Gender Order
Gender order – a relatively stable organization of gender relations in a society, through which power, status, labour, rights, responsibilities, norms of masculinity and femininity, sexuality, and symbolic representations are distributed between women and men and other gendered positions.
Gender order includes institutional, cultural, symbolic, and everyday practices that define what is considered “normal,” “proper,” or “natural” for women and men in a given society. It may reproduce gender hierarchy and inequality, but it may also change under the influence of social movements, legal reforms, economic transformations, feminist critique, and broader cultural change.
The term is closely connected with the work of R. W. Connell, who used it to describe the society-wide structure of gender relations.
See also: Gender System of Society, Gender Regime, Gender Inequality, Patriarchy.
Reference:
Connell, R. W. (1987). Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
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