Feminism and Social Structures
While multi-ethnic feminism focuses on the effects of location in the system of granting or not granting benefits, and Femenism of men focus on hierarchical relations between men and other men and women, social constructive feminism looks at the structure of the gender-based social system as a whole. Gender is seen as an institution at the community level that permeates all major sociall organizations. As a social institution, gender determines the distribution of power, privileges and economic resources. Standards and stereotyped expectations of self-perceptions of men and women as certain types of human beings as specific ways of working and organizing them and for family life without thinking, analysis or accountability of these standards and expectations. Feminist constructivism sees inequality as the essence of gender itself: women and men are socially heterogeneous in order to justify their unequal treatment. Thus, despite gender overlap with other inequalities, addressing the gender part of inequality structures may be more difficult, since gender is very widespread. In fact, this sweeping spread is what leads many people to believe that these genders are biological, and therefore "normal".
Social constructive feminism focuses on processes that create gender differences and make gender composition invisible at the same time. Examples of common social processes that encourage us to engage in and ignore gender differences are the division of labor in the home that allocates child care and domestic chores to women; gender segregation in professions and wages; the justification for masculine and "natural" feminine characteristics; selective comparisons that ignore similarities, It is the case of separate sports competitions for men and women; the containment, repression and suppression of inappropriate behavior and manifestations, such as aggression in women and affection in men. Social feminism says that both male and female biases based on biological and physiological sex are produced and communicated through social processes. Hormonal and hormonal ambiguity is ignored or exceeded in the sex classification of infants, and the gender of sport and physical effort ignores the interferences of strength and muscle structure.
From the social constructive feminism's perspective, gender differentiation, acceptance of gender behavior and specific appearance, and non-approval of deviations from predetermined criteria are manifestations of power and social control. Religion, law and medicine reinforce the boundaries between women and men and repress gender differences through moral blame and stigmatization, such as identifying improper behavior as wrong, illegal and insane. Social feminism also analyzes the cultural and historical context in which gender is identified and aged. What are the approved, permitted and forbidden sexual behaviors for women and men and for social groups and their transformations over time and place.
Gender, from this perspective, is the product of learning, social pressures and cultural values. Legal sanctions, job loss and violence support the Guerrero social system, defeating any individual attempts at resistance and rebellion. However, most people are willingly compatible with their society's gender-related prescriptions, because standards and expectations have been embedded in their personal sense of value and identity as a natural imperative.
Even transsexuals (male and female) and transgender people (people who have undergone sex change surgery) try to act as "normal" men and women. So men who tend to change clothes prefer to wear very feminine-looking clothes, and male converts use hormones to enlarge the breasts. Because men's clothing in the modern West is acceptable to women, there is no problem with female transgenders and gender rebels to be acceptable.
The authority of social construction is clear, not only in the generosity of bodies and clothing, but in what happens in the work and roles of the family. Male-to-female converts found that the jobs they occupied as females were lower than men. Married men who wear women's clothing at home do not do housework while they are wearing women's clothing. Moreover, all identity papers of transsexuals, from birth certificates to passports, must be re-issued with their gender and their new name. Transgender couples must obtain a divorce because two women and two men can not be married legally.
Gender change is changing one's basic social status. From the feminist point of view, this gender-based social system must mean a conscious rearrangement of the division of labor between gendarmes in the family and at work, while undermining assumptions about the capabilities of women and men that justify the status quo. This change is unlikely to occur unless the gender-based social institution and its social structure are exposed to a flagrant challenge that threatens its pervasive prevalence. But since gender operations are often invisible, where do we start? With personal awareness and attitude change, or restructuring of social institutions and behavior change? Certainly, both individuals and institutions need to be changed to achieve gender equality, but it may be impossible to do them at once and at the same time.
Social constructive feminism is facing a political dilemma. If political activities focus on individuals' understanding of gender limitations and expectations and encourage their resistance in every aspect of their lives, this will not necessarily change the social structure. If the focus is on the structure of labor organizations and governments in a way that ensures equality between genders, it will not necessarily change the gender standards of individuals.
This is a real dilemma in the theory of social structure - building individuals and maintaining standards, expectations and patterns of behavior that become institutionalized, but existing institutions restrict the extent of permissible differences and individual and collective differences. Individualized social actions and institutional structures are adopted and mutually reinforcing. For this reason, social constructivism recognizes that there is always a change, but it is usually slow - and may not be in the direction of gender equality - such as change towards reactionary and fundamentalism as has happened recently and in more than one place.
© 2019 Oussema Ben Romdhane