4 Gender and Social Institutions Free Online FlashCards

What is a social institution?

Enduring systems of rules, roles, and practices that organize social life.

How do formal rules differ from informal norms?

Formal rules include laws and eligibility requirements; informal norms are assumptions about appropriate behavior.

How does substantive equality differ from formal equality?

Formal equality means equal treatment in a rule’s wording; substantive equality concerns people’s actual conditions and opportunities.

What dimensions of educational inequality go beyond enrollment?

Educational inequality involves access, learning conditions, completion, and later opportunities—not enrollment alone.

Why are the effects of religious institutions on gender not uniform?

Religious communities can reinforce established gender roles or provide resources for questioning them; their effects vary across interpretations and contexts.

How do medical institutions shape gender?

They define health needs, classify bodies, set standards of care, and influence which concerns receive attention.

Through what channels does the state shape gender?

The state shapes gender through laws, public services, education and health policies, labor regulation, and political representation.

What does structural functionalism ask about gender institutions?

It asks how gender roles and institutional arrangements contribute to social order, but may treat existing inequalities as necessary or overlook who benefits.

What do conflict and feminist theories examine?

They examine how power and resources are distributed, how rules advantage dominant groups, and how collective action can change institutions.

What does symbolic interactionism focus on in the study of gender?

It focuses on how people interpret gender categories, enact expectations, and respond to conformity or resistance in everyday interactions.

What do social-constructionist approaches investigate?

It examines how institutions make particular ideas about gender seem natural or inevitable, even though norms and categories vary and change.

What does intersectional analysis examine?

It examines how gender works together with race, class, sexuality, disability, and other social relations, rather than assuming everyone in a gender group has the same experience.