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In psychology, sociology and gender studies, "doing gender" is the idea that gender, rather than being an innate quality of individuals, is a social construct that actively surfaces in everyday human interaction. This term was used by Candace West and Don Zimmerman in their article "Doing Gender", published in 1987 in Gender and Society. [1]
Gender is used as a means of describing the distinction between the biological sex and socialized aspects of femininity and masculinity. [9] According to West and Zimmerman, is not a personal trait; it is "an emergent feature of social situations: both as an outcome of and a rationale for various social arrangements, and as a means of legitimating one of the most fundamental divisions of society."
West and Zimmerman argued that the use of "role" to describe gender expectations conceals the production of gender through everyday activities. Furthermore, they stated that roles are situated identities, such as "nurse" and "student," which are developed as the situation demands, while gender is a master identity with no specific site or ...
West and Zimmerman state that to understand gender as activity, it is important to differentiate between sex, sex category, and gender. [ 73 ] : 127 They say that sex refers to the socially agreed upon specifications that establish one as male or female; sex is most often based on an individual's genitalia, or even their chromosomal typing ...
However, the media is a product of different cultural values. Western culture creates cultural gender roles based on the meanings of gender and cultural practices. Western culture has clear distinctions among sex and gender, where sex is the biological differences and gender is the social construction.
Instead of speech falling into a natural gendered category, the dynamic nature and multiple factors of an interaction help a socially appropriate gendered construct. As such, West and Zimmerman describe these constructs as "doing gender" instead of the speech itself necessarily being classified in a particular category. [25]
Summarizing the role of Grimms' women succinctly, Bottigherimer writes, "Snow-White's mother thinks to herself but never speaks, and when her daughter is born, she dies." T he tales were scrubbed further and the Disney princesses -- frail yet occasionally headstrong , whenever the trait could be framed as appealing — were born.
The change from the one-sex model to the two-sex model helped to create a new understanding of gender in the meaning of human history. There is an "increasing differentiation of male and female social roles; conversely, a greater differentiation of roles and a greater female 'delicacy and sensibility' are [seen as] signs of moral progress."