Cranny-Francis, Anne, Waring, Wendy, Stavropoulos Pam & Kirkby, Joan (2003) Gender Studies: Terms and Debates. London: Macmillan.

2017

The confusions that have originated from the gender category are explored and described. A confusion that arises from the feminist academy in the distinction as to how the biological bodies of human beings become social, and therefore, every social interaction is sexed. The gender category has been widely divulged in the last years, but while doing it, its use has become freer and less rigorous, identifying it with feminine, women, feminist movements and social movements of women. Underlying theoretical and epistemology are proposed. Theoretical essays that borrow categories of social analysis from conceptual schemes are revised, but these are decontextualized when using them for theorizations of gender. Difficulties arise in the theoretical categories of sociological character and of political science such as social construction and power, they are transported without epistemic mediation or specification to the language of other disciplines, mainly psychology or anthropology.

2018

Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 1991

Forum on Studies of Society (FSS). International Conference on Social and Humanistic Sciences, Fourth Edition, University of Molise (Università degli Studi del Molise), Campobasso, Italy, November 25th-26th , 2022

Approaches and debates on gender and sexuality are a topical area in sociology and social research. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the main theoretical approaches on gender, following the logic of theoretical development and progress from the structural-functionalist perspective to the constructivist (interactionist, ethnomethodological) one and, further, to the deconstructivist paradigm in social sciences. In this regard, theoretical perspectives on gender socialization, social roles assigned to biological genders, as well as conceptualizations of gender identities are first addressed. Particular attention is paid here to T. Parsons' views to gender socialization, gender roles, and the institutionalized 'normality' of heterosexuality, E. Goffman's approach to ‘the arrangement between the sexes’, sexual subcultures and gender identity, and H. Garfinkel's ethnomethodological view on sexual status, naturalization of the binary sexual status, heteronormativity, and how bona fide members of society manifest themselves as 'normal', i.e. 'in consensus with the majority' in terms of both sexuality and gender. The paper continues with approaching the concepts of ‘accomplishment of gender’ and ‘doing gender’ introduced by C. West and D.H. Zimmerman in 1987, and the theoretical debates opened by the latter. Finally, some views and conceptualizations of gender from the perspective of the deconstructivist current are presented, such as the conception of gender as a result of symbolic representations, the challenging of the differentiation made between sex (biological) and gender (socio-cultural roles ascribed to the sex), as well as the current theoretical discussions about ‘undoing gender’ and ‘redoing gender’.

Journal of Family Therapy, 1996

Current Sociology, 2013