Gender Status
Gender status – a distinction should be made between collective gender status and individual gender status.
Collective gender status determines the position occupied in society by an entire sex/gender group, such as women, depending on the prevailing system of power relations, cultural norms, and religious beliefs. Thus, in a patriarchal society, women’s collective gender status is structurally lower than that of men.
Individual gender status directly depends on the extent to which a person’s way of life, forms of self-realization, and patterns of behavior correspond to the generally accepted gender standards of a particular society. It is the position that an individual occupies in the social hierarchy relative to others, depending on the extent to which they consciously or unconsciously, voluntarily or involuntarily, uphold or disregard the socially recognized sociocultural and symbolic construct associated with their sex/gender.
An individual’s gender status is influenced by both external and intrapersonal factors. External factors take the form of specific standards and behavioral patterns prescribed for women and men within a particular sociocultural environment. Intrapersonal factors determine the extent to which an individual’s actual behavior corresponds to socially accepted models of femininity and masculinity.
Within a social order that rewards conformity to conventional gender norms, the closer a person’s actual behavior is to the behavior expected of them, the higher their status may be within their sex/gender group and, as a rule, the greater the approval they may receive from members of another sex/gender group (Shevchenko, 2015, pp. 44–45).
See also: Gender Order, Gender Role, Gender Norms, Gender Hierarchy, Gender Inequality.
References:
Shevchenko, Z. V. (2016). Gendernyi status [Gender status]. In Z. V. Shevchenko (Comp.), Slovnyk gendernykh terminiv [Dictionary of gender terms] (pp. 76–77). Cherkasy: Chabanenko Yu. [in Ukrainian]
Shevchenko, Z. V. (2015). Gendernyi status yak element sotsialnoi iierarkhii [Gender status as an element of social hierarchy]. In Ekolohiia vizualnosti: Stratehii, kontsepty, proekty. Materialy IV Vseukrainskoi naukovo-praktychnoi konferentsii, 8–10 zhovtnia 2015 roku [Ecology of visuality: Strategies, concepts, projects. Proceedings of the Fourth All-Ukrainian Scientific and Practical Conference, October 8–10, 2015]. Cherkasy. [in Ukrainian]
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