Sociology of Gender

Sociology of gender is a prominent subfield of sociology. Since 1950 an increasing part of the academic literature, and of the public discourse uses gender for the perceived or projected (self-identified) masculinity or femininity of a person. The term was introduced by Money (1955):

“The term gender role is used to signify all those things that a person says or does to disclose himself/herself as having the status of boy or man, girl or woman, respectively. It includes, but is not restricted to, sexuality in the sense of eroticism.”

A person's gender is complex, encompassing countless characteristics of appearance, speech, movement and other factors not solely limited to biological sex.

Societies tend to have binary gender systems in which everyone is categorized as male or female. Some societies include a third gender role; for instance, the Native American Two-Spirit people and the Hijras of India. In July 2012 Gopi Shankar,a Gender activist and a student from The American College in Madurai coined the regional terms for genderqueer people in Tamil, Gopi said apart from male and female, there are more than 20 types of genders, such as transwoman, transmen, androgynous, pangender and trigender etc., and there are more than 10 types of Sexual Orientation, ancient India recogonized all gender including Third Gender as Trithiya prakirthi. "

There is debate over the extent to which gender is a social construct or a biological construct.

Read more about Sociology Of Gender:  In Feminist Theory, Other Languages, U.S. Media, Gender in The Workplace, Intersectionality, Family, Embodiment, Sexuality, Masculinity, Gender and Violence, Globalization and Gender

Famous quotes by sociology of gender:

    Parenting, as an unpaid occupation outside the world of public power, entails lower status, less power, and less control of resources than paid work.
    Nancy Chodorow, U.S. professor, and sociologist. The Reproduction of Mothering Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender, ch. 2 (1978)