Gender, Interaction, and Inequality

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvi

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2. Gender, Power, and Social Exchange

   • Linda D. Molm, Mark Hedley

   Pages 1-28

3. Gender, Formal Authority, and Leadership

   • Cathryn Johnson

   Pages 29-49

4. The Look of Power: Gender Differences and Similarities in Visual Dominance Behavior

   • Steve L. Ellyson, John F. Dovidio, Clifford E. Brown

   Pages 50-80

5. Touch Asymmetry Between the Sexes

   • Judith A. Hall, Ellen M. Veccia

   Pages 81-96

6. Sex Differences in Interaction Style in Task Groups

   • Wendy Wood, Nancy Rhodes

   Pages 97-121

7. Gender and Conversational Dynamics

   • Lynn Smith-Lovin, Dawn T. Robinson

   Pages 122-156

8. Are Gender Differences Status Differences?

   • Cecilia L. Ridgeway, David Diekema

   Pages 157-180

9. Gender and Double Standards for Competence

   • Martha Foschi

   Pages 181-207

10. Gender, Interaction, and Inequality in Organizations

    • Patricia Yancey Martin

    Pages 208-231

11. Back Matter

    Pages 233-247

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Causal explanations are essential for theory building. In focusing on causal mechanisms rather than descriptive effects, the goal of this volume is to increase our theoretical understanding of the way gender operates in interaction. Theoretical analyses of gender's effects in interaction, in turn, are necessary to understand how such effects might be implicated with individual-level and social structural-level processes in the larger system of gender inequality. Despite other differences, the contributors to this book all take what might be loosely called a "microstructural" approach to gender and interaction. All agree that individuals come to interaction with certain common, socially created beliefs, cultural meanings, experiences, and social rules. These include stereotypes about gendered activities and skills, beliefs about the status value of gender, rules for interacting in certain settings, and so on. However, as individuals apply these beliefs and rules to the specific contingent events of interaction, they combine and reshape their implications in distinctive ways that are particular to the encounter. As a result, individuals actively construct their social relations in the encounter through their interaction. The patterns of relations that develop are not completely determined or scripted in advance by the beliefs and rules of the larger society. Consequently, there is a reciprocal causal relationship between constructed patterns of interaction and larger social structural forms. The constructed patterns of social relations among a set of interactants can be thought of as micro-level social structures or, more simply, "microstructures.

• Arbeitsteilung
• Gender
• Geschlecht
• Nation
• Sex
• Sozialisation
• Stereotyp
• geschlechtsspezifische Arbeitsteilung
• interaction
• socialisation

• Department of Sociology, Stanford University, Stanford, USA

  Cecilia L. Ridgeway

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