June 24, 2022

My spouse and I sit on the couch watching our 15-month-old twins play. Born during the pandemic, they don’t have many playmates, but fortunately they have each other. Like other parents with the privilege of time and financial resources, we read about different styles of parenting and ways to foster their development. Inundated with so much information, which may very well change by the time this textbook is published, we ultimately decided to do our best and to deemphasize traditional gender roles. Our children wear “girl” clothes and “boy” clothes, often allowing them to select their clothing by pointing to one outfit or another. We try not to reinforce a gender ideology behind the toys they select or the ways they interact with others. Instead we try to work on skills like sharing, kindness, and speaking up for what they want (as much as possible, which currently looks more like gestures, signs, and squeals). We model behavior where sometimes Mom cooks/cleans/drives, sometimes Dad cooks/cleans/drives.

I open this chapter with a story that links to gender socialization or at least our attempt at degendering (deemphasizing gender roles) because gender is often discussed at the individual level, such as practices of socialization. Don’t worry, we do that in this chapter; however, right now I’d like to bring your attention to how gender acts to organize us at a structural level. For many students, this concept is a hard one to grasp. Our social institutions and how gender is viewed within them has real consequences on our daily lives (and the lives of our children).

What do I mean when I say gender itself structures our lives and opportunities? Sociologists view gender as something that is embedded in our organizations and the ways in which they are structured. In other words, our organizational structure itself is not gender neutral. Instead assumptions about gender are built into positions and jobs, a fact that is made invisible by obscuring the gendered nature of work (Acker 1990). In a patriarchal society, the universal worker, voter, and so on, becomes a man. Sociologist Joan Acker theorizes the ways in which organizations are structured along the lines of class and gender by looking at hierarchies within the organization of work.

We can apply the idea that gender acts as an organizing principle of our daily lives by examining the U.S. Supreme Court ruling announced on June 24, 2022. In a 6-to-3 decision, the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade ruling that protected women’s autonomy to choose abortion. The due process clause added to the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that provided a “right to privacy” and protected pregnant women’s rights to an abortion has changed. This decision comes at a time when data from the PEW Research Center shows that 61 percent of adults believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases (Public Opinion on Abortion | Pew Research Center [Website]; On Abortion, Few Americans Take an Absolutist View| Pew Research Center [Website]).

A decision made by nine individuals appointed by a handful of (male) presidents impacts the lives of families and fundamentally restricts women’s autonomy and choices. Now individual states and government officials have the power to determine women’s reproductive rights. Current laws and policies within individual states will make accessing safe medical procedures difficult. Several states already had laws banning abortion that predated Roe v Wade and others had trigger laws (bans on abortion go into effect with the overturning of Roe v. Wade) (Mangan 2022a). Some states have abortion bans that go into effect after six weeks gestation. At such an early stage, many women might not be aware that they are pregnant or might not be able to secure doctor’s appointments within the narrow timeframe.

Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, argued that the 1973 ruling was an error made on weak arguments and an “abuse of judicial authority” (Totenberg and McCammon 2022). Dissenting Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan said that the court decision means that “young women today will come of age with fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers . . . from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A state can force her to bring a pregnancy to term even at the steepest personal and familial costs” (Totenberg and McCammon 2022). This ruling has significant implications for women’s positions in society—or at least some women. As we will discuss later in this chapter, affluent women have always and will continue to have options when it comes to seeking medical care.

There are many reasons a women may choose to get an abortion. Rather than questioning why someone might want control over their reproductive rights and bodies, it is interesting from a sociological perspective to understand how complicated this court decision becomes when we examine our current social institutions. As dissenting justices pointed out, women will be expected (and can be forced) to carry pregnancies to term when our current work and family policies do not uniformly support family life.

In the United States, parental leave policies are limited. If workplaces offer parental leave, it is often unpaid. This can either create an additional financial burden or make time off inaccessible at a time when new parents and guardians need to adjust to the mental and physical demands that come with newborns. If eligible, employees may need to take short-term disability or use the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA [Website]). Government programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) attempt to offer financial support for low income families with children, but there is still a stigma associated with participating in welfare programs (McLaughlin 2021). Eligibility requirements are restrictive and benefits are low. For example, in Oregon the current maximum monthly benefit for a family of three is $503 (Benefits.gov [Website]). We also should consider how this decision will impact the growing fertility industry.

Keep in mind that this chapter introduction isn’t a “pro-abortion” discussion. This discussion is intended to point out how women’s rights are now restricted. This decision disproportionately affects women of color and those with lower socioeconomic status (Dehlendorf, Harris, Weitz 2013; Johnson 2022). The overturning of Roe v. Wade also brings into question other rulings where it was used as precedent. For example, Justice Clarence Thomas has mentioned that we need to reexamine marriage equality and contraceptive rights (Mangan 2022b). As we can see from this single decision, gender acts to organize our daily lives, from how we learn to interact with others to how our laws serve to protect us.