Chapter 2: What’s the “Sociology” in the Sociology of Gender? Understanding Sociology and Gender

Test Bank

Multiple Choice

1. A set of predictions or explanations about patterns we observe in the social world is called a ______.

A. demonstration

B. theory

C. perspective

D. confirmation

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: Why Do You Need Theory to Understand Gender?

Difficulty Level: Medium

2. Which of the following terms refers to the tendency of individuals to focus on information that validates our preexisting beliefs?

A. confirmation bias

B. Ryle principle

C. queer theory

D. master frame

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Three Reasons to Learn Gender Theories

Difficulty Level: Easy

3. Which of the following is an example of confirmation bias?

A. The U.S. Census Bureau compiles data about racial segregation.

B. Social science research examines wage disparities based on gender.

C. Gender theorists test explanations behind violence against transgender people.

D. An individual who does not support immigration concludes that immigrants are criminals based on news of an immigrant committing a crime.

Cognitive Domain: Application

Answer Location: Three Reasons to Learn Gender Theories

Difficulty Level: Easy

4. A set of mostly unearned rewards and benefits that come with a given status position in society is known as ______.

A. proxy

B. self-fulfilling prophecy

C. prestige

D. privilege

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Gender in Sociology Before Feminism

Difficulty Level: Easy

5. A White, upper-class woman who is able to easily exchange an item at a store without being questioned about whether she bought the item at the store is benefiting from ______.

A. gender profiling

B. a privileged status

C. social distance

D. master status

Cognitive Domain: Application

Answer Location: Gender in Sociology Before Feminism

Difficulty Level: Easy

6. Which of the following describes the limitations of the perspective with which male sociologists studied gender in the early years of the discipline?

A. They assumed the concepts they studied described everyone’s experiences.

B. They asserted that industrialization and urbanization were more important issues to study.

C. They wrote that spread of capitalism did not affect women.

D. They felt that women were inferior to men.

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: Gender in Sociology Before Feminism

Difficulty Level: Medium

7. The movement that fought for giving women the right to vote is known as the ______.

A. intersectionality movement

B. suffrage movement

C. prohibition movement

D. neocolonial movement

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: The First Wave of the Feminist Movement

Difficulty Level: Easy

8. Which wave of feminism is characterized by the growing strength of women of color, many of whom questioned the essentialist and universal assumptions often made about women?

A. first

B. second

C. third

D. fourth

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: The Third Wave of the Feminist Movement

Difficulty Level: Easy

9. What is one of the defining qualities of the fourth-wave feminist movement?

A. online activism

B. focus on women’s right to work

C. postmodernist theory

D. focus on abortion

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: The Fourth Wave of the Feminist Movement

Difficulty Level: Easy

10. Which of the following terms is defined as the tendency to explain social behavior according to personal issues while ignoring the impact of social structure and context on the individual?

A. the sociological imagination

B. confirmation bias

C. fundamental attribution error

D. individual perception

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Gender and the Sociological Imagination

Difficulty Level: Easy

11. Research that analyzes how a lack of gender-neutral bathrooms in schools impacts the educational experiences of transgender students exemplifies which sociological approach?

A. individual

B. interactionist

C. intersectional

D. institutional

Cognitive Domain: Application

Answer Location: Gender and the Sociological Imagination

Difficulty Level: Medium

12. Sex role theory asserts that sex roles are built upon and reinforced by biological differences. This is an ______-level approach to gender.

A. individual

B. interactional

C. institutional

D. interrogative

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: Gender and the Sociological Imagination

Difficulty Level: Medium

13. A set of expectations that are attached to a particular status or position in society is known as a _______.

A. sex role

B. social role

C. sex status

D. gender role

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Sex Roles

Difficulty Level: Easy

14. Critics argue that sex role theory ______.

A. undermines the traditional division of labor by encouraging women to find employment in the paid labor market

B. reinforces gender inequality by adhering to assumptions about behaviors that allowed society to function most effectively

C. inadequately addresses the Hobbesian question, “How is society possible?”

D. is objective science

Cognitive Domain: Analysis

Answer Location: Sex Roles

Difficulty Level: Hard

15. A set of expectations that are attached to a particular sex category is known as a ______.

A. sex role

B. social role

C. sex status

D. gender role

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Sex Roles

Difficulty Level: Easy

16. Structural-functionalist sociologist Talcott Parsons argued that men tend to be ______, or task-oriented and women are ______, or interaction-oriented.

A. instrumental; expressive

B. expressive; instrumental

C. ego; alter

D. alter; ego

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Sex Roles

Difficulty Level: Easy

17. Assuming that a person wearing high heels is a woman is an example of ______.

A. sex status

B. sex categorization

C. gender roles

D. master status

Cognitive Domain: Application

Answer Location: Sex Categorization

Difficulty Level: Easy

18. Why was Harold Garfinkel’s research on the social life of transgender woman Agnes important?

A. Agnes’ gender identity posed a “breach” in gender expectations.

B. Agnes’ life demonstrated the trials of intersex people.

C. Agnes was the first person to undergo gender confirmation surgery.

D. Agnes’ gender identity was congruent to the sex category she was assigned at birth.

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: Interactionist Theories

Difficulty Level: Medium

19. The theory of “doing gender,” which says that gender is a performance and we are constantly on stage, is an ______-level approach to gender.

A. intersectionist

B. interactionist

C. institutional

D. interrogative

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: Doing Gender

Difficulty Level: Medium

20. Frank makes sure to make sexual remarks about women when he is in the male locker room after practice because he wants to be clearly understood as a straight man. Frank is participating in what social process?

A. accountability

B. sex roles

C. dimorphism

D. confirmation bias

Cognitive Domain: Application

Answer Location: Doing Gender

Difficulty Level: Medium

21. The gendered-organizations approach assumes ______.

A. an interactional approach to gender

B. organizations create gendered individuals

C. gender works from the bottom up

D. organizations are gender neutral

Cognitive Domain: Analysis

Answer Location: Gendered Organizations

Difficulty Level: Hard

22. The tendency to interact in networks of people similar to you is known as ______.

A. diversity

B. categorization

C. homophily

D. egocentric

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: Homophily: A Social Network Approach to Gender

Difficulty Level: Medium

23. Women’s social networks tend to consist of more ______, while men’s networks are made up of more ______.

A. coworkers; kin

B. organization members; coworkers

C. kin; organization members

D. kin; coworkers

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: Homophily: A Social Network Approach to Gender

Difficulty Level: Medium

24. Which theoretical perspective would say that a person’s position is at the center of intersecting and mutually reliant systems of oppression?

A. liberal feminism

B. multiple consciousness perspective

C. doing gender perspective

D. mathematical model of intersectionality

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Intersectional Feminist Theory

Difficulty Level: Easy

25. ______ is the concept that refers to the social structures of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation which work with and through each other so that individuals experience the categories differently depending on their social location.

A. Multiple consciousness

B. Hegemonic masculinity

C. Complicit masculinity

D. Matrix of domination

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Intersectional Feminist Theory

Difficulty Level: Easy

26. The exploration of how our dominant ideas about what it means to be a man influence the behaviors of actual men in society is known as ______.

A. hegemonic masculinity

B. complicit masculinity

C. patriarchal dividend

D. subordinated masculinity

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Hegemonic Masculinity

Difficulty Level: Easy

27. Men who receive the benefits of patriarchy without enacting a strong version of masculine dominance are said to be engaging in ______.

A. patriarchal dividend

B. complicit masculinity

C. subordinated masculinity

D. marginalized masculinity

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Hegemonic Masculinity

Difficulty Level: Easy

28. Gay men are at the bottom of the male gender hierarchy and thus occupy a status of ______.

A. subordinated masculinity

B. patriarchal dividend

C. complicit masculinity

D. hegemonic masculinity

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: Hegemonic Masculinity

Difficulty Level: Medium

29. According to network theorists, the relationship between a focal person and other people in a network is defined as ______.

A. network density

B. social homophily

C. organizational logic

D. ego network

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: Homophily: A Social Network Approach to Gender

Difficulty Level: Medium

30. ______ refers to the relations between masculinities in dominant and subordinated classes or ethnic groups.

A. Racist masculinity

B. Subordinated masculinity

C. Marginalized masculinity

D. Complicit masculinity

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Hegemonic Masculinity

Difficulty Level: Easy

True/False

1. From the beginning, sociology as a discipline has focused on gender.

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Gender in Sociology Before Feminism

Difficulty Level: Easy

2. The first-wave feminist movement focused on the right to vote.

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: The First Wave of the Feminist Movement

Difficulty Level: Easy

3. The third-wave feminist movement, like the first two waves, was made up primarily of White, middle-class women.

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: The Third Wave of the Feminist Movement

Difficulty Level: Easy

4. Men have never been involved in feminism.

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: He for She: Men and Feminism

Difficulty Level: Easy

5. The institutional approach locates gender metaphorically in the space between people.

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Gender and the Sociological Imagination

Difficulty Level: Easy

6. Sex role theory assumes that gender works from inside the individual.

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: Sex Roles

Difficulty Level: Medium

7. The “doing gender” perspective is an individualist approach to understanding gender.

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: Doing Gender

Difficulty Level: Medium

8. The enactment of gender is deeply situational and contextual.

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: Doing Gender

Difficulty Level: Medium

9. Separate male and female locker rooms are an example of gendered organizations.

Cognitive Domain: Application

Answer Location: Gendered Organizations

Difficulty Level: Easy

10. Patriarchal dividend refers to the relations between masculinities in dominated and subordinated classes or ethnic groups.

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Hegemonic Masculinity

Difficulty Level: Easy

11. #MeToo was an important factor in starting the third-wave feminist movement.

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: The Third Wave of the Feminist Movement

Difficulty Level: Easy

12. Karl Marx is widely regarded as one of the founders of gender theory.

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Gender in Sociology Before Feminism

Difficulty Level: Easy

13. Gender identity is defined as one’s internal sense of gender.

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Doing Gender

Difficulty Level: Easy

14. Having separate bathrooms for men and women in the workplace is an example of an organizational logic.

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Gendered Organizations

Difficulty Level: Easy

15. Women’s networks have more ties to nonkin than those of men:

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Homophily: A Social Network Approach to Gender

Difficulty Level: Easy

Essay

1. What does it mean to analyze gender on an “interactional” level? Draw upon status characteristics theory and the doing gender perspective in your explanation, and discuss the similarities and differences between these theories.

Cognitive Domain: Analysis

Answer Location: Doing Gender

Difficulty Level: Medium

2. Compare and contrast the second, third, and fourth waves of feminism. Explain the key assumptions and objectives of each wave, taking care to address their similarities and differences.

Cognitive Domain: Analysis

Answer Location: Feminist Theories and Their Influence on Sociological Thinking About Gender

Difficulty Level: Medium

3. What is a “sex role” and what are the key arguments of this theoretical perspective? What are the criticisms of sex role theory that have led to its declining use in the sociology of gender?

Cognitive Domain: Analysis

Answer Location: Sex Roles

Difficulty Level: Medium

4. Consider and identify a workplace setting in which you have been employed. How did that workplace manifest any of the five key characteristics of a gendered organization? Provide specific examples.

Cognitive Domain: Application

Answer Location: Gendered Organizations

Difficulty Level: Hard

5. Explain hegemonic masculinity and discuss the ways in which different groups of men relate to these ideals. Include in the answer the different types of masculinity that affect men.

Cognitive Domain: Analysis

Answer Location: Hegemonic Masculinity

Difficulty Level: Medium