Like race and ethnicity, gender has an enormous influence on people's lives. In this chapter we explained the cultural basis for gender and examined the ways in which gender defines a person's social roles. We discussed four theoretical perspectives on gender and studied the economic and social effects of prejudice and discrimination on women around the world.

1. Like race, gender is an ascribed status that is socially constructed. Gender roles define significantly different expectations for females and males.

2. In the United States, homophobia--fear of and prejudice against homosexuality--contributes to rigid gender-role socialization. Family, peers, and the media reinforce gender role stereotypes for both sexes.

3. Cross-cultural studies such as those done by Margaret Mead show that rather than being biologically determined, gender roles differ from one culture to the next.

4. Functionalists maintain that well-defined gender roles contribute to a society's stability. They stress the instrumentality, or emphasis on tasks, of the male role and the expressiveness, or emphasis on harmony, of the female role.

5. Conflict theorists stress men's dominance over women. They see women's inequality of income, wealth, prestige, and power as the result of men's deliberate subjugation of women.

6. Like conflict theorists, feminists stress the power struggle between the sexes. More than conflict theorists, they tend to see women's inequality as part of the exploitation inherent in capitalist societies.

7. Interactionist studies of interruptions in everyday conversation have shown that men interrupt women much more frequently than women interrupt men--one indication of the pervasive inequality between the sexes.

8. Women experience a special kind of prejudice known as sexism. They suffer institutional discrimination in the form of lower pay and restricted opportunities, as well as sexual harassment in school and on the job.

9. Worldwide, women are undereducated, underpaid, and overworked. In the United States, women who work in the paid labor force are restricted by a glass ceiling that blocks their promotion to higher-paying jobs. These women commonly work a second shift when they get home.

10. Women who belong to minority groups experience a double jeopardy: discrimination based on both their gender and their race or ethnicity.