The Social World has Two Sexes: Incorporating Gender Issues in Research Juliet Webster Work and Equality Research 22 Northchurch Terrace, London N1 4EG, UK Tel:

Why try to address gender issues?  Gender remains one of the main dimensions of inequality and social division in European societies  Persistent gender inequality is neither socially acceptable nor socially sustainable  It is a major objective of the EU to abolish gender discrimination

Conceptualising gender: going beyond “women’s issues”  The social - not the biological - characteristics of and relations between the two sexes  A series of socially ascribed and therefore contingent aspects of social life  The development and identity of the two sexes in relation to each other

Conceptualising gender Sandra Harding (1986):  Individual gender  Symbolic gender  Division of labour by gender 3 levels of gender - Yvonne Hirdmann (1988):  Cultural level - meanings of male and female  Institutional level - conceptions of gender in societal institutions  Individual level - conceptions which regulate interactions between individuals

‘Gender’ in European policy  Equal opportunities is a substantive policy issue which stands in its own right  Gender structures, relations and inequalities are present in all social arrangements. Gender is therefore a “horizontal” issue which is relevant to several other policy domains

The Relevance of Gender for a Range of Social Policy Domains

Gender-aware research  Conceptual frameworks - recognising gender in framing research questions, using gender perspectives  Empirical methods - including gender in methodological design  Analysis - addressing the gender dimensions of findings  Policy conclusions - considering the implications for gender and for the equal opportunities project

What about gender-free issues?  Are there topics which do not lend themselves to a gender analysis?  Is there a danger of ‘imposing’ gender on an analysis where it is not relevant?  At what level of analysis does gender become relevant?  How to avoid the risk of being ‘gender-blind’

“Women constitute half the world’s population, perform nearly two-thirds of its work hours, receive one-tenth of the world’s income and own less than one-hundredth of the world’s property”. (United Nations, 1980)