Structural Functionalist Theories of Gender Inequality

Structural functionalists posit that gender roles arise from the need to establish a division of labor that will help maintain the smooth running of the family and concomitantly contribute to the stability of society. In this view, girls and boys are taught different approaches to life. Boys are taught instrumentality—that is, to be goal oriented, to focus on tasks, and to be concerned for the relationship of the family to outside societal structures. Girls, on the other hand, are taught to be expressive—that is, to express their emotions and to look for and react to the emotions of others. In many ways, the functionalist perspective of gender equality is a product of its times, describing the realities of gender roles and inequalities of the 1950s but not explaining them. However, the functionalist perspective is less useful for describing the realities of gender in the postindustrial age, in which many women work outside the home, men can stay at home with the children, and everyone helps with the housework. More research is needed in order to gain a better understanding of the role of gender in twenty-first-century society and how the changing requirements of the postindustrial age affect these roles and the stability they enforce on society.

Keywords Expressiveness; Functionalism; Gender; Gender Inequality; Gender Role; Instrumentality; Postindustrial; Society

Sex, Gender & Sexuality > Structural Functionalist Theories of Gender Inequality

Overview

Gender inequality can be defined as the existence of disparities among individuals based solely on their gender rather than objective differences in skills, abilities, or other characteristics. Gender inequality may be obvious (e.g., not receiving the same pay for the same job) or subtle (e.g., not being given the same subjective opportunities for advancement). Although there are US federal laws in place that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex and that require equal pay for equal work regardless of one's gender, on average, men continue to be paid more money than women in the United States. Women are also often victims of gender stratification, or the hierarchical organization of a society in such a way that members of one gender have more access to wealth, prestige, and power than do the members of the other gender. However, gender inequality is not an issue confined to the United States or other developed countries: It occurs in societies and cultures around the world. Gender inequality is a matter of social justice and human rights wherever it occurs. However, in many developing countries, it is even more so as women are marginalized and thought of as second-class citizens. In fact, gender inequality is so important that it is included in the Millennium Development Goals developed by the United Nations. While it is known that gender inequality exists, why it exists is not completely understood. As a complex issue with many underlying determinants, there are a number of different perspectives on why it occurs. It is important to investigate these differing perspectives as each provides different suggestions for solving the gender inequality problem. The structural functionalist perspective is one such view that highlights some theories as to why gender inequality occurs; these are discussed in the following paragraphs.

Structural Functionalism & Gender Inequality

Structural functionalists attempt to explain the nature of social order and the relationship between the various parts (structures) in society by examining the functionality of each to determine how it contributes to the stability of society as a whole. Although theorists using other perspectives argue that gender differentiation is bad for society in general and women in particular because it keeps women from reaching their potential and contributing fully to society, from the functionalist perspective, gender differentiation contributes to the stability of a society. Gender roles, in this view, arise from the need to establish a division of labor within the family. Because of their biological role in childbirth and breastfeeding, women in virtually every culture and society around the planet have the primary responsibility for child care. Similarly, men have traditionally had the responsibilities for hunting and waging war because of their relatively greater size and strength.

Socialization

Through the socialization process, these roles are taught to succeeding generations. Although in modern times there are other options for feeding an infant and many jobs require brain power more than muscle power, this differentiation between gender roles has become ingrained to a great degree. Through socialization, individuals learn to differentiate between what the society regards as acceptable versus unacceptable behavior and act in a manner that is appropriate for the needs of the society. The family (and, later, the larger society) begins teaching gender roles almost immediately after birth. For example, most infant girls are held more gently and treated more tenderly than are infant boys. As the child grows older, both mothers and fathers usually play more roughly with little boys than with little girls. As children, little boys are typically also allowed to roam a wider territory without permission than are little girls, and boys are typically expected to run errands earlier than are girls.

Worldview

In addition, through the socialization process, boys and girls are frequently taught different worldviews. For example, sons are typically told that "real boys don't cry" and encouraged to control their softer emotions, while girls are taught not to fight and not to show anger or aggression. Functionalists refer to these different worldviews as instrumentality and expressiveness.

• Instrumentality is a worldview that includes an emphasis on tasks, a focus on long-term goals, and concern for the relationship between one's family and other social institutions. To teach this attitude, for example, boys may be taught to be goal-oriented by encouraging them to participate in team sports in which they compete and strive to win or to build models or other long-term projects where gratification is not immediate.
• Expressiveness, on the other hand, is a worldview that includes a concern for maintaining harmony and emotional affairs internal to the family. Girls are typically taught to be more emotion-oriented (as opposed to emotional) than boys. For example, girls are often taught how to express their emotions and to look for and react to the emotions of others.

The socialization process of gender roles can be so subtle that when the disparity between the way they teach and treat their daughters and sons is pointed out to many parents, they often respond that the sexes are naturally different not only biologically but behaviorally as well. According to the functionalist perspective, these divergent ways of interacting with the world are mutually supportive. For example, by being expressive and maintaining a harmonious home and family life, women free men from such responsibilities, thereby enabling them to go out into the world and focus on long-term tasks and goals. Similarly, by men having an instrumental outlook and interacting with the larger society, women are freed to focus on creating a harmonious home and family life. Although functionalists do not suggest that such traditional gender roles are the only way in which to bring about a stable society, they posit that traditional roles do have this result.

Parsons & Bales

The functionalist perspective of gender roles with its view of expressive females and instrumental males is based on the work of Parsons and Bales in traditional societies. Part of the concern of these theorists was that if both partners in a marriage worked outside the home, competition could arise and the marriage could be threatened. As a result, they did separate spheres for men and women as a way to preserve the institution of marriage, which they believed was not well supported in urban, industrialized societies. Further, this theory arose during a time in which theories of social stratification assumed that the status of a woman was determined by the status of her husband. Postmodern, postindustrial society no longer accepts this assumption as a given.

Applications

The Functionalist Approach within a Twenty-First-Century Framework

The functionalist perspective of division of labor concerned with instrumental and expressive gender roles was situated in 1950s America, where such traditional roles were de rigueur. In many ways, this perspective of gender roles is a product of its time and, perhaps, less appropriate in the twenty-first-century context, where girls are taught to be goal oriented and participate in sports and boys are taught that it is acceptable to express their emotions. Further, if the functionalist perspective of gender role differentiation were correct, it would be reasonable to expect that all girls and women would be interested in babies and either want to be mothers or to work with children. However, as increasing numbers of women who choose to remain single and childless shows, this is not true.

Similarly, boys and men can lack interest in hard-driving, high-powered roles as executives in the workplace and prefer to work in more expressive endeavors and spend time with their children. If the structural functionalist perspective were followed to its logical conclusion, such a common class of individuals would be forced into roles for which they were not well-suited, thereby negatively affecting their emotional and psychological well-being. Further, although the functionalist perspective attempts to explain the pervasiveness of traditional gender roles, it does not well explain why males should be instrumental and females should be expressive. Similarly, the functionalist perspective does not take into account other cultures in which females are instrumental and males are expressive.

Changing Family Structure & Gender Roles

Hare-Mustin (1988) underscores one of the weaknesses of the functionalist perspective of gender in her discussion of family change and gender differences. She points out that the functionalist view of gender continues to emphasize the separate roles for men and women despite the changing nature of the family in Western society in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Traditionally, most families were patriarchal in nature with a hierarchical structure in which the husband was the head of the household. In such traditional settings, the value of women to the family was their ability to bear and nurture children; the primary value of the children was for their contribution to the family production and, eventually, as caregivers to their aging parents. Family organization was based on specialization by age and gender, predicated on the belief that different types of family members (e.g., males vs. females; young vs. old) were better suited for different kinds of work. In many ways, this specialization was self-sustaining: Men typically disliked doing traditional "women's work" (e.g., housecleaning, doing the dishes, cooking) and women disliked doing traditional "men's work" (e.g., mowing the lawn, fixing the car, paying the bills). However, with the advent of modernization, traditional gender roles began to change. With industrialization, many people sought work in offices, factories, and other organizations, and the home became no longer the center of production. As women began to become an increasingly significant part of the workforce, many women found themselves in a position of either having to renegotiate gender roles or find themselves working a "second shift" as career women in the office and housewives in the home.

Developed vs. Developing Societies

Further, although the historical norms regarding the division of labor between the sexes are similar across cultures, they are based on the needs and realities of less developed societies. To a great extent, these norms are changing in more developed societies. Women are no longer confined by their biology to be physically present with an infant to feed it and ensure its survival. Not only can this task be taken on by other women (e.g., nannies, preschool teachers), but by men as well. Similarly, many of the jobs in industrial and postindustrial societies do not require the physical strength necessary in hunter-gather societies in order to successfully provide for one's family. Jobs in information and service industries, for example, require little more physical strength than the ability to sit up in front of a computer and rely on brain power, not physical power.

Gender Equality at Work & Home

As women earn more gender equality in the workplace, they also tend to look for more gender equality in the home as well. This attitude frequently affects the division of labor for domestic responsibilities. Many postmodern men no longer see housework as "women's work" and have no problem vacuuming the living room or doing the dishes, while the wife pays the bills or finishes writing a document for work. In both cases, the jobs needed for the smooth running of the home get accomplished. Although functionalists posit that traditional gender roles are important for the stability of society, it can be argued that the stability of society depends on the tasks of the various roles being accomplished, not on who accomplishes them. As more women participate in the workforce not only in traditional support roles but in those roles that were once thought to be the sole domain of men, they find that they need different skills and attitudes than are needed for the care of hearth and home. To be a high-level executive in a major corporation, for example, does not require a woman to be expressive. Rather, it requires a goal-oriented, instrumental orientation.

Further, not every woman is married. For some, this is a choice: An increasing number of women are choosing to not get married but to focus on their careers instead. In addition, the high rate of divorce—approximately half of marriages end in separation, divorce, or annulment in the United States—means that a high number of women voluntarily or involuntarily no longer have a man to take the instrumentalist role in the household. Further, increasingly, neither group of women is tending to return to their parents to live but are instead setting up their own households as female head. In these situations, when a woman finds herself in the situation where she is responsible for both the goal-oriented tasks as well as the emotional ones, the gender role is expanded to include both expressiveness and instrumentality so that both the household tasks and the child care tasks are accomplished.

Conclusion

The functionalist perspective of gender roles with its expressive females and instrumental males is a product of its times and its assumptions. Certainly, traditional gender roles in most societies are based on a division of labor in which women stay home and attend to hearth and family, while men go out (whether it be to the hunting ground, agricultural fields, or modern office) and earn a living. However, both for the sake of society and for the sake of the individual and family, it is important that gender roles be flexible so that they can be adapted to changing times of a society, different needs of a family or families, and individual variations in personality and proclivities. It can be argued that the functionalist perspective of gender roles and the concomitant gender inequality that it yields is a description rather than an explanation. Although functionalists do not necessarily imply that traditional gender role paradigms are the only — or even the best — way to ensure the stability of society, they also do not offer alternatives nor do they well consider the changing needs of postindustrial societies. The functionalist perspective was good as far as it went, describing the reality of most families in the United States of the 1950s and reflecting the assumptions of stratification theorists of that time and place. However, the times have changed and the functionalist perspective no longer adequately describes — let alone explains — the realities of contemporary gender roles and gender inequality. More research is needed in order to gain a better understanding of the role of gender in postmodern society and how the changing requirements of the postindustrial age affect these roles and the stability they affect on society.

Terms & Concepts

Economic Development: The sustainable increase in living standards for a nation, region, or society. More than mere economic growth (i.e., a rise in output), economic development is sustainable and positively affects the well-being of all members of the group through such things as increased per capita income, education, health, and environmental protection. Economic development is progressive in nature and positively affects the socioeconomic structure of a society.

Expressiveness: A worldview that includes a concern for maintaining harmony and emotional affairs internal to the family.

Functionalism: A theoretical framework used in sociology that attempts to explain the nature of social order and the relationship between the various parts (structures) in society by examining the functionality of each to determine how it contributes to the stability of society as a whole. Also referred to as structural functionalism.

Gender: Psychological, social, cultural, and behavioral characteristics associated with being female or male. Gender is defined by one's gender identity and learned gender role.

Gender Inequality: Disparities among individuals based solely on their gender rather than objective differences in skills, abilities, or other characteristics. Gender inequalities may be obvious (e.g., not receiving the same pay for the same job) or subtle (e.g., not being given the same subjective opportunities for advancement).

Gender Role: Separate patterns of personality traits, mannerisms, interests, attitudes, and behaviors that are regarded as "male" and "female" by one's culture. Gender role is largely a product of the way in which one was socialized and may not be in conformance with one's gender identity.

Gender Stratification: The hierarchical organization of a society in such a way that members of one gender have more access to wealth, prestige, and power than do the members of the other gender.

Industrialization: The use of mechanization to produce the economic goods and services within a society. Historically, industrialization is a society's transition between farm production and manufacturing production. Industrialization is associated with factory production, division of labor, and the concentration of industries and populations within certain geographical areas and concomitant urbanization.

Instrumentality: A worldview that includes an emphasis on tasks, a focus on long-term goals, and concern for the relationship between one's family and other social institutions.

Patriarchy: A social system (e.g., society or group) in which the male is the head of the family, descent may be traced through the father's side of the family, and men have power over women.

Postindustrial: The nature of a society whose economy is no longer dependent on the manufacture of goods (i.e., industrial) but is primarily based upon the processing and control of information and the provision of services.

Social Stratification: A relatively fixed hierarchical organization of a society in which entire subgroups are ranked according to social class. These divisions are marked by differences in economic rewards and power within the society and different access to resources, power, and perceived social worth. Social stratification is a system of structured social inequality.

Socialization: The process by which individuals learn to differentiate between what the society regards as acceptable versus unacceptable behavior and act in a manner that is appropriate for the needs of the society.

Society: A distinct group of people who live within the same territory, share a common culture and way of life, and are relatively independent from people outside the group. Society includes systems of social interactions that govern both culture and social organization.

Worldview: Broad framework of ideas and beliefs used by an individual, class, or culture to interpret the data received from the world and determine the appropriate way of interacting with the world.

Bibliography

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Suggested Reading

Fulcher, J., & Scott, J. (2003). Theories and theorizing: Sociology moves on. In Sociology (2nd ed.; pp. 63–71). New York: Oxford University Press.

Hall, M. A. (1988). The discourse of gender and sport: From femininity to feminism. Sociology of Sport Journal, 5, 330–340. Retrieved September 11, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=13331080&site=ehost-live

Lorber, J. (2011). Gender inequality: Feminist theories and politics. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Rice, J. K. (1994). Reconsidering research on divorce, family life cycle, and the meaning of family. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 18, 559–584.

Sperling, S. (1991). Baboons with briefcases: Feminism, functionalism, and sociobiology in the evolution of primate gender. Signs, 17, 1–27. Retrieved September 11, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=9112091068&site=ehost-live

Stanworth, C. (2000). Women and work in the information age. Gender, Work and Organizations, 7, 20–32. Retrieved September 11, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=4519173&site=ehost-live

Szelényi, S., & Olvera, J. (1996).The declining significance of class: Does gender complicate the story? Comments. Theory and Society, 25, 725–530. Retrieved September 11, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=9708135536&site=ehost-live

Wharton, A. S. (2012). The sociology of gender: An introduction to theory and research (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Wiley. Retrieved November 8, 2013 from EBSCO online database eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=522159&site=ehost-live