Routledge International Handbook of Diversity Studies

Steven Vertovec

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780415813860
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317600688
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: Social Sciences

In recent years the concept of 'diversity' has gained a leading place in academic thought, business practice and public policy worldwide. Although variously used, 'diversity' tends to refer to patterns of social difference in terms of certain key categories. Today the foremost categories shaping discourses and policies of diversity include race, ethnicity, religion, gender, disability, sexuality and age; further important notions include class, language, locality, lifestyle and legal status. The Routledge Handbook of Diversity Studies will examine a range of such concepts along with historical and contemporary cases concerning social and political dynamics surrounding them. With contributions by experts spanning Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science, History and Geography, the Handbook will be a key resource for students, social scientists and professionals. It will represent a landmark volume within a field that has become, and will continue to be, one of the most significant global topics of concern throughout the twenty-first century.

Part I

Dimensions of diversity

1

Gender – a central dimension of diversity

Andrea D. Bührmann

As we enter the twenty-first century, modern differentiated societies are characterised by fundamental social transformations. Particular mention must be given here to the progressive globalisation of economic activities, the transnationalisation of social environments, advancing individualisation and, at the same time, the resurgence of social movements and the increased digitalisation of transport, information, organisation and production technologies. Within social science debates, those processes and developments are accorded different weights and interpretations. Informed by a structural functionalist and systems theoretical orientation, one observes modern industrial societies changing to become post-modern knowledge-based or information societies (Stehr 2001); from a regulation theory or neo-Marxist perspective, one detects a transformation from Fordism to post-Fordism (Jessop 2001); and in the tradition of critical social theory, processes of cosmopolitanisation are diagnosed (Beck 2006). Notwithstanding all their differences in the interpretation of those developments, within the specialised discourses of the social sciences there is a general consensus that the seemingly rigid institutional arrangements of western industrial societies are coming increasingly under pressure such that ongoing processes of diversification are now underway, resulting in an increasing diversity of form, style and mode in relation to living and working arrangements.¹

Gender – a central dimension of diversity

Societal processes of differentiation and thus also diversification have been discussed ever since the birth of modern social sciences. However, it was not until 1978 that the term ‘diversity’ expressly came to light. In the lawsuit University of California v. Bakke, US universities defended their right to engage in affirmative action in favour of minorities that had experienced discrimination (on grounds of race). Crucial to the subsequent rise and propagation of diversity as a relevant notion for the social sciences were the activities of various social movements, above all the civil rights movement, the women’s and lesbian movement and also the labour movement (Salzbrunn 2012). Today, the issue of diversity features in many disparate areas of society and at different levels. The spectrum stretches from discussions at the micro level on the identity politics of individual social groups, tending to involve, in particular, women, members of ethnic minorities and also lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activists, to the macro level with the central axes of social inequality, for example, hierarchical gender relations, class relations or migration regimes, and also encompasses, at the meso level, approaches to diversity in the workplace in the form of organisational diversity management policies. Further, at the level of the symbolic order, discussions are taking place on the possible consequences of diversity. Indeed, many of the important positions in that discourse are included in this handbook. What is at issue in those discussions is the recognition of historical discrimination and privilege and the redistribution – primarily – of economic and cultural resources (Fraser 2007). A further area of controversy is whether diversity management policies should be seen as the appreciation or simply the economisation of the ‘other’.

Notwithstanding the multiplicity of discussions in relation to diversity and the exploration of diversification processes, diversity consultants and researchers have identified that the greatest attention has been paid to the following categories: race, gender, ethnicity/nationality, organisational role/function, age, sexual orientation, mental/physical ability and religion. Of these ‘big 8’ (Plummer 2003: 25), three are particularly prominent. In the United States, diversity is associated primarily with the category of race, whereas in Europe it is identified above all with cultural and ethnic differences (Wrench 2007: 5). However, ‘in both contexts gender remains highly associated with the term, too’ (Vertovec 2012: 296). In the debates in German-speaking countries, diversity is generally linked first and foremost with the category of gender and only subsequently with cultural and ethnic identities and, in addition, with socio-economic background.² Thus, gender is one of the central dimensions with which to describe diversification processes and diversity. At the same time, gender itself must be regarded as the product of discursive processes of differentiation.

In that connection, much of the current research in diversity studies builds upon findings from gender studies showing that gender must be understood both as a process and a structural category. In other words, the category of gender is produced through specific practices of differentiation and, at the same time, serves alongside race and class as one of the central axes of inequality in modern societies. Taking that as my starting point, in the following sections I will first reconstruct the processes – identified in gender studies – by which the category of gender came to be differentiated. I will then present certain key findings from gender studies illustrating the relevance of gender as a social category in modern societies. In a third section, I will sketch future research perspectives for the gender dimension of diversity and, at the same time, propose several cautionary directives that should be taken into consideration when researching further dimensions of diversity and the interplay between those dimensions.

The differentiation of gender

The genealogy of the processes by which gender became differentiated is characterised by several different stages. The starting point for the following reconstruction of those processes of differentiation must be to consider not only the very notion of gender itself, but also the processes of differentiation between and within genus groups as sedimented and thus persistent effects of dispositive construction processes and practices (Bührmann and Schneider 2012).³ Consequently, although gender identities and differences between and amongst the sexes appear, ultimately, unstable, variable and historically contingent, in an empirical sense, they cannot be freely chosen or simply altered at will. Instead, they are formed through the interplay of discursive practices with existing social structures of power and dominance, which, in turn, provides the basis for possible modifications.

The differentiation of two biological genus groups

Historical research has shown that well into the early modern period a biological ‘one-sex model’ prevailed. Only since the eighteenth century has it been presumed that the female body differs fundamentally from the male body in terms of its physiological and psychological ‘nature’ (Laqueur 1990). In this system of two sexes, man is regarded as the natural representation of all that is human whereas woman is considered to be the ‘other’, ‘special’ and ‘lesser’ form. This knowledge about the ‘natural’ order of the sexes was disseminated via encyclopaedias, journals and also literary texts to the middle-class public. As a consequence, from the nineteenth century onwards a ‘polarisation of the character of the sexes’ (Hausen 1976) became regarded as a given, according to which a woman was required to act within the family as housewife, wife and mother, and, on the other hand, a man had to act in the public sphere as the breadwinner for ‘his’ family. Whereas the masculine represented culture, rationality and activity, the feminine stood for nature, irrationality and passivity. This ‘natural’ division of labour and the resulting hierarchical order(ing) of the sexes was challenged subsequently by the women’s movement and women’s studies and, since the mid-1990s in particular, has been intensely scrutinised within the mainstream of the social sciences.

The differentiation between sex and gender

Since the 1970s, women’s studies have ascribed the observed differences between men and women primarily to processes of socialisation. In that context, a distinction was drawn between ‘sex’, understood as an inborn biological embodiment that may also be culturally shaped, and ‘gender’ in the sense of behaviours and characteristics mapped onto a specific sex (see e.g. Rubin 1975). It was presumed that in the framework of gender-specific socialisation processes individuals learn and adopt a feminine or masculine gender identity and develop certain characteristics or behaviours. Whereas some wished to recognise the psychological and physiological differences resulting from those processes, and indeed this position can be found in many diversity management concepts (e.g. Loden and Rosener 1991), others considered those differences to be due to the effects of deforming socialisation processes.

Differentiation within the genus groups

In this phase, attention turned to the differences within genus groups. Above all, discussions focused on the need to take account of the interests not only of white heterosexual middle-class women, but also of black women, lesbians and working-class women. Research showed that not all women were equally affected by discrimination. For example, in the late 1970s in the United States, members of the Combahee River Collective drew attention to the multiple discrimination of black women both as black people and as women and called for different and interlocking forms and situations of discrimination to be understood from an integrational perspective (Combahee River Collective 1982). Since the late 1980s, starting from the notion of hegemonic masculinity, men’s studies has sought to explore the differences amongst men. According to Robert Connell (1987), hegemonic masculinity – and its beneficiaries⁴ – are characterised by a dual form of dominance. First, it dominates all other forms of masculinity, in particular marginalised masculinity, considered ‘too’ feminine and thus often embodied by homosexual men, and also the subordinate masculinity of the lower social classes. Second, in order to dominate, hegemonic masculinity requires a certain type of femininity that Connell describes as ‘emphasised femininity’ (ibid.: 183). In western societies, hegemonic masculinity is embodied, as a rule, by successful men from educated families with a Christian background holding a suitable (professional) qualification and having a wife and housewife at their side who, in turn, embodies emphasised femininity. In other words, this hegemonic masculinity continues to be based on the ‘polarisation of the character of the sexes’ popularised in the nineteenth century.

In fact, both in women’s studies and in men’s studies, efforts began in the 1980s to carry out research on an intersectional basis, that is, to examine the links and interplays between various dimensions and categories of inequality (see Lutz, this volume). In this context, the term ‘intersectional’ was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, who wrote:

Consider an analogy to traffic in an intersection, coming and going in all four directions. Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction, and may flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection, it can be caused by cars travelling from any number of directions and, sometimes, from all of them. Similarly, if a black woman is harmed because she is in the intersection, her injury could result from sex discrimination or race discrimination.

(Crenshaw 1989: 149)

Questioning the practices of differentiation

Since the early 1990s, the very practices by which the genus groups are differentiated have been subject to close investigation. In that context, recourse has been had in particular to ethnomethodological and constructivist approaches. Building on earlier research on transsexuals, ethnomethodological studies in the 1970s examined the everyday performance and, thus, production of femininity and masculinity, in other words, doing gender. It became clear that individuals are not per se feminine or masculine, but have to perform a specific gender identity in a manner that is competent and appropriate to the situation if they are to be identified as masculine or feminine (Goffman 1977). For example, in his study of the male-to-female transsexual Agnes, Garfinkel (1967) examined the practices of day-to-day performance and interactive production of gender identity. In order to understand how in interactions gender is produced as a function of sex, West and Zimmermann (1991: 15) coined the term ‘sex category’, i.e. a person’s assumed sex.

If, in principle, from an ethnomethodological perspective, the existence of gender difference is presumed, something which must then be produced through performance, constructivist approaches go one step further and question how the knowledge on gender differences and the category itself came into being and how they are continuously reproduced. In that context, the distinction between sex and gender itself is seen as culturally constructed. For that reason, the interest of researchers no longer focuses simply on transsexuals, who, in principle, actually confirm the two-sex system, but now includes individuals who refuse to be categorised in a particular sex. In particular, intersex people and the growing community of transgender people have encouraged thinking to develop around flexible and fluid sexual identities (e.g. Wilchins 2004). The person most closely identified with this deconstructivist perspective is Judith Butler (1990). Taking as her starting point the notion of the heterosexual matrix, she questions the two-sex system and the associated fixed categorisations of identity and, drawing on the work of Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, draws attention to the role of specialist academic discourses in the reification of sex(ed) identities. Namely, if researchers are looking to find differences between sexes or disagree on their relevance, they are, at the same time, continuing to confirm the relevance of gender as a category (see Bührmann 2010). Nonetheless, figures, data and facts demonstrate that, in practice, gender matters.

Gender as a category of social structures

Individuals are excluded, marginalised and encounter discrimination on grounds of their sex in many different ways and to varying extents. The shocking nature of this can be seen, for example, in the latest Human Development Report of the United Nations (2013). In western societies, the notion of sex discrimination is generally associated with the oppression of women. However, men, too, can experience discrimination, for example if they do not conform to the demands of hegemonic masculinity and are considered ‘too’ feminine or not sufficiently successful. In recent years, awareness has grown that individuals can experience discrimination because they refuse to conform to the two-sex system. However, representative findings are scarce on the discrimination experienced by transgender individuals.

Discrimination at the macro level

On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that, in the EU27 Member States, in central aspects of their living and working conditions, women are disadvantaged in relation to men. Admittedly, they are no longer confined to their roles as housewife, mother and wife. In recent years, the proportion of women in employment has risen continuously across the European Union (EU), with 62.4 per cent of women in employment in 2012. However, across the EU, the employment rate of women is still lower than that of men (74.6 per cent) (EU 2013a). In addition, women are overrepresented in precarious, fixed-term or part-time forms of employment and are threatened by or experience poverty or social exclus...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction: formulating diversity studies
• PART I Dimensions of diversity
• PART II Historical geographies of diversity
• PART III Policies and politics of diversity
• PART IV Encounters and diversity
• PART V Fusions of diversity
• Index