Untitled

DOING GENDER,
DOING DIFFERENCE
DOING GENDER,
DOING DIFFERENCE
INEQUALITY, POWER, AND
INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE
Edited by
SARAH FENSTERMAKER
CANDACE WEST
ROUTLEDGE
NEW YORK· LONDON

Published in 2002 by
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Doing Gender, Doing Difference: inequality, power, and institutional change / edited by Sarah
Fenstermaker, Candace West
p.em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-93178-9 (hb.) - ISBN 0-415-93179-7 (pb.)
1. Sex role. 2. Sex discrimination against women. 3. Equality. 4. Feminist theory. I.
Fenstermaker, Sarah, 1949- II. West, Candace.
HQ1075 .D65 2002

305.3-dc21
2001056893
Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint
but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments Vli
Foreword ix
DOROTHY E. SMITH
Introduction X111
SARAH FENSTERMAKER AND CANDACE WEST
SECTION I THEORETICAL FORMULATION, CRITICISM, AND RESPONSE
I. Doing Gender 3
CANDACE WEST AND DON H. ZIMMERMAN
2. Gender Inequality: New Conceptual Terrain 25

SARAH FENSTERMAKER, CANDACE WEST, AND
DON H. ZIMMERMAN
3. Power, Inequality, and the Accomplishment of Gender: An 41

Ethnomethodological View
CANDACE WEST AND SARAH FENSTERMAKER
4· Doing Difference 55
5. Symposium on West and Fenstermaker's "Doing Difference" 81

PATRICIA HILL COLLINS, LIONEL A. MALDONADO,
DANA Y. TAKAGI, BARRIE THORNE, LYNN WEBER, AND
HOWARD WINANT
y
Reply-(Re)Doing Difference 95
SECTION II EMPIRICAL APPLICATIONS
6. Work and Gender {from The Gender Factory) !O5

SARAH FENSTERMAKER
7· Accountingfor Cosmetic Surgery: The Accomplishment II9

if Gender
DIANA DULL AND CANDACE WEST
8. Accountability and Affirmative Action: The Accomplishment 141

if Gender, Race, and Class in a University if California
Board if Regents Meeting
9· "Doing Gender" Differently: Institutional Change in 16 9

Second-Parent Adoptions
SUSAN DALTON AND SARAH FENSTERMAKER
SECTION III THEORETICAL ELABORATIONS
10. Performance and Accomplishment: Reconciling Feminist 18 9

Conceptions if Gender
MOLLY MOLONEY AND SARAH FENSTERMAKER
II. "Doing Difference" Revisited: Problems, Prospects, and the 20 5

Dialogue in Feminist Theory
CONCLUSION Central Problematics: An Agenda for Feminist Sociology 21 7

References 221
Permissions 234
Index 235
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The work within this book represents two full careers in sociology. Sarah's
analysis of the household division of labor was first conceived in her disser-
tation, completed at Northwestern University in 1976. Candace's original
work on the accomplishment of gender emerged from her research on inter-
ruption in conversation, first conceived in her dissertation, completed at the
University of California Santa Barbara in 1977. To us, this volume repre-
sents changes that have shaped our lives, as well as our careers, since "Doing
Gender" was first published more than a decade ago: We have gained and
lost members of our families, gained and lost relationships, friendships, and
colleagues. Predictably, we have likewise lost and regained health, some-
times reshaped and sometimes reclaimed our sense of ourselves as feminists
and as sociologists.
The accumulated debt to others that is represented here is staggering.
In preparing this manuscript, we were struck by the presence of so many:
Family, teachers, colleagues, students, personal friends, and helpers outside
the discipline all convinced us that our ideas were interesting and important
enough to pursue. In particular, when the work was new and seemed a lit-
tle intellectually dangerous, we received unwavering support from Don
Zimmerman, Bettina Aptheker, Spencer Cahill, Erving Goffman, Nancy
Henley, Val Jenness, Nancy Jurik, Judith Lorber, Doni Loseke, Beth
Schneider, Dorothy Smith, and Barrie Thorne. Later, as the ideas devel-
oped, accumulated, and gained some currency (as well as notoriety), there
were additional colleagues who were steadfast and encouraging: Maggie
Anderson, Renee Anspach, Maxine Baca Zinn, Bob Connell, Reg Daniel,
Carol Brooks Gardner, Evi Glenn, Hazel Hull, Neal King, Molly Moloney,
vii
Laury Oaks, Denise Segura, Judy Stacey, Dana Takagi, and Howard
Winant. Over the course of the last decade, our seminar students have been
enormously influential in shaping our ideas and in teaching us to think of
those ideas as both important and always provisional. We thank our stu-
dents for all their lessons. We also acknowledge the scores of social scien-
tists who have used our formulations to try to make sense of their own data
or who attempt to extend their own theoretical contributions by engaging
with ours. There can be no more satisfYing intellectual experience than
influencing the work of others, and we are grateful for it.
This volume also represents the gifts of our collaborators, who coau-
thored particular papers in their original publication or contributed to the
dialogue begun in the Gender & Society symposium on our 1995 publication,
"Doing Difference" (reprinted here in chapter 6): Don Zimmerman, Diana
Dull, Susan Dalton, Molly Moloney, Patricia Hill Collins, Lionel
Maldonado, Dana Takagi, Barrie Thorne, Lynn Weber, and Howie Winant.
Each of them is deserving of our thanks for showing us new aspects to our
thinking.
Last in a long line of esteemed colleagues but singularly crucial to the
success of this project is Mitch Duneier. His generosity, offered at the right
time, was a gift we will always appreciate. Respect and thanks also go to
Ilene Kalish, our editor at Routledge. Our thanks also to Sarah's research
assistant, Tonya Lindsey, for her care and construction of the manuscript,
and to Kimberly Guinta at Routledge. We also want to recognize, with
gratitude, those who don't do what we do but who inexplicably care about
it just the same: Rachel, Frank, Anita, Charles, Kate, Leigh, Ray, Robyn,
Siu, Stan, and Yonie. What a group.
Finally, this collection symbolizes the most enduring feminist partner-
ship of our careers: twenty-five years of friendship and a decade of collabo-
ration. Each of us greatly admires the other's remarkable intellectual gifts,
and over the years we have felt lucky to witness each other's growth. Only
a few times did we feel like those other longtime partners Thelma and
Louise, riding in the green convertible, the wind blowing in their hair, hap-
pily hurtling toward the precipice. We are grateful to have taken the trip
together.
Sarah Fenstermaker
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Candace West
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FOREWORD
DOROTHY E. SMITH
It's time that this developing line of thought and research in the sociology
of gender was made visible in a volume of this kind. Published articles are
dispersed all over the place. The continuities of dialogue aren't apparent for
readers who may hold only a fragment here and there. For quite a while now
sociologists like me, aware of the work done by feminist sociologists on gen-
der as an accomplishment or the social construction of gender, have
watched as postmodernist feminist theorists reinvented the wheel. I don't
reject their contributions as such. On the contrary, I've learned a great deal.
But it is tiresome to read contemporary feminist philosophers and literary
theorists presenting as radically new discoveries ideas that are old hat to
sociologists familiar with work of the kind presented in this book. It's not a
matter of getting credit for inventing the original wheel. It's more a matter
of bringing into view thinking which, unlike feminist philosophy and liter-
ary theory, is subject to the discipline of research.
The chapters have been written over a period of some 20 years. The
two authors were among the earliest to develop specifically feminist
research in sociology, and this volume builds on those early studies. The
interest that organizes the collection arises out of the political and theo-
retical discoveries made in the women's movement. The significance of dif-
ferentiating sex and gender was first of all a political move. Biological sex
is a given (or so it seemed then). Yet we had to believe that change was pos-
sible, that the repressions to which women were subjected were not the
simple effects of biological determinants. The notion of gender was
invented or adapted from its grammatical usage to hold in place a concep-
Ix
tion of historically specific sociocultural forms of being women and men.
The distinction between sex and gender performs a ruthless but invaluable
surgery that has opened the way to gains in knowledge and theory that
would have been unthinkable earlier. When I was in graduate school (late
1950s-early 1960s), I was taught that anything that smelled of politics
tainted the (tenuous) purity of sociology's objectivity with bias. We have,
of course, learned since then that the political and historical are necessary
presences in the social sciences. The social sciences are all always of the
society they explore. Critical investigations such as Edward Said's study of
orientalism, demonstrating the imperial foundations of Western European
"oriental" scholarship, have undermined sociology's dream of an
archimedean point. It doesn't follow, however, that everything is up for
postmodernist grabs. Rather the possibility emerges of discovering the
social from the multiple sites it generates, a move that is essential to soci-
ology's ability to escape from its own presuppositions (a struggle without
conclusion). Feminist sociology has been specially productive of research
that takes advantage of this discursive opening.
Sarah Fenstermaker's and Candace West's collection draws on a body
of thinking and research that originated with Harold Garfinkel's invention
in the 1960s of a radically new approach to sociological investigation which
he called "ethnomethodology." Ethnomethodology opens up investigation
into people's methods for accomplishing the recognizable facticity of a
world in common. Its research practices are anchored in an ontology that
commits to people's doings and sayings as they can be observed and
recorded. In contrast to the abstract nominalization of much sociology, eth-
nomethodology, in all its variants, is oriented to discovering how people
produce what we can recognize as just this or just that everyday event, occa-
sion, setting, act, or person.
In contrast, therefore, to the tendency of sociology to generate master
theories, West and Fenstermaker, in company with their collaborators, Don
Zimmerman, Diana Dull, Susan Dalton, and Molly Moloney, have worked
their way forward exploring the potentialities of ethnomethodology for the
feminist problematic of gender. Their focus has been on how people them-
selves accomplish and recognize gender in their everyday practices. They
have not sought determinants external to gender, and they have not dis-
placed people's everyday knowledge with the claimed superiority of socio-
logical interpretation. They have, however, brought to light dimensions of
gender of which we had been unaware.
CI The theory developed in this collection is similar in some respects to
III:
C the contemporary theories of feminist philosophers and literary theorists,
:.
III notably to Judith Butler's thinking. A thoughtful essay in the collection by
III:
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C Molly Moloney and Sarah Fenstermaker examines the commonalities and
x
divergences of theirs and Butler's theoretical frameworks. There are, how- ...
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ever, additional differences to those addressed in that chapter. Unlike fem- •
III
lIE
inist philosophy and literary theory, the inquiry evolving in this collection is o
disciplined by research. Dialogue is not only with theoretical traditions or •a
with contemporary feminist thought, but also with a social world to be dis-
covered as people themselves bring it into being.
Like the novel as theorized by Mikhail Bakhtin, sociology is essentially
dialogic. No matter how far it goes in attempting to bury the interchange
between sociologists and other members of our society, that interchange is
necessarily implicated in anything sociology can claim as knowledge.
Sociological research is a specialized dialogue in which sociologists bring
what sociology "knows" into dialogue with other members of the society.
This double dialogic is wonderfully represented here. The chapters engage
with sociology, draw on sociology, and respond to a broad spectrum of crit-
ics, particularly to anti-racist and feminist critics such as Patricia Hill
Collins, as well as expose the theories and debates to research.
I'm not in entire agreement with the authors' reasoning. I'm not con-
vinced that they have successfully drawn whatever it is we are talking about
when we talk about power fully into the circumference of their theory and
hence that the issues raised by Patricia Hill Collins are resolved. This reser-
vation, however, is an indicator of the authors' success. In reading, I have
been drawn into the dialogue they are developing in which research, socio-
logical or ethnomethodological formulations, and political critique are in
productive tension.
Here is a special merit of this work. It is a model for how sociology
should proceed. Those who have written these papers did not know that
they were going to make a book. Its coherence has arisen out of step-by-
step advances. In assembling the studies and theories, the book makes visi-
ble the developing character of a body of theory and research. It is not only
a fascinating and unusually coherent collection of papers, but also the record
of an actively developing area of investigation. In contrast to the tendency
in post-Second World War sociology to construct comprehensive theories
with positively bureaucratic capacities to subsume practically anything, the
inquiry you, the reader, have before you in this book is built carefully from
formulations that aim to bring their object into researchable view and from
researches that extend what can be known. Revisions, clarifications, refor-
mulations are made as the line of inquiry goes forward. I have taken much
pleasure in the unfolding of the work from chapter to chapter, each adding
a different aspect, resolving problems, taking advantage of criticism to
refine, and, in its conclusion, arriving at a direction for further studies. This,
I began to realize as I read, is just how it should be done. There is good
research; there is thinking extending an established area of work into an
xl
exploration of a region that was largely unknown at the outset of the work
recorded here; there is dialogue with critics and appraisals of related bodies
of thought; and there is a conclusion which, in reviewing the status of the
research and in reaffirming and refining its major concepts, provides a base
from which further studies can be launched.
Vancouver, British Columbia

August 2001
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INTRODUCTION
Rather than as a property of individuals, we conceive ofgender as an

emergent feature ofsocial situations: both as an outcome of and a rationale
for various social arrangements, and as a means oflegitimating one ofthe
most.fUndamental divisions ofsociety. ("Doing Gender," 126)
Candace West and Don Zimmerman wrote the words above in 1977. As
they make clear in the introduction of the article, at that time the most
sophisticated theoretical move made was drawing the clear distinction
between the ascribed characteristics of sex ("male"l"female") and the
achieved characteristics of gender ("boy"I"girl" or "man"l"woman").
Symbolic interaction's notion of the provisional, ever-changing, constructed
nature of social life and ethnomethodology's fascination with the constitu-
tive character of social arrangements had yet to decenter the seemingly per-
manent or biologically decreed nature of gender. Indeed, that is where
"Doing Gender" begins, as it asserts that things sexed and things gendered
are not at all what they seem.
In manuscript form, "Doing Gender" stirred great interest each time it
was presented, and it circulated among a private, enthusiastic public. Yet,
it faced defeat in journal reviews repeatedly. Read as a microinteractional
replacement for conventional role theory (and thus trivial) or as a funda-
mental challenge to the existence of consequential biological differences
between the sexes (and thus blasphemous), the paper was rejected and the
authors retreated, shelving the manuscript. As sometimes happens with
innovative theory whose time appears not to have come, other scholars
began to borrow the theory and use it to make sense of their own data. Most
xiii
notably, "Doing Gender" first saw the light of day in Fenstermaker's analy-
sis of the division of household labor. The publication of The Gender Factory
and the renewed exposure of the framework (and Fenstermaker's repeated
urgings) prompted West and Zimmerman to try again. Happily, the world
had changed a little. In 1987, the new journal of Sociologists for Women in
Society, Gender & Society, edited by feminist sociologist Judith Lorber, pro-
vided a home for "Doing Gender." In the decade that followed, West and
Fenstermaker published five additional papers on the formulation that first
clarified and then extended the initial statement by West and Zimmerman.
This volume republishes those early articles along with far newer extensions
of the framework, both theoretical and empirical. 1
As Dorothy Smith points out in the foreword, this collection did not
develop by design, but by iteration: Each research problem, each exchange
with other scholars, or an experience in our graduate seminars prompted
another attempt to explore and problematize our ideas. Indeed, until
recently, we had no intention whatever to subject readers to our work not
only once in its original published form, but twice, in this newer incarnation.
When graduate students told us that it would be "nice" to have all the pieces
published in one place, we thought reasons of convenience (or vanity) did
not justify such an undertaking. Later on, however, as we became aware of
the large number of scholars who were reading, teaching, and adapting the
formulation to their empirical work, and when we knew that we would have
a number of new pieces to offer, we changed our minds and decided to go
forward with publication. Our hope is that only two years from prospectus
to publication means that this collection will assume a constructive role in
the dialogue about gender and difference that motivated the work in the
first place.
We have taken some pains to address the editorial problem posed by a
collection of this sort-half old, half new. While we understood from those
who encouraged the project that it was important to retain the character of
III the previously published pieces, we also knew that reading the rationale for
'"Z
III
our formulation again and again would be a dreary business indeed. Thus,
...-=...
III we have done our best to retain the flavor and intention of each reprinted
article while at the same time deleting the passages that seem repetitious .
D
\II Sometimes, however, we allowed for repetition if we thought it important
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to the character of the piece as it was originally published. To indicate
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D minor deletions of text, we employed ellipses; when larger sections are
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III deleted, the reader will see three asterisks to denote deleted paragraphs or
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Z sections.
III
\II This introduction, then, to provide some brief context, is an exercise in
\II
Z hindsight. If the chapters are read in order, the reader will notice a kind of
o linear progression in the ideas. The obvious change in our ideas is the reflec-
D
tion of our own growth, the effect others' criticism and perspective had on
that development, and the slow unfolding of our own discovery of the
implications of our theoretical formulations. The obviously consistent
thread is a result of the theoretical staying power of the ideas first published
by West and Zimmerman more than a decade ago.
THEORETICAL FORMULATION, CRITICISM, AND RESPONSE
When we view gender as an accomplishment, an achieved property ofsitu-

ated conduct, our attention shifts from matters internal to the individual
andfocuses on interactional, and ultimately, institutional arenas. ("Doing
Gender," 126)
"Gender Inequality: New Conceptual Terrain" (chapter 3 in this volume)

amplifies the argument made by West and Zimmerman a few years before. In
addition, we were trying to respond to what we regarded as a misreading-
then as now--of our formulation as one best confined to microinteractional
exchanges. Puzzled at first by this sort of reading, we now understand it to be
a reflection of the deep-seated devotion to the bifurcation of the social world
into "micro" and "macro" phenomena, as if they are not only separable but
governed by different forces. Chapter 3 addresses our argument about how
"doing" gender involves both the interpersonal and the institutional. It was
the beginning of a theme that would find a place in each subsequent effort to
explain the mechanisms behind the practice of inequality.
In this light, the institutional arrangements of a society can be seen as

responsive to the differences-the social order being merely an
accommodation to the natural order. ("Doing Gender," 146)
Chapters 4, 5, and 6 represent a new line of argument and a substantial

expansion of our concerns from the "doing" of gender to the more general
accomplishment of social inequality. Chapter 4 appeared in a volume edited
by Paula England, which was intended to highlight the theoretical founda-
tions of various formulations about gender, and is thus by design a state-
ment of how the ethnomethodological viewpoint lies at the core of our
thinking about gender. But we took that opportunity to tentatively suggest
that more than gender can be "done" and that our more dearly felt and ubiq-
uitously practiced social categories-categories around which we allocate
social goods and social opportunities-could be productively viewed as
"accomplished."
Chapters 5 and 6 return us to the debate surrounding our movement
from a focus on "doing gender" to one on "doing difference." In chapter 5,
our goal was to open a dialogue and a line of research inquiry into how sys-
terns of domination operated to produce the outcomes of inequality chron-
icled so often. We chose "difference" as the word to describe what was being
accomplished when relations of power are at work to produce the account-
ably weak, unworthy, or denigrated, and the justified practices surrounding
them. When writing that paper, we searched for a word that would convey
what was being created: distinctions construed to be consequential for the
organization of social life and to which social groups held themselves
"accountable." We needed a word that would accommodate the categorical
distinctions of race, class, and gender. Perhaps "difference" was not the best
choice. In using it, perhaps we inadvertently conveyed the notion that our
intention was to diminish the impact, or trivialize the exercise, of power. In
short, "difference" was taken to wash away power and domination-the very
thing we wished the formulation to illuminate. Thus, subsequently we tried
to make plain-ad nauseum, some would argue-that not each "difference"
equaled every other, that we were not interested in denying history or in dis-
regarding the suffering unique to particular groups and experiences.
Chapter 6 contains the symposium that followed the publication of "Doing
Difference," including our brief response to that exchange.
EMPIRICAL APPLICATIONS
wecontend that the "doing" ofgender is undertaken by women and men

whose competence as members ofsociety is hostage to its production.
("Doing Gender," 126)
In her foreword to this volume, Dorothy Smith wrote, "Unlike feminist phi-
losophy and literary theory, the inquiry evolving in this collection is disci-
plined by research." We are pleased that this quality may come through for
the reader, for that was our intention. Section 3 represents the empirical
complement to our largely theoretical effort. From Fenstermaker's initial
effort to apply the accomplishment of gender to the household, to Dull and
III West's application of the theory to their study of cosmetic surgery, we
'"•
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hoped to convey the importance we place on the productive tension
•...
III between our theories of gender and the empirical realities of gender.
... The two newer chapters in this section are intended to address specif-
a
II ically what have been thought to be two problematic aspects of the theory,
•
o
namely, the character of accountability and the relationship between the
a interpersonal and the institutional in the creation of change. Our analysis of
•a
III the public presentations at a meeting of the University of California Regents
•
III
II
attempts to demonstrate how a presumption of accountability operates even
in formal discourse to make present the accomplishment of class, race, and
II
•
o
gender. Dalton and Fenstermaker analyze Dalton's data on social workers
a and their role in second-parent adoptions. The paper is intended to illus-
xvi
trate the ways in which institutional change often comes packaged as "only"
interpersonal interactions, as well as how the accomplishment of gender
does not preclude change in its content; indeed, that change is inherent in
such accomplishment.
THEORETICAL ELABORATIONS
Gender is fundamental, institutionalized, and enduring: yet because mem-

bers ofsocial groups must constantly (whether they realize it or not) "do"
gender to maintain their proper status, the seeds of change are ever present.
(Judith Lorber, editor's introduction to "Doing Gender," 124)
Chapters 11 and 12 are attempts to reflect upon some underdeveloped fea-

tures of our formulation. Moloney and Fenstermaker's chapter responds to
the perplexing lack of dialogue but apparent similarities between the work
ofJudith Butler-especially her concept of gender performativity-and our
formulations about difference. Born of a seminar discussion, the chapter is
a close reading of text to clarify what the divide across the disciplines might
mean to feminist scholars interested in gender. Chapter 12, "Doing
Difference Revisited," is just that: a revisiting. Originally an invited paper
for a special issue of Kolner ZeitschriJtfur Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, the
well-known German sociology journal, this chapter tries to address directly
the concern raised by our colleagues in the symposium of 1995 and in sub-
sequent exchanges. This was our chance to more fully consider the thought-
ful criticisms the formulation had received. There, we give some
much-needed attention to the question of our formulation and the possi-
bility of social change-apparently something our colleague Judith Lorber
has understood for a long, long time.
CONCLUSION
An understanding ofhow gender is produced in social situations will afford

clarification ofthe interactional scaffolding ofsocial structure and the social
control processes that sustain it. ("Doing Gender," 147)
We end the volume with a consideration of what might come next. This
final chapter recapitulates our goal from the beginning: to encourage an
empirical focus on how inequality is done and to promote a continuing dia-
logue among feminists about the mechanisms by which we reproduce rela-
tions of inequality via the complex and simultaneous workings of gender,
race, and class. We hope too that this chapter, and the volume itself, will
encourage feminist scholars to do more than say that gender, or race, or
class, or sexuality, or nationality, or is "done." The result is often
quite conventional considerations-without theoretical foundation-of
xvii
what inequality might be, but not at all how it is created, sustained, or
changed. Finally, we hope this collection conveys the fascinating complica-
tion that has compelled our sociological attention for so long and points the
way to work left to do.
NOTE
1. The designation of this volume as "edited" is an arbitrary one, necessitated by the inclusion
of the multi-authored symposium in chapter 5. Nevertheless, the reader will discover that the work
of Fenstermaker or West----or both-is represented in each chapter.
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xviii
Section I THEORETICAL
FORMULATION,
CRITICISM, AND
RESPONSE
CHAPTER ONE
Doing Gender
CANDACE WEST AND DON H. ZIMMERMAN
In the beginning, there was sex and there was gender.! Those of us who
taught courses in the late 1960s and early 1970s were careful to distinguish
one from the other. Sex, we told students, was what was ascribed by biol-
ogy: anatomy, hormones, and physiology. Gender, we said, was an achieved
status: that which is constructed through psychological, cultural, and social
means. To introduce the difference between the two, we drew on singular
case studies of hermaphrodites (Money 1968, 1974; Money and Ehrhardt
1972) and anthropological investigations of "strange and exotic tribes"
(Mead 1963, 1968).
Inevitably (and understandably), in the ensuing weeks of each term, our
students became confused. Sex hardly seemed a "given" in the context of
research that illustrated the sometimes ambiguous and often conflicting cri-
teria for its ascription. And gender seemed much less an "achievement" in
the context of the anthropological, psychological, and social imperatives we
studied-the division of labor, the formation of gender identities, and the
social subordination of women by men. Moreover, the received doctrine of
gender socialization theories conveyed the strong message that although
gender may be "achieved," by about age five it is certainly frxed, unvarying,
and static-much like sex.
Since about 1975, the confusion has intensified and spread far beyond
our individual classrooms. For one thing, we learned that the relationship
between biological and cultural processes was far more complex-and
reflexive-than we previously had supposed (Rossi 1984, esp. 10-14). For
another, we discovered that certain structural arrangements, for example
those between work and family, actually produce or enable some capacities,
3
such as to mother, that we formerly associated with biology (Chodorow
1978 versus Firestone 1970). In the midst of all this, the notion of gender
as a recurring achievement somehow fell by the wayside.
Our purpose in this article is to propose an ethnomethodologically
informed, and therefore distinctively sociological, understanding of gender
as a routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishment. We contend that
the "doing" of gender is undertaken by women and men whose competence
as members of society is hostage to its production. Doing gender involves a
complex of socially guided perceptual, interactional, and micropolitical
activities that cast particular pursuits as expressions of masculine and femi-
nine "natures."
When we view gender as an accomplishment, an achieved property of
situated conduct, our attention shifts from matters internal to the individ-
ual and focuses on interactional and, ultimately, institutional arenas. In one
sense, of course, it is individuals who do gender. But it is a situated doing,
carried out in the virtual or real presence of others who are presumed to be
oriented to its production. Rather than as a property of individuals, we con-
ceive of gender as an emergent feature of social situations: both as an out-
come of and a rationale for various social arrangements and as a means of
legitimating one of the most fundamental divisions of society.
To advance our argument, we undertake a critical examination of what
sociologists have meant by gender, including its treatment as a role enact-
ment in the conventional sense and as a "display" in Goffman's (1976) ter-
minology. Both gender role and gender display focus on behavioral aspects of
being a woman or a man (as opposed, for example, to biological differences
between the two). However, we contend that the notion of gender as a role
obscures the work that is involved in producing gender in everyday activi-
ties, while the notion of gender as a display relegates it to the periphery of
interaction. We argue instead that participants in interaction organize their
various and manifold activities to reflect or express gender, and they are dis-
III posed to perceive the behavior of others in a similar light.
•""
III
To elaborate our proposal, we suggest at the outset that important but
•...
III often overlooked distinctions be observed among sex, sex category, and
... gender. Sex is a determination made through the application of socially
III
agreed upon biological criteria for classifying persons as females or males. 2
"o• The criteria for classification can be genitalia at birth or chromosomal typ-
III ing before birth, and they do not necessarily agree with one another.
•
III
III
Placement in a sex category is achieved through application of the sex cri-
•
III
teria, but in everyday life, categorization is established and sustained by the
socially required identificatory displays that proclaim one's membership in
"
•o" one or the other category. In this sense, one's sex category presumes one's
III
sex and stands as proxy for it in many situations, but sex and sex category
can vary independently; that is, it is possible to claim membership in a sex
category even when the sex criteria are lacking. Gender, in contrast, is the
activity of managing situated conduct in light of normative conceptions of
attitudes and activities appropriate for one's sex category. Gender activities
emerge from and bolster claims to membership in a sex category.
We contend that recognition of the analytical independence of sex, sex
category, and gender is essential for understanding the relationships among
these elements and the interactional work involved in "being" a gendered
person in society. While our primary aim is theoretical, there will be occa-
sion to discuss fruitful directions for empirical research following from the
formulation of gender that we propose.
We begin with an assessment of the received meaning of gender, par-
ticularly in relation to the roots of this notion in presumed biological dif-
ferences between women and men.
PERSPECTIVES ON SEX AND GENDER

In Western societies, the accepted cultural perspective on gender views
women and men as naturally and unequivocally defined categories of being
(Garfinkel 1967) with distinctive psychological and behavioral propensities
that can be predicted from their reproductive functions. Competent adult
members of these societies see differences between the two as fundamental
and enduring-differences seemingly supported by the division of labor
into women's and men's work and an often elaborate differentiation of fem-
inine and masculine attitudes and behaviors that are prominent features of
social organization. Things are the way they are by virtue of the fact that
men are men and women are women-a division perceived to be natural
and rooted in biology, producing in turn profound psychological, behav-
ioral, and social consequences. The structural arrangements of a society are
presumed to be responsive to these differences.
Analyses of sex and gender in the social sciences, though less likely to
accept uncritically the naive biological determinism of the view just pre-
sented, often retain a conception of sex-linked behaviors and traits as essen-
tial properties of individuals (for good reviews, see Henley 1985;
Hochschild 1973; Thorne 1980; Tresemer 1975). The "sex differences
approach" (Thorne 1980) is more commonly attributed to psychologists
than to sociologists, but the survey researcher who determines the "gender"
of respondents on the basis of the sound of their voices over the telephone
is also making trait-oriented assumptions. Reducing gender to a fixed set of
psychological traits or to a unitary "variable" precludes serious consideration
of the ways gender is used to structure distinct domains of social experience
(Stacey and Thorne 1985).
Taking a different tack, role theory has attended to the social construc-
5
tion of gender categories, called "sex roles" or, more recently, "gender roles,"
and has analyzed how these are learned and enacted. Beginning with
Linton (1936) and continuing through the works of Parsons (Parsons 1951;
Parsons and Bales 1955) and Komarovsky (1946, 1950), role theory has
emphasized the social and dynamic aspect of role construction and enact-
ment (Connell 1983; Thorne 1980). But at the level of face-to-face inter-
action, the application of role theory to gender poses problems of its own
(for good reviews and critiques, see Connell 1983, 1985; Kessler et al. 1985;
Lopata and Thorne 1978; Stacey and Thorne 1985; Thorne 1980). Roles
are situated identities-assumed and relinquished as the situation
demands-rather than master identities (Hughes 1945), such as sex category,
that cut across situations. Unlike most roles, such as "nurse," "doctor," and
"patient" or "professor" and "student," gender has no specific site or organi-
zational context.
Moreover, many roles are already gender marked, so that special quali-
fiers-such as "female doctor" or "male nurse"-must be added to excep-
tions to the rule. Thorne (1980) observes that conceptualizing gender as a
role makes it difficult to assess its influence on other roles and reduces its
explanatory usefulness in discussions of power and inequality. Drawing on
Rubin (1975), Thorne calls for a reconceptualization of women and men as
distinct social groups, constituted in "concrete, historically changing-and
generally unequal-social relationships" (11).
We argue that gender is not a set of traits, nor a variable, nor a role, but
the product of social doings of some sort. What then is the social doing of
gender? It is more than the continuous creation of the meaning of gender
through human actions (Gerson and Peiss 1985). We claim that gender
itself is constituted through interaction. 3 To develop the implications of our
claim, we turn to Goffman's (1976) account of "gender display." Our object
here is to explore how gender might be exhibited or portrayed through
interaction, and thus be seen as "natural," while it is being produced as a
III
U
socially organized achievement.
•
III
•...
III GENDER DISPLAY
... Goffman (1976) contends that when human beings interact with others in
a
IIiI their environment, they assume that each possesses an "essential nature"-
•o a nature that can be discerned through the "natural signs given off or
a expressed by them" (75). Femininity and masculinity are regarded as "pro-
•a
III totypes of essential expression-something that can be conveyed fleetingly
• in any social situation and yet something that strikes at the most basic char-
III
IIiI acterization of the individual" (75). The means through which we provide
IIiI
•
o
such expressions are "perfunctory, conventionalized acts" (69), which convey
to others our regard for them, indicate our alignment in an encounter, and
a
6
tentatively establish the terms of contact for that social situation. But they
are also regarded as expressive behavior, testimony to our "essential natures."
Goffman (1976) sees displays as highly conventionalized behaviors
structured as two-part exchanges of the statement-reply type, in which the
presence or absence of symmetry can establish deference or dominance.
These rituals are viewed as distinct from but articulated with more conse-
quential activities, such as performing tasks or engaging in discourse.
Hence, we have what he terms the "scheduling" of displays at junctures in
activities, such as the beginning or end, to avoid interfering with the activ-
ities themselves. Goffman formulates gender display as follows:
If gender be defined as the culturally established correlates of sex

(whether in consequence of biology or learning), then gender display
refers to conventionalized portrayals of these correlates. (69)
These gendered expressions might reveal clues to the underlying, fun-

damental dimensions of the female and male, but they are, in Goffman's
view, optional performances. Masculine courtesies mayor may not be
offered and, if offered, mayor may not be declined. Moreover, human
beings "themselves employ the term 'expression,' and conduct themselves to
fit their own notions of expressivity" (1976, 75). Gender depictions are less
a consequence of our "essential sexual natures" than interactional portrayals
of what we would like to convey about sexual natures, using conventional-
ized gestures. Our human nature gives us the ability to learn to produce and
recognize masculine and feminine gender displays-"a capacity [we] have
by virtue of being persons, not males and females" (76).
Upon first inspection, it would appear that Goffman's formulation
offers an engaging sociological corrective to existing formulations of gen-
der. In his view, gender is a socially scripted dramatization of the culture's
idealization of feminine and masculine natures, played for an audience
that is well schooled in the presentational idiom. To continue the
metaphor, there are scheduled performances presented in special loca-
tions, and like plays they constitute introductions to or time out from
more serious activities.
There are fundamental equivocations in this perspective. By segregat-
ing 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 interac-
tion, fitted in here and there and not interfering with the serious business
of life. While it is plausible to contend that gender displays--construed as
conventionalized expressions-are optional, it does not seem plausible to
say that we have the option of being seen by others as female or male.
7
It is necessary to move beyond the notion of gender display to consider
what is involved in doing gender as an ongoing activity embedded in every-
day interaction. Toward this end, we return to the distinctions among sex,
sex category, and gender introduced earlier.
SEX, SEX CATEGORY, AND GENDER

Garfinkel's (1967) case study of Agnes, a transsexual raised as a boy who
adopted a female identity at age 17 and underwent a sex-reassignment
operation several years later, demonstrates how gender is created through
interaction and at the same time structures interaction. Agnes, whom
Garfinkel characterized as a "practical methodologist," developed a number
of procedures for passing as a "normal, natural female" both prior to and
after her surgery. She had the practical task of managing the fact that she
possessed male genitalia and that she lacked the social resources a girl's
biography would presumably provide in everyday interaction. In short, she
needed to display herself as a woman, simultaneously learning what it was
to be a woman. Of necessity, this full-time pursuit took place at a time when
most people's gender would be well accredited and routinized. Agnes had to
consciously contrive what the vast majority of women do without thinking.
She was not "faking" what "real" women do naturally. She was obliged to
analyze and figure out how to act within socially structured circumstances
and conceptions of femininity that women born with appropriate biological
credentials come to take for granted early on. As in the case of others who
must "pass," such as transvestites, Kabuki actors, or Dustin Hoffman's
"Tootsie," Agnes's case makes visible what culture has made invisible-the
accomplishment of gender.
Garfinkel's (1967) discussion of Agnes does not explicidy separate
three analytically distinct, although empirically overlapping, concepts-sex,
sex category, and gender.
III SEX
•.:'"
III
Agnes did not possess the socially agreed upon biological criteria for classi-
fication as a member of the female sex. Still, Agnes regarded herself as a
......
III
female, albeit a female with a penis, which a woman ought not to possess .
..•
D
The penis, she insisted, was a "mistake" in need of remedy (Garfinkel 1967,
126-7,131-2). Like other competent members of our culture, Agnes hon-
o
D ored the notion that there are essential, biological criteria that unequivocally
.: distinguish females from males. However, if we move away from the com-
III
D
....
•
III
monsense viewpoint, we discover that the reliability of these criteria is not
beyond question (Money and Brennan 1968; Money and Erhardt 1972;
•
o
Money and Ogunro 1974; Money and Tucker 1975). Moreover, other cul-
D
tures have acknowledged the existence of "cross -genders" (Blackwood 1984;
•
W. Williams 1986) and the possibility of more than two sexes (Hill 1935; ~
M. Martin and Voorhies 1975; but see also Cucchiari 1981). ~.
More central to our argument is Kessler and McKenna's (1978) point ~
that genitalia are conventionally hidden from public inspection in everyday ~
life; yet we continue through our social rounds to "observe" a world of two
naturally, normally sexed persons. It is the presumption that essential criteria
exist and would or should be there if looked for that provides the basis for
sex categorization. Drawing on Garfinkel, Kessler and McKenna argue that
"female" and "male" are cultural events-products of what they term the
"gender attribution process"-rather than some collection of traits, behav-
iors, or even physical attributes. Illustratively they cite the child who, view-
ing a picture of someone clad in a suit and a tie, contends, "It's a man,
because he has a pee-pee" (154). Translation: "He must have a pee-pee [an
essential characteristic] because I see the insignia of a suit and tie." Neither
initial sex assignment (pronouncement at birth as a female or male) nor the
actual existence of essential criteria for that assignment (possession of a cli-
toris and vagina or penis and testicles) has much-if anything-to do with
the identification of sex category in everyday life. There, Kessler and
McKenna note that we operate with a moral certainty of a world of two
sexes. We do not think, "'Most persons with penises are men, but some may
not be" or "Most persons who dress as men have penises." Rather, we take
it for granted that sex and sex category are congruent-that knowing the
latter, we can deduce the rest.
SEX CATEGORIZATION
Agnes's claim to the categorical status of female, which she sustained by
appropriate identificatory displays and other characteristics, could be dis-
credited before and after her transsexual operation (see Raymond 1979). In
this regard, Agnes had to be continually alert to actual or potential threats
to the security of her sex category. Her problem was not so much living up
to some prototype of essential femininity but preserving her categorization
as female. This task was made easy for her by a very powerful resource,
namely, the process of commonsense categorization in everyday life.
The categorization of members of society into indigenous categories
such as "girl" or "boy," or "woman" or "man," operates in a social way. The act
of categorization does not involve a positive test, in the sense of a well-
defined set of criteria that must be satisfied prior to making identification.
Rather, the application of membership categories relies on an "if-can" test in
everyday interaction (Sacks 1972, 332-5). This test stipulates that if people
can be seen as members of relevant categories, then categorize them that way.
That is, use the category that seems appropriate unless discrepant informa-
tion or obvious features rule it out. This procedure is quite in keeping with
,
the attitude of everyday life, which has us take appearances at face value
unless we have special reason to doubt (Bernstein 1986; Garfinkel 1967;
Schutz 1943).4 It should be added that it is precisely when we have special
reason to doubt that the issue of applying rigorous criteria arises, but it is
rare, outside legal or bureaucratic contexts, to encounter insistence on posi-
tive tests (Garfinkel 1967; T. Wilson 1970).
Agnes's initial resource was the predisposition of those she encountered
to take her appearance (her figure, clothing, hairstyle, and so on) as the
undoubted appearance of a normal female. Her further resource was our
cultural perspective on the properties of "natural, normally sexed persons."
Garfinkel (1967, 122-8) notes that in everyday life, we live in a world of
two-and only two--sexes. This arrangement has a moral status, in that we
include ourselves and others in it as "essentially, originally, in the first place,
always have been, always will be, once and for all, in the final analysis, either
'male' or 'female'" (121).
Consider the following case:
This issue reminds me of a visit I made to a computer store a couple

of years ago. The person who answered my questions was truly a
salesperson. I could not categorize him/her as a woman or a man.
What did I look for? (1) Facial hair: Shelhe was smooth skinned, but
some men have little or no facial hair. (This varies by race, Native
Americans and Blacks often have none.) (2) Breasts: Shelhe was
wearing a loose shirt that hung from his/her shoulders. And, as many
women who suffered through a 1950s adolescence know to their
shame, women are often flat-chested. (3) Shoulders: His/hers were
small and round for a man, broad for a woman. (4) Hands: Long and
slender fingers, knuckles a bit large for a woman, small for a man. (5)
Voice: Middle range, unexpressive for a woman, not at all the exag-
gerated tones some gay males affect. (6) His/her treatment of me:
III Gave off no signs that would let me know if I were of the same or
•""
III
different sex as this person. There were not even any signs that
•...
III he/she knew hislher sex would be difficult to categorize and I won-
... dered about that even as I did my best to hide these questions so I
a
ell would not embarrass him/her while we talked of computer paper. I
•
o
left still not knowing the sex of my salesperson, and was disturbed by
a that unanswered question (child of my culture that I am). (Diane
•
III
a
Margolis, personal communication)
•
III
ell What can this case tell us about situations such as Agnes's (cf. Morris
ell
•
o
1974; Richards 1983) or the process of sex categorization in general?
First, we infer from this description that the computer salesclerk's identi-
a
ficatory display was ambiguous, since she or he was not dressed or
adorned in an unequivocally female or male fashion. It is when such a dis-
play fails to provide grounds for categorization that factors such as facial
hair or tone of voice are assessed to determine membership in a sex cate-
gory. Second, beyond the fact that this incident could be recalled after "a
couple of years," the customer was not only "disturbed" by the ambiguity
of the salesclerk's category but also assumed that to acknowledge this
ambiguity would be embarrassing to the salesclerk. Not only do we want
to know the sex category of those around us (to see it at a glance, perhaps),
but also we presume that others are displaying it for us, in as decisive a
fashion as they can.
GENDER
Agnes attempted to be "120 percent female" (Garfinkel 1967, 129), that is,
unquestionably in all ways and at all times feminine. She thought she could
protect herself from disclosure before and after surgical intervention by
comporting herself in a feminine manner, but she also could have given her-
self away by overdoing her performance. Sex categorization and the accom-
plishment of gender are not the same. Agnes's categorization could be
secure or suspect, but did not depend on whether she lived up to some ideal
conception of femininity. Women can be seen as unfeminine but that does
not make them "unfemale." Agnes faced an ongoing task of being a
woman-something beyond style of dress (an identificatory display) or
allowing men to light her cigarette (a gender display). Her problem was to
produce configurations of behavior that would be seen by others as norma-
tive gender behavior.
Agnes's strategy of "secret apprenticeship," through which she learned
expected feminine decorum by carefully attending to her fiance's criticisms
of other women, was one means of masking incompetencies and simultane-
ously acquiring the needed skills (Garfinkel 1967, 146-7). It was through
her fiance that Agnes learned that sunbathing on the lawn in front of her
apartment was "offensive" (because it put her on display to other men). She
also learned from his critiques of other women that she should not insist on
having things her way and that she should not offer her opinions or claim
equality with men. (Like other women in our society, Agnes learned some-
thing about power in the course of her "education.")
Popular culture abounds with books and magazines that compile ideal-
ized depictions of relations between women and men. Those focused on the
etiquette of dating or prevailing standards of feminine comportment are
meant to be of practical help in these matters. However, the use of any such
source as a manual ofprocedure requires the assumption that doing gender
merely involves making use of discrete, well-defined bundles of behavior
that can simply be plugged into interactional situations to produce recog-
nizable enactments of masculinity and femininity. The man "does" being
masculine by, for example, taking the woman's arm to guide her across a
street, and she "does" being feminine by consenting to be guided and not
initiating such behavior with a man.
Agnes could perhaps have used such sources as manuals, but we con-
tend doing gender is not so easily regimented (Mithers 1982; Morris 1974).
Such sources may list and describe the sorts of behaviors that mark or dis-
play gender, but they are necessarily incomplete (Garfinkel 1967; Wieder
1974; Zimmerman and Wieder 1970). And to be successful, marking or
displaying gender must be finely fitted to situations and modified or trans-
formed as the occasion demands. Doing gender consists of managing such
occasions so that, whatever the particulars, the outcome is seen and seeable
in context as gender appropriate or, as the case may be, gender inappropri-
ate-that is, accountable.
GENDER AND ACCOUNTABILITY

As Heritage (1984, 136-7) notes, members of society regularly engage in
"descriptive accountings of states of affairs to one another," and such
accounts are both serious and consequential. These descriptions name, char-
acterize, formulate, explain, excuse, excoriate, or merely take notice of some
circumstance or activity and thus place it within some social framework
(locating it relative to other activities, like and unlike).
Such descriptions are themselves accountable, and societal members
orient to the fact that their activities are subject to comment. Actions are
often designed with an eye to their accountability, that is, how they might
look and how they might be characterized. The notion of accountability
also encompasses those actions undertaken so that they are specifically
unremarkable and thus not worthy of more than a passing remark, because
they are seen to be in accord with culturally approved standards.
III Heritage (1984) observes that the process of rendering something
•""
III
accountable is interactional in character.
...•...
III
[This] permits actors to design their actions in relation to their cir-

III
III cumstances so as to permit others, by methodically taking account of
•o circumstances, to recognize the action for what it is. (179)
III
•
III
III
The key word here is circumstances. One circumstance that attends virtu-
•
III
III
ally all actions is the sex category of the actor. As Garfinkel (1967) comments,
III
•o [T]he work and socially structured occasions of sexual passing were
III
obstinately unyielding to [Agnes's] attempts to routinize the grounds
of daily activities. This obstinacy points to the omnirelevance of sexual
status to affairs of daily life as an invariant but unnoticed background
in the texture of relevances that compose the changing actual scenes
of everyday life. (118, italics added)
If sex category is omnirelevant (or even approaches being so), then a person
engaged in virtually any activity may be held accountable for performance
of that activity as a woman or a man, and their incumbency in one or the
other sex category can be used to legitimate or discredit their other activi-
ties (Berger, Cohen, and Zelditch 1972; Berger, Conner, and Fisek 1974;
Berger et al. 1977; Humphreys and Berger 1981). Accordingly, virtually any
activity can be assessed as to its womanly or manly nature. And note, to "do"
gender is not always to live up to normative conceptions of femininity or
masculinity; it is to engage in behavior at the risk of gender assessment.
Though it is individuals who do gender, the enterprise is fundamentally
interactional and institutional in character, for accountability is a feature of
social relationships, and its idiom is drawn from the institutional arena in
which those relationships are enacted. If this is the case, can we ever not do
gender? Insofar as a society is partitioned by "essential" differences between
women and men and placement in a sex category is both relevant and
enforced, doing gender is unavoidable.
RESOURCES FOR DOING GENDER

Doing gender means creating differences between girls and boys and women
and men, differences that are not natural, essential, or biological. Once the
differences have been constructed, they are used to reinforce the "essential-
ness" of gender. In a delightful account of the "arrangement between the
sexes," Goffman (1977) observes the creation of a variety of institutionalized
frameworks through which our "natural, normal sexedness" can be enacted.
The physical features of social setting provide one obvious resource for the
expression of our "essential" differences. For example, the sex segregation of
North American public bathrooms distinguishes "ladies" from "gentlemen" in
matters held to be fundamentally biological, even though both "are somewhat
similar in the question of waste products and their elimination" (315). These
settings are furnished with dimorphic equipment (such as urinals for men or
elaborate grooming facilities for women), even though both sexes may achieve
the same ends through the same means (and apparently do so in the privacy
of their own homes). To be stressed here is the fact that
the functioning of sex-differentiated organs is involved, but there is

nothing in this functioning that biologically recommends segregation;
that arrangement is a totally cultural matter ... toilet segregation is
I]
presented as a natural consequence of the difference between the sex-
classes when in fact it is a means of honoring, if not producing, this
difference. (Goffman 1977,316)
Standardized social occasions also provide stages for evocations of the

"essential female and male natures." Goffman cites organized sports as one
such institutionalized framework for the expression of manliness. There,
those qualities that ought "properly" to be associated with masculinity, such as
endurance, strength, and competitive spirit, are celebrated by all parties con-
cerned-participants, who may be seen to demonstrate such traits, and spec-
tators, who applaud their demonstrations from the safety of the sidelines.
Assortative mating practices among heterosexual couples afford still
further means to create and maintain differences between women and men.
For example, even though size, strength, and age tend to be normally dis-
tributed among females and males (with considerable overlap between
them), selective pairing ensures couples in which boys and men are visibly
bigger, stronger, and older (if not "wiser") than the girls and women with
whom they are paired. So, should situations emerge in which greater size,
strength, or experience is called for, boys and men will be ever ready to dis-
play it and girls and women, to appreciate its display (Goffman 1977; West
and Iritani 1985).
Gender may be routinely fashioned in a variety of situations that seem
conventionally expressive to begin with, such as those that present "help-
less" women next to heavy objects or flat tires. But, as Goffman (1977)
notes, heavy, messy, and precarious concerns can be constructed from any
social situation, "even though by standards set in other settings, this may
involve something that is light, clean, and safe" (324). Given these
resources, it is clear that any interactional situation sets the stage for depic-
tions of "essential" sexual natures. In sum, these situations "do not so much
allow for the expression of natural differences as for the production of that
... difference itself" (Goffman 1977,324) .
'"•... Many situations are not clearly sex categorized to begin with, nor is what
•... transpires within them obviously gender relevant. Yet any social encounter
...... can be pressed into service in the interests of doing gender. Thus, Fishman's
III
III (1978) research on casual conversations found an asymmetrical "division of
•
CI
labor" in talk between heterosexual intimates. Women had to ask more ques-
III tions, fill more silences, and use more attention-getting beginnings in order
•...
III
to be heard. Her conclusions are particularly pertinent here:
...•
III Since interactional work is related to what constitutes being a woman,
III
• with what a woman is, the idea that it is work is obscured. The work
CI
III
is not seen as what women do, but as part of what they are. (405)
We would argue that it is precisely such labor that helps to constitute the
essential nature of women as women in interactional contexts (West and
Zimmerman 1983; but see also Kollock, Blumstein, and Schwartz 1985).
Individuals have many social identities that may be donned or shed,
muted or made more salient, depending on the situation. One may be a
friend, spouse, professional, citizen, and many other things to many differ-
ent people--or, to the same person at different times. But we are always
women or men-unless we shift into another sex category. What this means
is that our identificatory displays will provide an ever-available resource for
doing gender under an infinitely diverse set of circumstances.
Some occasions are organized to routinely display and celebrate behav-
iors that are conventionally linked to one or the other sex category. On such
occasions, everyone knows his or her place in the interactional scheme of
things. If an individual identified as a member of one sex category engages
in behavior usually associated with the other category, this routinization is
challenged. Hughes (1945) provides an illustration of such a dilemma:
[A] young woman ... became part of that virile profession, engineer-
ing. The designer of an airplane is expected to go up on the maiden
flight of the first plane built according to the design. He [sic] then
gives a dinner to the engineers and workmen who worked on the new
plane. The dinner is naturally a ~tag party. The young woman in ques-
tion designed a plane. Her co-workers urged her not to take the
risk-for which, presumably, men only are fit--of the maiden voyage.
They were, in effect, asking her to be a lady instead of an engineer.
She chose to be an engineer. She then gave the party and paid for it
like a man. Mter food and the first round of toasts, she left like a
lady. (356)
On this occasion, parties reached an accommodation that allowed a woman

to engage in presumptively masculine behaviors. However, we note that in
the end, this compromise permitted demonstration of her "essential" femi-
ninity, through accountably "ladylike" behavior.
Hughes (1945) suggests that such contradictions may be countered by
managing interactions on a very narrow basis, for example, "keeping the
relationship formal and specific" (357). But the heart of the matter is that
even-perhaps, especially-if the relationship is a formal one, gender is still
something one is accountable for. Thus a woman physician (notice the spe-
cial qualifier in her case) may be accorded respect for her skill and even
addressed by an appropriate tide. Nonetheless, she is subject to evaluation
in terms of normative conceptions of appropriate attitudes and activities for
her sex category and under pressure to prove that she is an "essentially" fem-
15
inine being, despite appearances to the contrary (West 1984,97-101). Her
sex category is used to discredit her participation in important clinical activ-
ities (Lorber 1984), while her involvement in medicine is used to discredit
her commitment to her responsibilities as a wife and mother (Bourne and
Wilder 1978). Simultaneously, her exclusion from the physician colleague
community is maintained and her accountability as a woman is ensured.
In this context, "role conflict" can be viewed as a dynamic aspect of our
current "arrangement between the sexes" (Goffman 1977), an arrangement
that provides for occasions on which persons of a particular sex category can
"see" quite clearly that they are out of place and that if they were not there,
their current troubles would not exist. What is at stake is, from the stand-
point of interaction, the management of our "essential" natures, and from
the standpoint of the individual, the continuing accomplishment of gender.
If, as we have argued, sex category is omnirelevant, then any occasion, con-
flicted or not, offers the resources for doing gender.
We have sought to show that sex category and gender are managed
properties of conduct that are contrived with respect to the fact that oth-
ers will judge and respond to us in particular ways. We have claimed that
a person's gender is not simply an aspect of what one is, but, more funda-
mentally, it is something that one does, and does recurrently, in interaction
with others.
What are the consequences of this theoretical formulation? If, for
example, individuals strive to achieve gender in encounters with others, how
does a culture instill the need to achieve it? What is the relationship
between the production of gender at the level of interaction and such insti-
tutional arrangements as the division oflabor in society? And, perhaps most
important, how does doing gender contribute to the subordination of
women by men?
RESEARCH AGENDAS
III To bring the social production of gender under empirical scrutiny, we might
'Z"'
III
begin at the beginning, with a reconsideration of the process through which
III:
societal members acquire the requisite categorical apparatus and other skills
......
III
to become gendered human beings .

ell
"oz RECRUITMENT TO GENDER IDENTITIES

ell The conventional approach to the process of becoming girts and boys has
ri been sex role socialization. In recent years, recurring problems arising from
III
ell
Z this approach have been linked to inadequacies in role theory per se-its
III
emphasis on "consensus, stability and continuity" (Stacey and Thorne 1985,
"
"
z
o
307), its ahistorical and depoliticizing focus (Stacey and Thorne 1985;
ell
Thorne 1980), and the fact that its "social" dimension relies on "a general
16
assumption that people choose to maintain existing customs" (Connell
1985,263).
In contrast, Cahill (1982, 1986a, 1986b) analyzes the experiences of pre-
school children using a social model of recruitment into normally gendered
identities. Cahill argues that categorization practices are fundamental to learn-
ing and displaying feminine and masculine behavior. Initially, he observes,
children are primarily concerned with distinguishing between themselves and
others on the basis of social competence. Categorically, their concern resolves
itself into the opposition of"girl/boy" classification versus "baby" classification
(the latter designating children whose social behavior is problematic and who
must be closely supervised). It is children's concern with being seen as socially
competent that evokes their initial claims to gender identities.
During the exploratory stage of children's socialization ... they learn

that only two social identities are routinely available to them, the
identity of "baby," or, depending on the configuration of their external
genitalia, either "big boy" or "big girl." Moreover, others subtly inform
them that the identity of "baby" is a discrediting one. When, for
example, children engage in disapproved behavior, they are often told
"You're a baby" or "Be a big boy." In effect, these typical verbal
responses to young children's behavior convey to them that they must
behaviorally choose between the discrediting identity of "baby" and
their anatomically determined sex identity. (1986a, 175)
Subsequently, little boys appropriate the gender ideal of "efficacious-

ness," that is, being able to affect the physical and social environment
through the exercise of physical strength or appropriate skills. In contrast,
little girls learn to value "appearance," that is, managing themselves as orna-
mental objects. Both classes of children learn that the recognition and use
of sex categorization in interaction are not optional, but mandatory (see also
Bern 1983).
Being a "girl" or a "boy," then, is being not only more competent than a
"baby," but also being competently female or male, that is, learning to pro-
duce behavioral displays of one's "essential" female or male identity. In this
respect, the task of four- to five-year-old children is very similar to Agnes's.
For example, the following interaction occurred on a preschool play-

ground. A 55-month-old boy (D) was attempting to unfasten the
clasp of a necklace when a preschool aide walked over to him.
A: Do you want to put that on?

D: No. It's for girls.
S7
A: You don't have to be a girl to wear things around your neck.
Kings wear things around their necks. You could pretend you're a
king.
D: I'm not a king. I'm a boy. (Cahill, 1986a, 176)
As Cahill notes of this example, although D may have been unclear as to

the sex status of a king's identity, he was obviously aware that necklaces are
used to announce the identity "girl." Having claimed the identity "boy" and
having developed a behavioral commitment to it, he was leery of any dis-
play that might furnish grounds for questioning his claim.
In this way, new members of society come to be involved in a seif-
regulating process as they begin to monitor their: own and others' conduct
with regard to its gender implications. The "recruitment" process involves
not only the appropriation of gender ideals (by the valuation of those ideals
as proper ways of being and behaving) but also gender identities that are
important to individuals and that they strive to maintain. Thus gender dif-
ferences, or the sociocultural shaping of "essential female and male natures,"
achieve the status of objective facts. They are rendered as normal, natural
features of persons and provide the tacit rationale for differing fates of
women and men within the social order.
Additional studies of children's play activities as routine occasions for
the expression of gender-appropriate behavior can yield new insights into
how our "essential natures" are constructed. In particular, the transition
from what Cahill (1986a) terms "apprentice participation" in the sex-
segregated worlds that are common among elementary school children to
"bona fide participation" in the heterosocial world so frightening to adoles-
cents is likely to be a keystone in our understanding of the recruitment
process (Thorne 1986; Thorne and Luria 1986).
GENDER AND THE DIVISION OF LABOR

III Whenever people face issues of allocation-who is to do what, get what,
•'"
III
plan or execute action, direct or be directed-incumbency in significant
...•
III
...
social categories such as "female" and "male" seems to become pointedly rel-
evant. How such issues are resolved conditions the exhibition, dramatiza-
III
CD tion, or celebration of one's "essential nature" as a woman or man.
•o Fenstermaker Berk (1985) offers elegant demonstration of this point in
III her investigation of the allocation of household labor and the attitudes of
•
III
III
married couples toward the division of household tasks. Fenstermaker Berk
•
III
CD
found little variation in either the actual distribution of tasks or perceptions
of equity in regard to that distribution. Wives, even when employed outside
CD
• the home, do the vast majority of household and child-care tasks. Moreover,
o both wives and husbands tend to perceive this as a "fair" arrangement.
III
sa
Noting the failure of conventional sociological and economic theories to
explain this seeming contradiction, Fenstermaker Berk contends that some-
thing more complex is involved than rational arrangements for the produc-
tion of household goods and services.
Hardly a question simply of who has more time, or whose time is

worth more, who has more skill or more power, it is clear that a com-
plicated relationship between the structure of work imperatives and
the structure of normative expectations attached to work as gendered
determines the ultimate allocation of members' time to work and
home. (195-6)
She notes, for example, that the most important factor influencing wives'
contribution of labor is the total amount of work demanded or expected
by the household; such demands had no bearing on husbands' contribu-
tions. Wives reported various rationales (their own and their husbands)
that justified their level of contribution and, as a general matter, under-
scored the presumption that wives are essentially responsible for house-
hold production.
Fenstermaker Berk contends that it is difficult to see how people "could
rationally establish the arrangements that they do solely for the production
of household goods and services"-much less how people could consider
them fair. She argues that our current arrangements for the domestic divi-
sion of labor support two production processes: household goods and serv-
ices (meals, clean children, and so on) and, at the same time, gender. & she
puts it,
Simultaneously, members "do" gender, as they "do" housework and

child care, and what (has) been called the division of labor provides
for the joint production of household labor and gender; it is the
mechanism by which both the material and symbolic products of the
household are realized. (201)
It is not simply that household labor is designated as "women's work," but

that for a woman to engage in it and a man not to engage in it is to draw
on and exhibit the "essential nature" of each. What is produced and repro-
duced is not merely the activity and artifact of domestic life, but the mate-
rial embodiment of wifely and husbandly roles, and derivatively, of
womanly and manly conduct (see Beer 1983). What are also frequently
produced and reproduced are the dominant and subordinate statuses of
the sex categories.
How does gender get done in work settings outside the home, where
19
dominance and subordination are themes of overarching importance?
Hochschild's (1983a) analysis of the work of flight attendants offers some
promising insights. She found that the occupation of flight attendant con-
sisted of something altogether different for women than for men,
As the company's main shock absorbers against "mishandled" passen-

gers, their own feelings are more frequently subjected to rough treat-
ment. In addition, a day's exposure to people who resist authority in
a woman is a different experience than it is for a man .... In this
respect, it is a disadvantage to be a woman. And in this case, they are
not simply women in the biological sense. They are also a highly visi-
ble distillation of middle-class American notions of femininity. They
symbolize Woman. Insofar as the category "female" is mentally asso-
ciated with having less status and authority, female flight attendants
are more readily classified as "really" females than other females are.
(175)
In performing what Hochschild terms the "emotional labor" necessary to

maintain airline profits, women flight attendants simultaneously produce
enactments of their "essential" femininity.
SEX AND SEXUALITY

What is the relationship between doing gender and a culture's prescription
of "obligatory heterosexuality" (Rich 1980; Rubin 1975)? As Frye (1983,
22) observes, the monitoring of sexual feelings in relation to other appro-
priately sexed persons requires the ready recognition of such persons "before
one can allow one's heart to beat or one's blood to flow in erotic enjoyment
of that person." The appearance of heterosexuality is produced through
emphatic and unambiguous indicators of one's sex, layered on in ever more
inclusive fashion (Frye 1983). Thus, lesbians and gay men concerned with
III
1.1
passing as heterosexuals can rely on these indicators of camouflage; in con-
•
III
trast, those who would avoid the assumption of heterosexuality may foster
•...
III ambiguous indicators of their categorical status through their dress, behav-
... iors, and style. But "ambiguous" sex indicators are sex indicators nonethe-
A
III less. If one wishes to be recognized as a lesbian (or as a heterosexual
•o woman), one must first establish a categorical status as female. Even as pop-
a ular images portray lesbians as "females who are not feminine" (Frye 1983,
•
III
A
29), the accountability of persons for their "normal, natural sexedness" is
•
III
III
preserved.
Nor is accountability threatened by the existence of "sex-change oper-
III
•
o
ations"-presumably, the most radical challenge to our cultural perspective
a on sex and gender. Although no one coerces transsexuals into hormone
ao
therapy, electrolysis, or surgery, the alternatives available to them are unde-
niably constrained.
When the transsexual experts maintain that they use transsexual pro-
cedures only with people who ask for them, and who prove that they
can "pass," they obscure the social reality. Given patriarchy's prescrip-
tion that one must be either masculine or feminine, free choice is con-
ditioned. (Raymond 1979, 135, italics added)
The physical reconstruction of sex criteria pays ultimate tribute to the

"essentialness" of our sexual natures-as women or as men.
GENDER, POWER, AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Let us return to the question: Can we avoid doing gender? Earlier, we pro-
posed that insofar as inclusion in a sex category is used as a fundamental cri-
terion for differentiation, doing gender is unavoidable. It is unavoidable
because of the social consequences of sex category membership: the alloca-
tion of power and resources not only in the domestic, economic, and polit-
ical domains but also in the broad arena of interpersonal relations. In
virtually any situation, one's sex category can be relevant, and one's per-
formance as an incumbent of that category (i.e., gender) can be subjected to
evaluation. Maintaining such pervasive and faithful assignment of lifetime
status requires legitimation.
But doing gender also renders the social arrangements based on sex cat-
egory accountable as normal and natural, that is, legitimate ways of organiz-
ing social life. Differences between women and men that are created by this
process can then be portrayed as fundamental and enduring dispositions. In
this light, the institutional arrangements of a society can be seen as responsive
to the differences-the social order being merely an accommodation to the
natural order. Thus if, in doing gender, men are also doing dominance and
women are doing deference (C£ Goffman 1967), the resultant social order,
which supposedly reflects "natural differences," is a powerful reinforcer and
legitimator of hierarchical arrangements. Frye (1983) observes,
For efficient subordination, what's wanted is that the structure not

appear to be a cultural artifact kept in place by human decision or cus-
tom, but that it appear natural-that it appear to be quite a direct conse-
quence of facts about the beast which are beyond the scope of human
manipulation .... That we are trained to behave so differently as women
and men, and to behave so differently toward women and men, itself
contributes mightily to the appearance of extreme dimorphism, but also,
the ways we act as women and men, and the ways we act toward women
and men, mold our bodies and our minds to the shape of subordination
and dominance. We do become what we practice being. (34)
If we do gender appropriately, we simultaneously sustain, reproduce, and

render legitimate the institutional arrangements that are based on sex cate-
gory. If we fail to do gender appropriately, we as individuals-not the insti-
tutional arrangements-may be called to account (for our character,
motives, and predispositions).
Social movements such as feminism can provide the ideology and impe-
tus to question existing arrangements, and the social support for individuals
to explore alternatives to them. Legislative changes, such as that proposed by
the Equal Rights Amendment, can also weaken the accountability of conduct
to sex category, thereby affording the possibility of more widespread loosen-
ing of accountability in general. To be sure, equality under the law does not
guarantee equality in other arenas. As Lorber (1986) points out, assurance of
"scrupulous equality of categories of people considered essentially different
needs constant monitoring" (577). What such proposed changes can do is
provide the warrant for asking why, if we wish to treat women and men as
equals, there need be two sex categories at all (see Lorber 1986).
The sex category/gender relationship links the institutional and inter-
actionallevels, a coupling that legitimates social arrangements interaction.
Doing gender furnishes the interactional scaffolding of social structure,
along with a built-in mechanism of social control. In appreciating the insti-
tutional forces that maintain distinctions between women and men, we
must not lose sight of the interactional validation of those distinctions that
confers upon them their sense of "naturalness" and "rightness."
Social change, then, must be pursued both at the institutional and cul-
tural level of sex category and at the interactional level of gender. Such a
conclusion is hardly novel. Nevertheless, we suggest that it is important to
recognize that the analytical distinction between institutional and interac-
III
IJ
tional spheres does not pose an either/or choice when it comes to the ques-
Z
III
tion of effecting social change. Reconceptualizing gender not as a simple
•...
III property of individuals but as an integral dynamic of social orders implies a
... new perspective on the entire network of gender relations, comprising
the social subordination of women, and the cultural practices which

help sustain it; the politics of sexual object-choice, and particularly the
oppression of homosexual people; the sexual division of labor, the for-
mation of character and motive, so far as they are organized as femi-
ninity and masculinity; the role of the body in social relations,
especially the politics of childbirth; and the nature of strategies of sex-
ualliberation movements. (Conne111985, 261)
22
Gender is a powerful ideological device that produces, reproduces, and ~
legitimates the choices and constraints that are predicated on sex category. ~.
An understanding of how gender is produced in social situations will afford ~
clarification of the interactional scaffolding of social structure and the social !t
control processes that sustain it.
NOTES
1. The original version of this chapter was published in 1987 in Gender & Society, 1: 124-51.
That article was based in part on a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American
Sociological Association, Chicago, September 1977.
2. This definition understates many complexities involved in the relationship between biology
and culture (Jaggar 1983). However, our point is that the determination of an individual's sex clas-
sification is a social process through and through.
3. This is not to say that gender is a singular "thing," omnipresent in the same form historically
or in every situation. Because normative conceptions of appropriate attitudes and activities for sex
categories can vary across cultures and historical moments, the management of situated conduct in
light of those expectations can take many different forms.
4. Bernstein (1986) reports an unusual case of espionage in which a man passing as a woman
convinced a lover that he/she had given birth to "their" child, who, the lover thought, "looked like"
him.
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DOING GENDER,

NEW YORK· LONDON

Published in Great Britain by

Roudedge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group.

Transferred to Digital Printing 2009

Copyright © 2002 by Roudedge.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

HQ1075 .D65 2002

SECTION I THEORETICAL FORMULATION, CRITICISM, AND RESPONSE

2. Gender Inequality: New Conceptual Terrain 25

3. Power, Inequality, and the Accomplishment of Gender: An 41

5. Symposium on West and Fenstermaker's "Doing Difference" 81

SECTION II EMPIRICAL APPLICATIONS

6. Work and Gender {from The Gender Factory) !O5

7· Accountingfor Cosmetic Surgery: The Accomplishment II9

8. Accountability and Affirmative Action: The Accomplishment 141

9· "Doing Gender" Differently: Institutional Change in 16 9

SECTION III THEORETICAL ELABORATIONS

10. Performance and Accomplishment: Reconciling Feminist 18 9

II. "Doing Difference" Revisited: Problems, Prospects, and the 20 5

CONCLUSION Central Problematics: An Agenda for Feminist Sociology 21 7

Vancouver, British Columbia

SARAH FENSTERMAKER AND CANDACE WEST

Rather than as a property of individuals, we conceive ofgender as an

THEORETICAL FORMULATION, CRITICISM, AND RESPONSE

When we view gender as an accomplishment, an achieved property ofsitu-

"Gender Inequality: New Conceptual Terrain" (chapter 3 in this volume)

In this light, the institutional arrangements of a society can be seen as

Chapters 4, 5, and 6 represent a new line of argument and a substantial

wecontend that the "doing" ofgender is undertaken by women and men

Gender is fundamental, institutionalized, and enduring: yet because mem-

Chapters 11 and 12 are attempts to reflect upon some underdeveloped fea-

An understanding ofhow gender is produced in social situations will afford

CANDACE WEST AND DON H. ZIMMERMAN

PERSPECTIVES ON SEX AND GENDER

If gender be defined as the culturally established correlates of sex

These gendered expressions might reveal clues to the underlying, fun-

SEX, SEX CATEGORY, AND GENDER

This issue reminds me of a visit I made to a computer store a couple

GENDER AND ACCOUNTABILITY

[This] permits actors to design their actions in relation to their cir-

RESOURCES FOR DOING GENDER

the functioning of sex-differentiated organs is involved, but there is

Standardized social occasions also provide stages for evocations of the

On this occasion, parties reached an accommodation that allowed a woman

to become gendered human beings .

"oz RECRUITMENT TO GENDER IDENTITIES

During the exploratory stage of children's socialization ... they learn

Subsequently, little boys appropriate the gender ideal of "efficacious-

For example, the following interaction occurred on a preschool play-

A: Do you want to put that on?

As Cahill notes of this example, although D may have been unclear as to

GENDER AND THE DIVISION OF LABOR

Hardly a question simply of who has more time, or whose time is

Simultaneously, members "do" gender, as they "do" housework and

It is not simply that household labor is designated as "women's work," but

As the company's main shock absorbers against "mishandled" passen-

In performing what Hochschild terms the "emotional labor" necessary to

SEX AND SEXUALITY

The physical reconstruction of sex criteria pays ultimate tribute to the

GENDER, POWER, AND SOCIAL CHANGE

For efficient subordination, what's wanted is that the structure not

If we do gender appropriately, we simultaneously sustain, reproduce, and

the social subordination of women, and the cultural practices which