Professor Barbara Risman,
University of Illinois Chicago
Research seminar, University of St Andrews
Wednesday 30 May 2018
12.30pm – 2pm
Professor Risman presents a seminar entitled “From sex roles to gender as a social structure: Implications for organisational change”. In this talk, Professor Risman presents a theory for understanding gender inequality that goes far beyond defining gender as identity. Instead, she argues that gender is a structure that includes individual level identities, but also the interactional expectations linked to sex category, institutional policies which embed expectations into organizations, and cultural logics which legitimate inequality. The only way to decrease inequality is to address each level of analysis, and do so with attention to the material reality and cultural beliefs. The public policy and organizational implications of understanding gender as a social structure will be highlighted. A discussion of this new generation of workers, Millennials, will be included in the conversation.