non-Han minorities, Brazilian politics, and even discussions of skin color in India.
Gender
Contemporary sociological theories of gender raise many of the same questions as those focused on race. Gender inequality has been shaped by sexism as race has been shaped by racism. Gender is embedded in inequality but is to it. It has been transformed by collective struggle. And, it is commonly essentialized – as men (and sometimes women) make remarks on the lines of “you know what women are like.” Gender also has a biological basis – more substantial than that of race – though this is often held to determine characteristics it does not. Again, like race, how we think about gender influences sociological research on other themes – notably family and sexuality but also society in general.
Material inequality was and is basic. Women were long denied voting rights and subjected to unequal laws. They are still paid less than men and blocked from promotions. They carry disproportionate burdens for childcare. Women’s struggles for social equality entered a new phase of growth in the 1960s. This was contentious in sociology as in the rest of society. In 1969, several hundred women sociologists gathered in a “counterconvention” at San Francisco’s Glide Memorial Church rather than being marginalized in the nearby convention of the American Sociological Association. But, sociology was transformed. Sociologists claimed agency in the field’s self-transformation – forming organizations like Sociologists for Women in Society and seeking to broaden participation and perspectives through efforts like the ASA’s Minority Fellowship Program. And, having more women in sociology was basic to seeing things men did not notice and thinking differently.
The rise of feminist sociological theory was an important part of this struggle. This reflected in part the need to explain – simultaneously – why gender inequality was as pervasive as it was and why this was not inevitable (as popular beliefs and some functionalist theories suggested) but open to change. The Canadian sociologist Dorothy Smith (excerpted here) showed the implicitly masculine standpoint of most existing theory and the potential power of complementing this with theory written from the standpoint of women. She drew on both ethnomethodology and Marxism to construct a theory of the “conceptual practices of power.” 26 Work like this drew attention to the ways in which seemingly neutral classifications such as those of law courts and welfare agencies, censuses, and indeed sociological surveys reproduced and helped to enforce certain normative understandings of how the world should work. These normative understandings commonly benefited men at the expense of women – for example by associating housework “naturally” with childbearing.
Feminist theory argued that material equality would be hard to achieve so long as cultural categories remained biased against women. This left open a major question, though. Did the elimination of bias necessarily mean seeing men and women as essentially the same? Or could it mean recognizing gender differences but valuing men and women equally? The issue was similar to that of whether the elimination of ethnic and racial discrimination necessarily depended on the assimilation of immigrants into host cultures – or, in the case of US race relations, on making blacks more like whites. An influential strand of theory in both racial and gender studies argued that such assimilationist thinking was a further reflection of inequality and power, not a way around it. Why should women need to become more like men in order to gain equivalent political or economic rights? While much of the empirical research in sociology continued to focus on material dimensions of gender inequality – in workplaces, political institutions, and families – a major strand of feminist theory focused more on questions of the cultural construction of difference. This was influenced by both the critical theory tradition and French poststructuralist theory. Feminist theory of this sort also influenced the development of critical theories of sexuality. Linking these theories was a concern to avoid assuming that there was one correct model for human identity or social life. Rather, theorists suggested that theory needed to address the ways in which differences could be recognized without unjust discrimination.
Intersectionality
The terms class and stratification are both used usually to focus on inequality as such and by implication as characteristic of a whole population. But until recently, studies of class and stratification commonly looked at white men and ignored women and people of color (including immigrants). This was true not only of sociology but also of government statistics and the approaches of business and trade unions.
Since the 1960s, there has been more and more effort to include race and gender as variables in quantitative analyses. We may measure income, for example, and find out that on average US women are paid about 18% less than men – and Black men are paid 27% less than White men (though Asian men earn 17% more). Of course, some of this has to do with differences in education and jobs, but not all. We can quantify how much more housework and childcare women do than their male partners. We can study the lower rates of pay in disproportionately female occupations. We can quantify racial segregation in housing and schools. Taking race and gender seriously requires not only adding a variable but also rethinking what questions to study. Availability of childcare and rates of imprisonment immediately become prominent questions. So do who is allowed to speak in different settings, and who listens and a whole series of questions about visibility and invisibility.
Moreover, it is crucial to take race and gender seriously together, not only separately. The experience and pay of women are different from those of men. But, the experience and pay of Black women are different from those of white women. Women had different roles and representation in the Civil Rights movement; Black women had different roles and representation in the mostly white feminist movement. From observations like these came the theme of “intersectionality.” The term was coined in 1989 by the Law professor and social theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw (excerpted here).26 It reflected and helped to focus attention on the ways in which race and gender were connected in discrimination and could be better connected in feminist and antiracist response.
Crenshaw credited a number of predecessors in Black women’s thought, including the 19th century sociological pioneer Anna J. Cooper and the contemporary critical theorist Angela Davis, with developing the concept before the term. Though he did not use the word, W.E.B. Du Bois had something related in mind in 1903 when he wrote of the “double consciousness” involved in being simultaneously Black and American.27 Patricia Hill Collins (excerpted here) has developed the concept as a dimension of critical theory focused both on analyzing discrimination and providing tools for emancipatory struggles.28
Greater inclusivity was a primary motivation for attention to intersectionality. But, the concept is also important to call attention to processes – including symbolic interactions – by which intersectional identities are managed. And as Har Yeon Choo and Myra Marx Ferree show, intersectionality is systematically organized in institutions and social structure. It appears at many different levels of analysis and is relevant to different projects in contemporary sociological theory.
Race and racialization are not, of course, limited to Black and white. Intersectionality is also not limited to race and gender. Rocio Gracia (excerpted here) shows how the experiences of Latinas are commonly erased from accounts of Latin migrations that focus mainly on men. Indeed, as soon as one starts asking about intersectionality, of course, it becomes evident that almost every dimension of discrimination and inequality potentially combines with the others. Intersectionality is not limited to the dimensions of race and gender. Sexualities – lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, postbinary or cis (conventionally straight) – intersect with race and gender. So do disabilities, immigrant status, and indeed class. Individuals may suffer discrimination or claim identity on several dimensions at once.
Being Black, female, and disabled multiplies disadvantages in many areas of life. But not all intersectionalities multiply disadvantages, though they have been the primary focus of intersectionality research. One may be disable or gay (or both) but also white and rich. Intersectionality may limit rather than multiply a potential
