.
3. Gender as a structure of power
- Kate Millett (Sexual Politics, 1970) named patriarchy as a system of male domination.
- Sylvia Walby (1990) located it in six structures: paid work, household production, culture, sexuality, violence and the state.
- Uma Chakravarti’s “Brahmanical patriarchy” (1993) ties caste endogamy to control over women. Bina Agarwal’s A Field of One’s Own (1994) shows that women’s lack of land rights is central to rural inequality.
4. Gender as everyday practice
- Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman (“Doing Gender”, 1987) treat gender as something done in interaction and held accountable to norms.
- Judith Butler (Gender Trouble, 1990) calls it performative: repeated acts create the appearance of a natural sex.
- R. W. Connell describes a gender order with a hegemonic masculinity at the top. On this view inequality is reproduced daily, not just inherited.
5. Gender as intersecting
Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) showed that race and sex compound rather than add. Sharmila Rege’s Dalit feminist standpoint (1998) argued that “woman” in Indian feminism had silently meant the upper-caste woman.
How the construct shapes measurement
- The individual replaces the male-headed household as the unit of analysis.
- Unpaid work is counted. In India’s Time Use Survey 2024, women spent 289 minutes a day on unpaid domestic services against 88 for men.
- Composite indices track gaps across domains. In the Global Gender Gap Index 2026, India ranks 131st with a parity score of 64.5%, with economic participation its weakest domain.
Conclusion
The construction of gender has moved from treating it as a variable to seeing it as a relation of power produced in structures and interactions and cut across by caste, class and race. Each step has widened what counts as inequality, from wages to housework, the body and voice.