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Re-negotiating Gender

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Abstract

Chapter 2 provides the theoretical framework for the research as a whole. It teases out the polemic between the economic approach and the gender approach in the study of household divisions of labor. Past empirical evidence indicates competing results. This study of families with higher earning wives juxtaposes the two logics—“money equals power” and “men equal power”—to uncover the relative importance in the context of Hong Kong. I suggest a modification of “doing gender” theory as my theoretical framework which strengthens institutional factors and builds in a conflictual model and a model beyond the dyadic interaction between the husbands and wives.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Evertsson and Nermo’s study (2004) shows a curvilinear relationship in the U.S. data only, not in the Swedish data.

  2. 2.

    Italics are inserted by the author to stress agency.

  3. 3.

    Sex is the determination based on biological criteria as indicated by genitalia at birth or chromosomes for classifying persons as females or males (West and Zimmerman 1987). People are then put into different categories based on the sex criteria. However, in everyday perception, usually the sex criteria are lacking, and thus we categorize different sexes based on “socially required identificatory displays,” or characteristics that proclaim one’s membership. These are different from gender, which is both a social structure and what individuals do when managing the situated conduct based on the normative concepts of male and female based on sex categories. On the other hand, gender is more than just a display, as put forward by Goffman. Instead, it is ubiquitous in day-to-day interaction. Gender displays are what we think of as “expressive behavior” and how we tend to be conveyed and received about our sexual natures in social situations where there is mutual monitoring (Goffman 1976). It is like a drama of cultural idealization of feminine and masculine natures played for the audience (West and Zimmerman 1987). People “schedule” displays as if there is a beginning and an ending to them. In brief, gender displays are optional. By downplaying the pervasiveness of gender that cuts across situations, the notion of gender as a display relegates it to the periphery of interaction. As West and Zimmerman (1987) commented, “By segregating gender display from the serious business of interaction, Goffman obscures the effects of gender on a wide range of human activities. Gender is not merely something that happens in the nooks and crannies of interaction, fitted in here and there and not interfering with the serious business of life.” (p. 130)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Lake Lui

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Lui, L. (2012). Literature Review. In: Re-negotiating Gender. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4848-4_2

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