From Sex Roles to Gendered Institutions
From Sex Roles to Gendered Institutions
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从性别角色到性别制度
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发表时间：
1992
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通讯作者：
Joan Acker
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作者：
Joan Acker
在过去的二十年里，性别已经成为社会科学日常语言的一部分，这主要是女权主义运动和相应的智力努力的结果，目的是更好地理解女性系统和广泛的从属关系以及她们受到男性的支配。尽管这一术语被广泛使用，但对其含义没有达成共识，甚至在女权主义学者中也是如此(Butler 1990)。在社会学中，女权主义者从一种性别观点开始，这种观点逐渐被拓宽和改变，尽管新的观点并没有完全取代旧的观点。当然，辩称社会学中存在两种性别观点是过于简单化的复杂讨论，其中包含许多不同的立场和重叠的观点。然而，我认为，将这些观点分成两种观点，有助于突出我们社会中出现的一种关于中央机构过程的新思维方式。在早期的用法中，性别是性或女性的另一个词；对性别的研究是对女性、性别角色或两者的研究。在这个观点中，性别是一个领域或领域，但它是社会学中心关注的边缘问题，主要是专家感兴趣的。在较新的用法中，性别被理论化为社会结构和文化解释的基本原则(例如，Scott 1986；Acker 1988)。性别不是公认领域中的一个专门领域，而是通过男女之间的差异形成的差异和支配模式，这是许多社会进程不可或缺的。这种将性别理论化的方式批评和挑战了现有的框架，认为女性和性别角色不能只是添加到现有的理论中，而对性别保持沉默的理论从根本上是有缺陷的。这种更激进的性别观点是女权主义理论和方法不断发展的一部分；因此，对性别的阐述仍在进行中。在这篇文章中，我探讨了这些不同的性别定义，以及谈论性别机构意味着什么。性别最初是为了强调男女之间差异的社会和关系性质，而不是性别之间的生物差异。性是天生的，性别是后天养成的。在社会学的语言中，性别角色取代了性别角色，因为性别比性更准确地代表了将社会划分为女性和男性的身份和角色的社会结构。性和性别是相互依存的，但又有明显的区别。性别是社会性的，因此是可变的，容易变化，而性别代表了人类生殖过程中基本的和不变的生理差异。性和性别之间存在一种隐含的因果联系。设置性和性别之间的明确区别和因果联系对于那些对性别采取生物社会观点的女权主义社会学家来说是一种有用的策略(例如，Rossi 1984)，并认为性别行为至少部分是生理决定的。尽管生理差异对社会行为的贡献尚未确定，但对我和其他人来说，性别和性别之间的这种区别成了问题。男性和女性在行为和情感上的差异，以及女性和男性之间的相似之处，似乎太大了，以至于无法将行为追溯到生物差异。另一个问题与性的意义有关。性是指女性和男性身体之间的差异，如外生殖器、荷尔蒙分泌、卵巢和精子。这些差异定义了男性和女性两个类别，并表明人们属于其中一个或另一个。尽管这些类别被认为是自然的，因此在以性别的形式进行社会干预之前，确定某些身体特征作为对人进行分类的基础并分配
Gender has become, in the last twenty years, part of the everyday language of social science, largely as a consequence of the feminist movement and the accompanying intellectual efforts to better understand the systematic and widespread subordination of women and their domination by men. Although the term is widely used, there is no common understanding of its meaning, even among feminist scholars (Butler 1990). In sociology, feminists began with one view of gender, which has been gradually broadened and changed, although the newer view has not totally displaced the older one. To argue that there are two views of gender within sociology is, of course, to oversimplify a complex discussion containing a number of different positions and overlapping viewpoints. However, casting these positions into two views is, I believe, helpful in highlighting the emergence of a new way of thinking about central institutional processes in our society. In the earlier usage, gender is another word for sex or for women; the study of gender is the study of women, sex roles, or both. Gender, in this view, is an area or a field, but one that is peripheral to the central concerns of sociology, of interest primarily to specialists. In the newer usage, gender is theorized as a basic principle of social structure and cultural interpretation (e.g., Scott 1986; Acker 1988). Rather than being a specialized area within an accepted domain, gender is the patterning of difference and domination through distinctions between women and men that is integral to many societal processes. This way of theorizing gender criticizes and challenges existing frameworks, arguing that women and gender roles cannot just be added to existing theory and that theories that are silent about gender are fundamentally flawed. This more radical view of gender is part of the ongoing development of feminist theory and method; hence the elaboration of gender is still in process. In this essay I explore these different definitions of gender and what it means to talk about gendered institutions. Gender was first employed to emphasize the social and relational nature of differences between women and men in contrast to biological differences between the sexes. Sex was nature and gender was nurture. In the language of sociology, gender roles replaced sex roles, as gender represented more accurately than sex the social construction of identities and roles dividing societies into women and men. Sex and gender were interdependent, but clearly distinguished. Gender was social, thus variable and subject to change, while sex represented the essential and unchanging physical differences in human reproduction. An implicit causal link existed between sex and gender. Positing a clear distinction and a causal link between sex and gender was a useful tactic for those feminist sociologists who took a biosocial view of gender (e.g., Rossi 1984) and saw gendered behavior as at least in part physiologically determined. Although the contribution of physiological differences to social behavior is not settled, for me and others, this distinction between sex and gender became problematic. Variations in actions and feelings among both men and women, as well as similarities between women and men, seemed too great to allow tracing behavior to biological differences. Another problem had to do with the meaning of sex. Sex signifies differences between female and male bodies, such as external genitalia, hormonal production, ovaries and sperm. These differences define the binary categories male and female and serve as signs that persons belong to one or the other. Although the categories are seen as natural, thus prior to social intervention in the form of gender, the identification of certain physical characteristics as the basis for categorizing people and the assignment of