Lenses of Gender

1. Lenses of Gender A power point based on the research of Sandra Bem. By Lauren Miller

2. The Lenses of Gender • Bem argues that we all look at life through lenses of gender. • Much like rose-colored glasses we are able to see the things the way they really are. • That these, “lenses shape how people perceive, conceive and discuss social reality, but because they are embedded in social institutions, that also shape the more material things – like unequal pay and inadequate day care – that constinute reality itself.” • The way things are is not the way things should be and we should seek to activly see outside these lenses.

3. The Three Lenses • Bem focuses on three lenses that we use everyday that color our perspective of gender. I will go into each of these is more detail on their own slides but the lenses are as follows: • Androcentrism • Gender Polarization • Biological Essentialism

4. Androcentrism • This is ‘male centeredness. • “This is not just the…perception that men are inherently superior to women, but a more treacherous underpinning of that perception: a definition of males and male experience as…the norm.” • It asserts that female and female experience are a deviation of the norm and it is a dangerous perspective that lessens women. • Woman are treated as inferior where man is human and women is ‘other’.

5. Gender Polarization • Women and men are seen to be so different that we can not even be on the same level. • Dress and social roles and even ways of expressing emotion and sexual desire are so different between men and women it is impossible that we do not be different and it is impossible we can be equal. • Bem agues that gender polarization operates by: • Defining scripts that are male and female. By this she means that men a women have roles in society that they must full fill such as women in the kitchen and men in the workplace. They are sterotypes. • Defining any person or behavior that deviates from these scripts as a problem – maybe even an immoral or unnatural problem.

6. Biological Essentialism • This is the way that we see differences between the sexes “as natural and inevitable consequences of intrinsic biological natures of men and women.” • This was used at one time to legitimize the first two lenses. • Bem claims that science is being used to day to make these differences legitimate.

7. What does this all mean? • Lenses of Gender are very detrimental to society, these are the basis for prejudice for society that prevents equality. • The Biological Essentialism is used today to try to legitimize the inequality of gender roles by stating that women and men are different, biologically, in a way that can not be changed.

8. Lenses of Gender • This PowerPoint is based on the book: The Lenses of Gender by Sandra Lipstiz Bem • And the information found in the Gender Packed for Soc 2370