What Do We Learn about Difference from the Scholarship on Gender?

• Published in: Social forces Vol. 81; no. 1; pp. 1 - 24
• Main Author: Rosenfeld, Rachel A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chapel Hill, NC The University of North Carolina Press 01-09-2002; University of North Carolina Press; Oxford University Press
• Subjects: African Americans; Boundaries; Children; Civil Rights; College Faculty; Differences; Diversity (Faculty); Diversity (Student); Employment; Equality; Faculty College Relationship; Females; Feminism; Feminist theories; Feminist Theory; Gender; Gender differences; Gender differentiation; Gender equality; Gender inequalities; Gender Issues; Gender studies; Graduate Students; Higher Education; Identity; Inequality; Literary criticism; Males; Men; Nationality; Occupational segregation; Opposite Sex Relations; Periodicals; Racial Relations; Research Methodology; Scholarship; Sex (Biology); Sex Differences; Sex discrimination; Sex role; Sex roles; Sexual Inequality; Social aspects; Social Problems; Social Science Research; Social sciences research; Social Scientists; Social Stratification; Sociology; Sociology of the family. Age groups; Teacher Student Relationship; Teaching; Woman social status. Women's emancipation; Women's issues; Womens rights; Working women; United States Of America; United States; United Kingdom > UK; United States > US; England; East Germany; Arkansas; West Germany; Germany; Status; Sex equality; Comparison; Social Image; Gender; Research; Woman; Differences
• ISSN: 0037-7732; 1534-7605
• DOI: 10.1353/sof.2002.0057

What can the scholarship on gender teach us about studying difference and dealing with diversity in our professional and personal lives? Here, I first describe the expansion of research on gender over the last 30 years. This research has grown not only in its representation in our journals, but also in the types of differences it considers - between women and men, among women (and among men), and across national boundaries. Next, I discuss some of the lessons we learn from this research: to study difference in its own context, make real comparisons, look for similarities as well as differences, examine variation within as well as between groups, investigate exceptions, note failure to find effects, allow for equifinality, and move up a level in abstraction to go beyond gender as a category per se. These lessons about moving between the specific and the general can help us understand processes creating inequality. Finally, I illustrate how we can apply these lessons in our teaching and service.