ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to propose an ethnomethodologically informed, and therefore distinctively sociological, understanding of gender as a routine, methodical, and recurring accomplishment. Analyses of sex and gender in the social sciences, though less likely to accept uncritically the naive biological determinism of the view just presented, often retain a conception of sex-linked behaviors and traits as essential properties of individuals. Gender may be routinely fashioned in a variety of situations that seem conventionally expressive to begin with, such as those that present “helpless” women next to heavy objects or flat tires. Many situations are not clearly sex categorized to begin with, nor is what transpires within them obviously gender relevant. Subsequently, little boys appropriate the gender ideal of “efficaciousness,” that is, being able to affect the physical and social environment through the exercise of physical strength or appropriate skills. Thus gender differences, or the sociocultural shaping of “essential female arid male natures,” achieve the status of objective facts.
