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In this article, the author argues that we need to conceptualize gender as a social structure, and by doing so, we can better analyze the ways in which gender is embedded in the individual, interactional, and institutional dimensions of our society. To conceptualize gender as a structure situates gender at the same level of general social significance as the economy and the polity. The author also argues that while concern with intersectionality must continue to be paramount, different structures of inequality have different constructions and perhaps different influential causal mechanisms at any given historical moment. We need to follow a both/and strategy to understand gender structure, race structure, and other structures of inequality as they currently operate while also systematically paying attention to how these axes of domination intersect. Finally, the author suggests we pay more attention to doing research and writing theory with explicit attention to how our work can indeed help transform as well as inform society.

This article argues that individuals paradigms have predominated social scientific explanations for gendered behavior in intimate relationships but that a microstructural paradigm adds necessary additional information. The results of a study designed to test the relative strengths of individualist and microstructural explanations for "mothering behavior" are presented. The microstructural hypothesis is that single fathers will adopt parental behavior that more closely resembles that of women who mother than that of married fathers. Parenting behaviors of single fathers, single mothers, married parents with mothers at home, and married two-paycheck couples are compared. Overall, the hypothesis is supported. The article ends with a discussion of the implications of the microstructural perspective for social change in a feminist direction.

This research briefis a methodological critique of Richard Larson's criticism of the Kansas City Preventative Patrol Experiment. The measurement issues, which are the focus of his critique, are reassessed in this brief, and the argument is presented that the experimental conditions were different enough to expect significant results if variability in police presence did indeed affect the dependent measures.

Previous research suggests that an increasing age at first marriage has contributed to the prevalence of sexual hookups on U.S. college campuses. In this article, we use life course and marital horizons theories to analyze the influence of ideal age at first marriage on hooking up among unmarried heterosexual college students. Analyses of the Online College Social Life Survey (N = 17,981) show a positive association between ideal age at first marriage and hookups for most students, but not for students whose mothers have no post‐secondary education, Asian men, Asian women, and Latina women. Variation in ideal marriage timing does not account for gender, racial/ethnic, and class gaps in hookup participation. Results are discussed with reference to the role of sexuality in processes of stratification throughout young adulthood.

Hooking up, or sexual activity outside relationships, is a dominant feature of social life on many college campuses. However, research has yet to explore how social location intersects with campus-level factors to shape students' negotiations of this script. Interview data from 87 undergraduates at an urban commuter university demonstrate the distinction between "adopting" and "enacting" sexual scripts. Although the majority of students locate hooking up as a salient cultural scenario for their lives, the adoption of hooking up does not neatly translate into its enactment for all students. Where students live emerges as a fault line systematically structuring opportunities for hooking up. There are racial and class divisions even among students with similar residential locations, reflecting the importance of socioeconomic resources and peer group homophily to sexuality. This study points to how race, class, and residence integrally shape the interpersonal sexual scripts of college students.

This article has two goals, an intellectual history of gender as a concept and to outline a framework for moving forward theory and research on gender conceptualized as a structure of social stratification. The authors' first goal is to trace the conceptual development of the study of sex and gender throughout the 20th century to now. They do this from a feminist sociological standpoint, framing the question with particular concern for power and inequality. The authors use a modernist perspective, showing how theory and research built in a cumulative fashion, with empirical studies sometimes supporting and sometimes challenging current theories, often leads to new ones. The authors then offer their theoretical contribution, framing gender as a social structure as a means to integrate the wide variety of empirical research findings on causal explanations for and consequences of gender. This framework includes attention to: the differences and similarities between women and men as individuals, the stability of and changing expectations we hold for each sex during social interaction, and the mechanisms by which gender is embedded into the logic of social institutions and organizations. At each level of analysis, there is a focus on the organization of social life and the cultural logics that accompany such patterns.

How has the gender revolution impacted the campus Greek world? Interviews with women in sororities from the 1970s and today point to both continuity and change. Citing their sexism and segregation of white and wealthy students, alumna of sororities at elite universities have begun social movements to abolish the Greek system.

AbstractAs a society, we've made tremendous progress toward gender equality over the past several decades. Yet there remains significant inequality between women and men. Furthermore, when we look closely at some of the progress made toward gender equality, we find it considerably less impressive than surface appearances. In this article, we review the updated framework of Risman's (2017) gender structure theory and argue that it can help us make sense of the progress we've made as well as analyzing inequality as it persists between women and men. Using gender structure theory, we then show how gender is simultaneously reproduced and contested across the individual, interactional, and macro levels of society within 3 major social domains: work, family, and gender identity.