Gendered Lives Ch.7 & 8 Becoming Gendered and Gendered Education

In the first of the two chapters Wood delves into the process of "Becoming Gendered" and what factors influence this. The first factor that is brought up is family. I think that family is the biggest influence on becoming gendered because your parents are the first to expose you to gender and society's expectations of them. Parents provide their sons or daughters with toys that clearly reflect their own views of gender upon them.


Boys are typically given cars and encouraged to play rough outside sports which promotes the competitive and less independent side of them while girls on the other hand, are typically given dolls and encouraged to play house which cultivates them to become more nurturing and more valuing of physical closeness and verbal communication. This distinct patter is just on subtle way in which children are influenced by their parents to become gendered.

Wood also states that through rewards and punishments children also learn which gender roles are acceptable and which are not. I do not remember being rewarded much when I was younger but I do remember my mother rewarding my sisters for doing simple tasks with my mother. This goes right along with Chodrow's theory of boys being encouraged to be achieving and independent and girls being encouraged to become nurturing and relationally oriented.

I was always encouraged to play outside and to do outdoor chores like rake the leaves, take the garbage out, help my uncle mow the lawn etc. This gave me a sort of independent feeling being outside alone in charge of a task. I loved it and that drove me towards wanting more freedom and independence. My sisters were always encouraged to be indoors and help out with chores with my mother and not to play outside like I did. They were never given the same freedoms that I received and were made to do different things because that was my mothers views on gendered roles that she had been socialized into following and she only did what she saw as correct.

In the second chapter Wood begins by discussing the biases and pressures males, females and non gender conforming students face within the education. Males do have more energy and usually do have issues restraining themselves in the classrooms at times but I do disagree that males are at a disadvantage in the classroom setting. Above all, I believe that personal choice and home teachings influence a child's success in school. The statistics that Wood provides to show the gap between female and male success in the classroom is about where I expected it to be. I do agree that on average more women complete high school then men.

Gender non-conforming students face the most pressures and biases of them all. It was very interesting to think about what team a trans-girl should be apart of and how it would feel in either locker room. The gender binary system that we have used is the main problem for all of this. In school curricula women are often represented in a stereotypical way. There are never mentions of the females who fought in the wars or women who contributed and assisted to the success of the armies. This gender stereotyped curricula causes students to miss out on crucial parts of our history. Not only are females misrepresented and unrepresented at times, also are all minority groups. In most classes that I have taken prior to college, has mainly been about heterosexual, wealthy white males. At one point when I was very young, I even questioned if any other group of people have done anything worthwhile because I was only taught about the triumphs of the economically advantaged while male.

The last section discussed the disparities in salaries, promotion opportunities and job positions. There is a clear discrimination against women in the workforce as it is shown through the wage gap.(Women make 83 cents to every dollar a man makes.)  This lack of equality in pay for the same duties being performed is outrageous. I'm not sure how the employers of the US can look at themselves as rational human beings.


Discussion Questions:


Why is it taking so long for the wage gap to level out, if there has been an increase in women in the workforce and other laws for women's equality?

Do you thing that transgender students should have their own bathrooms/locker rooms? Should there be gender-less bathrooms?

Do you believe that parents will ever stop influencing a child's gender after birth?

Gendered Lives Chapter 6 -Forms of Gendered Nonverbal Communication

In this chapter Wood outlines the different functions and forms of nonverbal communication. She begins with the 3 main functions that nonverbal communication serves. The three main functions of a nonverbal communication are to supplement verbal communication, regulate interaction and to establish the relationship of meaning.


Nonverbal communication supplements verbal communication in 5 different ways: repeating, contradicting, complementing, replacing and accenting phrases. When you point to something and say what it is that is an example of repeating, which furthers the point you are making. When you say that you are feeling okay but you are doubled over that is how we regularly contradict a verbal message.Giving stern looks or smiles while making statements lets the receiver complements what you are saying to give it a more definite meaning.  Replacing words like "yes" with a nod and "I don't know" with a shrug are common ways we replace verbal messages with nonverbal communication. Lastly when we accentuate a word in a phrase it gives the statement a completely different meaning.
On a daily basis we use nonverbal communication both intentionally and unintentionally to regulate communication. We do this through facial expressions, eye contact and body movements. These things can indicate our disinterest in a conversation, desire to speak, or to signal the conclusion of a statement. Men and women indicate these desires differently. We establish the relationships through communicators through three dimensions of expression. Showing attentiveness through solid eye contact, nodding, attentive body posture are ways that we can show our responsiveness, which is the first dimension of relationship level meaning. The second dimension is liking. We express this through different things like touching, standing close and vocal warmth. These expressions show a liking or acceptance for someone. The last dimension is power or control. Men exert power and control through their voice and the space they take up. Women are less likely to exert these same things as forcefully as men.


Next, Wood goes on to explain the six forms of nonverbal communication.

The first form of nonverbal communication is artifacts. These artifacts are personal objects that expresses identity and influences how we see ourselves and how we want others to view us. These artifacts are things such as toy cars for young boys and dolls for young girls. For adults clothing is an important artifact that signifies what gender we would like to be called, what socioeconomic status we would like to identify with, what group we would like to identify with and so on and so forth. Artifacts are extremely important to human identification.

The second form of nonverbal communication is proximity and personal space. Men and women both operate differently with space. Women tend to take up less space and make them selves smaller whilst men do the opposite by taking up more space make themselves seem larger. Also the notion of power is correlated with space and can be seen through the sizes of office space. More important executives for the most part, have larger offices while secretaries who are less valuable and can be easily replaced usually have a significantly smaller allotment of space.

The third form of nonverbal communication is haptics. From a young age, boys are socialized to associate haptics, or touch, with control and power while girls are socialized to associate haptics with nurturing and nurturing. This explains that men why men, who are generally larger than women , tend to be more willing to use physical force  in a more controlling manner.

The fourth form of nonverbal  communication is kinesics. Kinesics are movements of the face and body. This includes the facial expression a person gives and the body movements a person utilizes. Males are less likely to use facial expressions during conversation while women are more likely to.

The fifth form of nonverbal communication is paralanguage. This consists of all of the different vocal cues a person uses during conversation. Men and women both are socialized to use different paralinguistic systems. There are some emotions that causes for different paralinguistic cues. But we should ask why does our society associate certain different paralanguage with gender? What would our society be without social norms? Would that eliminate the divide between the rights of men and women?

The last form of nonverbal communication is physical appearance. We are influenced now more than ever by media. The media that we are exposed to directly affects how we feel toward certain things. Because the only thing men and women see on TV is fit, muscular people, we tend to feel that we should make ourselves look like that. That is seen as the ideal body type and in order to feel attractive , we should look like that. Typically women more than men, tend to allow issues with their appearance affect their self esteem.


In conclusion, Wood summarizes the approaches to nonverbal communication and provides information to allow readers to critically analyze the patterns of socialized gender in nonverbal communication. I found myself thinking about the ways in which I perform gender and how I see others perform it as well. It is important to note how everything that people do is socialized. We are all so interwoven into this system that controls our train of thought.

Gendered Verbal Communication Ch. 5

In this Chapter Wood outlines and describes how language reflects and reinforces our views on gender.

The first connection that Wood makes between language and gender is that "Male generic language excludes women." This idea is true and can be seen in most of our daily conversations today. We tend to refer to jobs and positions with terms that are only male inclusive. For example, terms such as fireman, congressman, spokesman, mankind, mailman and a plethora of other terms have the word "man" in them. By association, one can infer that these terms signify jobs that only men can have. But this is definitely not the case. It is very important for us to all gravitate towards using more gender neutral statements that is inclusive to everyone such as spokesperson, police officer, humankind etc. 

The second connection that Wood makes is that "Language defines men and women differently." Men are typically defined by activities they participate in, accomplishments they receive, and the positions they hold. on the other hand, women are typically defined by their relationships with others and their physical appearance. When in athletic competitions, I found it egregious to find out that commentators mostly comment on the appearance of the woman and her outfit. It is appalling to know that that occurs and we dont do anything about it. Commentators should strictly only comment about the skills and the progress of the match rather than her appearance. During men's competitions or matches, they only comment on the play of the athletes so why deviate when it comes to women?

The third connection that Wood makes is that "Language shapes awareness of gendered issues." This section describes how things have meaning once we name them. If we don't acknowledge something and name it then its existence is questioned. The example of sexual harassment was brought up. through this we could see that until not long ago sexual harassment didn't really exist. Even though it actually occurred it was hard to describe and point out because there wasn't a name given to it. Once it was given a name it is now something that we are all aware of now. 

The fourth connection that Wood makes is that "Language organizes perceptions of gender." Two ways in which this occurs is through stereotyping and through polarized thinking. We have stereotypes of men and of women that causes our perception of gender to be skewed. We stereotype all women to be emotional and weak while we stereotype all men to be overly masculine and emotionless. When we meet someone that does not live up to the stereotype that we perceive we then describe them using terms with negative connotations. This polarized thinking is a way of thinking that causes us to think that everything is polar opposites Like right and wrong, heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual, to name a few. These statements are untrue and are not sensitive to our understanding of gender because there are people who don't identify with these and they might list themselves somewhere in the middle, but is it our right to judge and be insensitive?

The fifth connection is that "Language evaluates gender." We as a society, tend to give women nicknames and call women by names that is trivializing and juvenile. Associating women with such things like cupcake, baby doll etc. make women out to be items and animals rather than the humans that they are. Language we use to define men and women are drastically different and they have many different inherent meanings. For example, the use of language towards  men who frequently have sex and women who frequently have sex are completely polar. Men who have sex very often are referred to as "studs" and "man whores" whilst women are referred to as "sluts."

The last connection that Wood makes is that "Language allows self reflection . This is something that changes over tine and we are forced to live up to standards of the ideals of celebrities that we see on a daily basis. This in turn causes both men and women to alter their bodies from a younger age to attain these ideals.

The second section of the chapter explains how both men and women are socialized into different groups and how these different groups go about and view communication. Women tend to be more passive when speaking and have conversations that are more responsive and supportive. Men are more assertive and commanding when speaking and therefore tend to interrupt more often and speak more. Also men are socialized to be competitive and have a need to assert dominance in conversation.

Through these we can see how language has shaped how we act on a day- to-day basis and how powerful of a tool is in our lives. We should be more conscious with our words and be mindful of what we are implying when we make certain statements.

I found this chapter pretty interesting. Prior to this, I've begun to notice how my language can be misinterpreted because I had made a generalization or I have used a gender exclusive term. It is hard to break habits like that because most of us have learned these things from a very young age, whether it is on a school bus, at home. through TV or in the classroom. We are always around stereotypes and gender exclusive language. But the change starts one person at a time. The more we educate people about their mistakes the more there will be a shift towards equality through language. 

Why hasnt there been a shift sooner towards more gender inclusive language? It seems to be such a simple issue but yet children are being raised around it and are not being told about it until they are older?

What are some strides that have been made towards making an effort to curb gender exclusive language in classrooms?