SOC 110Sociology of Gender

3 credits · Sociology · Penn State

This course introduces students to sociological perspectives on gender using both theoretical concepts and everyday life examples. The course focuses on the constraints that gender imposes on our life experiences through our bodies, beauty standards, and social interactions, and across different social contexts, such as sex and dating, family, work, and politics. It explores how gender cannot be understood outside of its intersections with power and social difference. Students will have opportunities to think critically about how societal ideas about gender shape and constrain identities and opportunities within and across societies, as well as, how gender inflects on other parts of our social identities such as race, class, sexuality, ethnicity, and nationalities. Students will develop an empirically based understanding of how gender and sexual inequalities unfold across time and space. The goal is for students to notice and question the construction of gender in many different realms of their lives. This course meets a General Education requirement in Social and Behavioral Sciences. It can be used as a lower-level sociology course in the Sociology BA major and the Sociology minor. It can also be used as a supporting course in the Women's Studies major and minor.