ABSTRACT
Although there has been much documentation of male advantage at the macrostructural level (for example, the gender gap in earnings, sex segregation in the workforce, disparities of legal status between the sexes), such aggregate information sometimes does not seem very salient to one's everyday circumstances. Fishman's microsociological analysis of power shows the subtlety and ubiquitousness of male dominance in our culture. This work, which analyzes the text of transcribed conversations between intimates, is in the tradition of a perspective called "the social construction of reality." The social construction view stresses the processes by which society becomes the product of human consciousness and, at the same time, individuals become products of their society. One result is that humans are confronted with their culture without being aware that they created it. Fishman's work concretely captures these processes.
