Contemporary Social Issues
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Course Introduction
This course examines the pressing social challenges and debates shaping todays world, such as inequality, discrimination, climate change, migration, technologys impact, and shifting cultural norms. Through interdisciplinary perspectives, students analyze the roots and implications of these issues and evaluate responses from individuals, communities, and policymakers. Emphasis is placed on developing critical thinking, informed engagement, and effective communication about complex societal problems in both local and global contexts.
Recommended Textbook
Gender Ideas Interactions Institutions 1st Edition by Lisa Wade
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374 Verified Questions
374 Flashcards
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Chapter 2: Ideas
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Sample Questions
Q1) The word sex refers to
A) biological differences in primary and secondary sexual characteristics.
B) the symbolism of masculinity and femininity that we connect to being male or female.
C) the fact that the shape of our body may not extend to how a person feels or acts.
D) the primary way we naturalize and justify inequality.
Answer: A
Q2) Which one of the following statements is NOT about gender binary glasses?
A) They allow us to separate everything we see into masculine and feminine categories.
B) They provide us with cultural competence.
C) They exaggerate biological reality.
D) They help us interact with others in a meaningful way.
Answer: C
Q3) If bodies are functional, but don't fit into the gender binary, is that a problem? For who, and why?
Answer: Answers will vary.
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Chapter 3: Bodies
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Sample Questions
Q1) A genetic female has two X chromosomes, whereas a genetic male has both an X chromosome and a Y chromosome. Which of the following statements best describes the effect of chromosomes on sex differences?
A) The Y chromosome is the source of most sex differences.
B) Sex differences are mostly connected to whether a person has one or two X chromosomes.
C) A link between chromosomes and sex differences is yet to be established.
D) Chromosomes have no effect since both men and women have only one functioning X chromosome.
Answer: B
Q2) What are sex-influenced genes?
A) genes that are only expressed if they occur in a male or a female body.
B) genes whose effect depends on whether they occur in a male or a female body.
C) the chromosomal pairs that differentiate genetic females from genetic males.
D) genes that have been connected with observable sex differences
Answer: B
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4
Chapter 4: Performance
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following is a conclusion offered in this chapter?
A) Higher social status is a result of avoiding gender policing.
B) Breaking gender rules is typically painful and comes with significant social costs.
C) Gender rules are easily broken since most of them are unconscious and not policed.
D) Accounts we give for breaking gender rules make it seem like everyone agrees with them, even when they don't conform.
Answer: D
Q2) Which of the following best conveys the meaning of the phrase gender rules?
A) that we all have been socialized to fit into masculine and feminine roles
B) culturally specific instructions for how a man or a woman of a certain social status should appear and behave
C) conformity-promoting responses to the violation of the gender binary in particular situations
D) the process by which something becomes coded as masculine or feminine
Answer: B
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Chapter 5: Intersections
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Sample Questions
Q1) Describe at least three reasons gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals might adopt an All but Heterosexual gender strategy. Describe some of the potential constraints and opportunities gay African American men, rural lesbians, and French gays and lesbians might face in adopting the All but Heterosexual strategy.
Q2) What kinds of challenges do women and men with physical disabilities face in designing strategies with which to do gender? Are the strategies that are open to them differently available to women and men? To women and men of different race or class statuses? To women and men living in different kinds of urban/rural locations or family structures? Pick one intersectional situation to put in the center and compare the strategies of disabled people with at least three different life situations to this "reference person."
Q3) What conditions make it more likely that a woman will adopt a Supermom gender strategy?
A) She is married to a man with a high-paying job and loses her job.
B) She is the CEO of a tech company and her husband is a stay-at-home dad.
C) She is a single mother and works as a teacher at the local school.
D) She is an award-winning doctor and has a full-time nanny.
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Chapter 6: Inequality, Men and Masculinities
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following groups are considered to be members of subordinated masculinities in the United States?
A) nerds, dorks, and geeks
B) older men, disabled men, and gays
C) poor men and nonwhite men
D) all of the above
Q2) According to researcher Michael Kaufman, "Within each group, men usually have privileges and power relative to the women in that group, but in society as a whole, things are not always so straightforward." Explain this statement and provide examples to support your explanation. Show how the examples you choose illustrate the complex workings of privileges and power to which Kaufman refers.
Q3) Which of the following is NOT true of an androcentric society?
A) Things associated with masculinity are granted higher status, respect, value, reward, and power compared with things associated with femininity.
B) The rewards of the gender hierarchy go only to people with male bodies.
C) Women tend to embrace masculine traits and activities.
D) Men tend to avoid feminine traits and activities.
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Chapter 7: Inequality: Women and Femininities
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Sample Questions
Q1) What defines the ideal woman in the contemporary United States?
A) She is a perfect picture of pure femininity.
B) She performs masculinity and femininity in a balanced way.
C) She is committed to being a wife and mother above all else.
D) She challenges male dominance and the matrix of domination.
Q2) Which of the following is evidence of women performing emphasized femininity?
A) Combat positions in the U.S. military have been opened to women.
B) Stay-at-home moms are being committed to performing unpaid work at home.
C) Parents are encouraging their daughters to aspire for traditionally male occupations.
D) Women are teaching men to use makeup to appear more attractive, too.
Q3) According to Wade and Ferree, the main types of patriarchal bargains available to women are
A) gender equivocation, feminine apologetic, emphasized femininity.
B) benevolent and hostile sexism.
C) feminism, hegemonic masculinity, and emphatic sameness.
D) emphasized femininity, emphatic sameness, and gender equivocation.
Q4) Why do the authors call benevolent sexism and hostile sexism Plan A and Plan B. respectively, as strategies to ensure women's subordination?
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Page 8
Chapter 8: Institutions
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Sample Questions
Q1) Wade and Ferree discuss the history of basketball in the United States, showing that it was dominated by Jewish men in the first half of the 1900s. How does the concept of institution help explain why African Americans eventually came to dominate professional basketball? Likewise, how does the concept explain why men's basketball continues to outshine women's basketball?
Q2) What would happen if sports were not organized by gender, but by ability instead?
A) We would see that women and men have equal ability and women would win as often as men.
B) We would see that women and men have such unequal abilities that they would still never compete against each other.
C) Beliefs in gender difference and inequality would not be routinely and ritualistically rehearsed through sport.
D) Competitions would no longer be fair.
Q3) All of the following statements are true, except
A) gender is an organizing principle that permeates our social institutions.
B) institutions are relatively easy to opt in and out of.
C) the ebb and flow of gender is a persistent feature of many institutions.
D) the gender binary is reflected in some of our institutions.
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Chapter 9: Change
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following statements reflects change in the twentieth century ?
A) Poor women and women of color entered the wage economy after middle-class white women.
B) Marriage bans ensured that only white married women could get jobs, not unmarried women or women of color.
C) The family wage was not extended to most men of color or immigrant men.
D) As soon as more educated white women entered paid work, women started to have access to better paying jobs.
Q2) The breadwinner/housewife model did not offer women economic equality because A) the money women earned at home was less than what men earned at work.
B) working-class women and women of color could not legally work in factories, unlike men of these groups who held these industrial jobs.
C) access to a living wage came through men, and the work women did in maintaining a household was no longer recognized as work.
D) men did not really depend on women's cooking, cleaning, shopping, and childcare.
Q3) A friend of yours argues that it is important to respect 'traditional' marriage? Why is her statement meaningless in historical perspective?
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Page 10
Chapter 10: Sexualities
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Sample Questions
Q1) Choose the most accurate statement.
A) Sexual scripts distinguish the legal from the illegal forms of sexuality.
B) When sexual scripts change, there is always a cultural or institutional backlash.
C) Compulsory heterosexuality is part of our sexual script.
D) People who deviate from sexual scripts are heterosexist.
Q2) What is extended adolescence?
A) the period of time after high school during which young people prepare for a future in which they'll be "real" adults
B) the period of time after college during which young women think about whether they should have a career or not
C) the period of time during college during which young men want sex but don't feel mature enough actually to initiate sexual relationships
D) a midlife crisis in which men and women return to an adolescent frame of mind
Q3) What is the difference between being sexy and being sexual?
A) None, they mean the same thing.
B) To be sexy is to be desired; to be sexual is to feel desire.
C) To be sexy is to be desired; one becomes sexual at puberty.
D) To be sexy is to feel desired; to be sexual is to be desired.
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Chapter 11: Families
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following is true about the care chain?
A) The chain is based only on a series of unpaid nurturing relationships.
B) The work of care brings more financial returns as you move down the chain.
C) The chain involves both men and women doing care work at the highest levels.
D) The work of care is feminized and devalued, whether it is paid or not.
Q2) In Gender, Wade and Ferree discuss various ways labor can be divided within families. Pick any three ways, name and define the three you pick, and then explain what factors outside the family make it more or less probable that particular families will choose these specific arrangements.
Q3) Which statement best reflects how family life is represented in sitcoms, TV commercials, and parenting advice books in the United States today?
A) Grandparents are in charge of children and the second shift.
B) Parenting is a joint responsibility of a mother and father.
C) Women are primary caretakers of the house and children, and dads are backups.
D) Fathers are active and knowledgeable caretakers of children.
Q4) In 2012, the birthrate was the lowest recorded in American history. Give at least three potential explanations for the rise in childlessness in United States. What kind of changes in the division of household labor might reverse or at least stop this downward trend in births?
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Chapter 12: Work
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Sample Questions
Q1) Employers tend to prefer men for masculine jobs and women for feminine jobs. Explaining this is called the
A) gendered network hypothesis.
B) employer selection hypothesis.
C) socialization hypothesis.
D) subordination hypothesis
Q2) Which of the following occupations has maintained the same gendered profile since the 1970s?
A) computer programmer
B) pharmacist
C) engineer
D) medical doctor
Q3) What is the motherhood penalty?
A) the extra housework that women have, in addition to paid work outside the house
B) the highest cost of health care for women who choose to have children
C) a career path with fewer opportunities for raises, promotions, or even equal pay
D) the decrease in women's average salaries with every child they have
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Chapter 13: Politics
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Sample Questions
Q1) There are three main approaches to gender equality: equal access, equal value, and equal sharing. Compare and contrast the benefits and drawbacks of each of these approaches. Describe what a feminist in each different approach might say a feminist utopia would look like.
Q2) Equal access policies (like the antidiscrimination policies prominent in the United States) accomplish some things but not others. Which of these is their characteristic shortcoming?
A) Equal access policies do not reduce sexism in employers' decision-making.
B) Equal access policies not do encourage people to value femininity.
C) Equal access policies do not encourage women to seek work in masculine fields.
D) Equal access policies do not apply to women in education.
Q3) Which country was the first to grant women the right to vote in 1910?
A) Finland
B) United States
C) South Africa
D) France
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