Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Judith Lorber is professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and the Graduate School, City University of New York.<p>"A brilliant, compelling, and timely analysis of gender from a critical feminist perspective."—Patricia Yancey Martin, The Ohio State University</p><br /><br /><p>"An extraordinary book that will become a classic. It is impossible to read this book and not rethink gender."—Barbara Katz Rothman, Baruch College</p><br /><br /><p>"With remarkable intellectual breadth, Judith Lorber probes a series of paradoxes to theorize about gender as an all-encompassing social institution. This inclusive and compelling book will transform our thinking about society as well as women and men."—Maxine Baca Zinn, Michigan State University</p><br /><br /><p>"That gender is one of the central axes around which social life revolves (like race or class) has become a social science truism. But Judith Lorber goes further in this deeply thoughtful work. Lorber claims gender is a central social institution, analogous to the state or the market. Wide-ranging, provocative, and eloquently argued, <i>Paradoxes of Gender</i> is one of those rare works that define a field."—Michael Kimmel, Associate Professor, SUNY at Stony Brook</p><br /><br />
Drawing on many schools of feminist scholarship and on research from anthropology, history, sociology, social psychology, sociolinguistics, and cultural studies, Lorber explores different paradoxes of gender:
—why we speak of only two "opposite sexes" when there is such a variety of sexual behaviors and relationships;
—why transvestites, transsexuals, and hermaphrodites do not affect the conceptualization of two genders and two sexes in Western societies;
—why most of our cultural images of women are the way men see them and not the way women see themselves;
—why all women in modern society are expected to have children and be the primary caretaker;
—why domestic work is almost always the sole responsibility of wives, even when they earn more than half the family income;
—why there are so few women in positions of authority, when women can be found in substantial numbers in many occupations and professions;
—why women have not benefited from major social revolutions.
Lorber argues that the whole point of the gender system today is to maintain structured gender inequality—to produce a subordinate class (women) that can be exploited as workers, sexual partners, childbearers, and emotional nurturers. Calling into question the inevitability and necessity of gender, she envisions a society structured for equality, where no gender, racial ethnic, or social class group is allowed to monopolize economic, educational, and cultural resources or the positions of power.