In this article, we advance a new understanding of “difference” as an ongoing interactional accomplishment. Calling on the authors' earlier reconceptualization of gender, they develop the further implications of this perspective for the relationships among gender, race, and class. The authors argue that, despite significant differences in their characteristics and outcomes, gender, race, and class are comparable as mechanisms for producing social inequality.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Acker, Joan.1992a. Gendered institutions: From sex roles to gendered institutions.Contemporary Sociology21:565-69.
2.
Acker, Joan.
1992b. Gendering organizational theory. In Gendering Organizational Theory, edited by Albert J. Mills and Peta Tancred. London: Sage.
3.
Almquist, Elizabeth.
1989. The experiences of minority women in the United States: Intersections of race, gender, and class. In Women: A feminist perspective, edited by Jo Freeman. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
4.
Andersen, Margaret L.
, and Patricia Hill Collins. 1992. Preface toRace, class and gender, edited by Margaret L. Andersen and Patricia Hill Collins. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
5.
Aptheker, Bettina.
1989. Tapestries of life: Women's work, women's consciousness, and the meaning of daily experience.Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
6.
As smart as they look.Mirabella, June 1993, 100-111.
7.
Beale, Frances.
1970. Double jeopardy: To be Black and female. In The Black woman: An anthology, edited by Toni Cade (Bambara). New York: Signet.
8.
Berk, Sarah Fenstermaker.
1985. The gender factory: The apportionment of work in American households.New York: Plenum.
9.
Bhavani, Kum-Kum.
In press. Talking racism and the editing of women's studies. In Introducing women's studies, edited by Diane Richardson and Vicki Robinson. New York: Macmillan.
10.
Cahill, Spencer E.
1986. Childhood socialization as recruitment process: Some lessons from the study of gender development. In Sociological studies of child development, edited by Patricia Adler and Peter Adler. Greenwich, CT: JAI.
11.
Colen, Shellee.
1986. “With respect and feelings”: Voices of West Indian child care and domestic workers in New York City. In All American women, edited by Johnetta B. Cole. New York: Free Press.
12.
Collins, Patricia Hill.
1990. Black feminist thought.New York: Routledge.
Davis, Angela.1971. The Black woman's role in the community of slaves.Black Scholar3:3-15.
15.
Davis, Angela.
1981. Women, race and class.New York: Random House.
16.
de Beauvoir, Simone.
1953. The second sex.New York: Knopf.
17.
DeMott, Benjamin.
1990. The imperial middle: Why Americans can't think straight about class.New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
18.
Dill, Bonnie Thornton.1988. Our mothers' grief: Racial ethnic women and the maintenance of families.Journal of Family History13:415-31.
19.
Epstein, Cynthia Fuchs.
1973. Positive effects of the double negative: Explaining the success of Black professional women. In Changing women in a changing society, edited by Joan Huber. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
20.
Essed, Philomena.
1991. Understanding everyday racism: An interdisciplinary theory.Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
21.
Fenstermaker, Sarah
, Candace West, and Don H. Zimmerman. 1991. Gender inequality: New conceptual terrain. In Gender, family and economy: The triple overlap, edited by Rae Lesser Blumberg. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
22.
Firestone, Shulamith.
1970. The dialectic of sex.New York: Morrow.
23.
Friedan, Betty.
1963. The feminine mystique.New York: Dell.
24.
Frye, Marilyn.
1983. The politics of reality: Essays in feminist theory.Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press.
25.
Garfinkel, Harold.
1967. Studies in ethnomethodology.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
26.
Gerson, Judith.
1985. The variability and salience of gender: Issues of conceptualization and measurement. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Washington, DC, August.
27.
Glazer, Nona.
1977. A sociological perspective: Introduction. In Woman in a man-made world, edited by Nona Glazer and Helen Youngelson Waehrer. Chicago: Rand McNally.
28.
Glenn, Evelyn Nakano.1985. Racial ethnic women's labor: The intersection of race, gender and class oppression.Review of Radical Political Economics17:86-108.
29.
Glenn, Evelyn Nakano.1992. From servitude to service work: Historical continuities in the racial division of paid reproductive labor.SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and Society18:1-43.
30.
Goffman, Erving.1976. Gender display.Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication3:69-77.
31.
Goffman, Erving.1977. The arrangement between the sexes.Theory and Society4:301-31.
32.
Gossett, Thomas.
1965. Race: The history of an idea in America.New York: Schocken Books.
33.
Hacker, Helen Mayer.1951. Women as a minority group.Social Forces30:60-69.
34.
Heritage, John.
1984. Garfinkel and ethnomethodology.Cambridge, England: Polity.
35.
Hochschild, Arlie Russell.1973. A review of sex role research.American Journal of Sociology78:1011-29.
36.
hooks, bell.
1981. Ain't I a woman: Black women and feminism.Boston: South End.
37.
hooks, bell.
1984. From margin to center.Boston: South End.
38.
Hughes, Everett C.1945. Dilemmas and contradictions of status.American Journal of Sociology50:353-59.
39.
Hull, Gloria T.
, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith, eds. 1982. All the women are white, all the Blacks are men, but some of us are brave.Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press.
40.
Hurtado, Aída.1989. Relating to privilege: Seduction and rejection in the subordination of white women and women of color.Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society14:833-55.
41.
Jordan, June.
1985. Report from the Bahamas. In On call: Political essays.Boston: South End.
42.
Joseph, Gloria
, and Jill Lewis, eds. 1981. Common differences.Garden City, NY: Anchor.
43.
Kessler, Suzanne J.
, and Wendy McKenna. 1978. Gender: An ethnomethodological approach.New York: Wiley.
44.
Komarovsky, Mirra.1946. Cultural contradictions and sex roles.American Journal of Sociology52:184-89.
45.
Komarovsky, Mirra.1992. The concept of social role revisited.Gender & Society6:301-12.
46.
Langston, Donna.
1991. Tired of playing monopoly? In Changing our power: An introduction to women's studies, 2d ed., edited by Jo Whitehorse Cochran, Donna Langston, and Carolyn Woodward. Dubuque, IA: Kendall-Hunt.
47.
Linton, Ralph.
1936. The study of man.New York: Appleton-Century.
48.
Lopata, Helena Z.
, and Barrie Thorne.1987. On the term “sex roles.”Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society3:718-21.
Mitchell, Juliet.1966. Women: The longest revolution.New Left Review40:11-37.
52.
Moraga, Cherríe.
1981. La güera. In This bridge called my back: Radical writing by women of color, edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzalduá. New York: Kitchen Table Press.
53.
Moraga, Cherríe
, and Gloria Anzalduá, eds. 1981. This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color.Watertown, MA: Persephone.
54.
Morrison, Toni
, ed. 1992. Race-ing justice, engender-ing power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the construction of social reality.New York: Pantheon.
55.
Omi, Michael
, and Howard Winant. 1986. Racial formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1980s.New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
56.
Parsons, Talcott.
1951. The social system.New York: Free Press.
57.
Parsons, Talcott
, and Robert F. Bales. 1955. Family, socialization and interaction process.New York: Free Press.
58.
Rafter, Nichole H.1992. Claims-making and socio-cultural context in the first U.S. eugenics campaign.Social Problems39:17-34.
59.
Rich, Adrienne.
1979. Disloyal to civilization: Feminism, racism, gynephobia. In On lies, secrets, and silence.New York: Norton.
60.
Segura, Denise A.1992. Chicanas in white collar jobs: “You have to prove yourself more.”Sociological Perspectives35:163-82.
61.
Spelman, Elizabeth V.
1988. Inessential woman: Problems of exclusion in feminist thought.Boston: Beacon Press.
62.
Stacey, Judith
, and Barrie Thorne.1985. The missing feminist revolution in sociology.Social Problems32:301-16.
63.
Stack, Carol B.
1974. All our kin: Strategies for survival in a Black community.New York: Harper & Row.
64.
Stephans, Nancy.
1982. The idea of race in science.Hamden, CT: Archon.
65.
Thorne, Barrie. 1980. Gender... How is it best conceptualized? Unpublished manuscript, Department of Sociology, Michigan State University, East Lansing.
66.
West, Candace
, and Sarah Fenstermaker. 1993. Power, inequality and the accomplishment of gender: An ethnomethodological view. In Theory on gender/feminism on theory, edited by Paula England. New York: Aldine.
67.
West, Candace
, and Don H. Zimmerman.1987. Doing gender.Gender & Society1:125-51.
68.
Williams, Patricia.
1991. The alchemy of race and rights.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
69.
Young, Iris Marion.
1990. Impartiality and the civic public. In Throwing like a girl and other essays in feminist philosophy.Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
70.
Zavella, Patricia.
1987. Women's work and Chicano families: Cannery workers of the Santa Clara Valley.Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
71.
Zimmerman, Don H.1978. Ethnomethodology.American Sociologist13:6-15.
72.
Zinn, Maxine Baca.1990. Family, feminism and race in America.Gender & Society4:68-82.
73.
Zinn, Maxine Baca
, Lynn Weber Cannon, Elizabeth Higginbotham, and Bonnie Thornton Dill.1986. The costs of exclusionary practices in women's studies.Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society11:290-303.