Family and Gender
Many of the most important social developments of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century have concerned family and gender in one way or another. Around the world, in all societies, the structure of family life is undergoing profound changes. Changing family relations are accompanied by global changes in women's and men's labor force participation, and both developments are contributing to growing family diversity. Smaller households, rising divorce rates, and the feminization of poverty are making women's contributions increasingly important. As more family members seek employment in market economies, families throughout the world are becoming more dispersed. At the same time, around the world, women's paid and unpaid labor is key to global development strategies.
As these changes now figure prominently on the international stage, the time is right for sociology at Michigan State University to strengthen its specialization in family and gender. Global changes give a new urgency to family sociology - a long-standing specialization in the field, and to the sociology of gender - a specialization that has exploded in the past twenty-five years. Although they are distinctive sociological specialties, family and gender are inseparably linked. Both are shaped by economic and institutional forces, and both are closely tied with systems of inequalities, reflecting patterns of power and domination.
Major transformations in world economic and cultural systems have affected all families and households, and given rise to new patterns of family living. The last half of the twentieth century witnessed major transformations in global economic and welfare systems, migration, and the role of the state. As families assist people in dealing with these changes, family configurations have expanded to include a more diverse array of family and domestic groupings. Sociologically, family study extends beyond family living - to the relationships of families to their extended kin, the larger community and transnational forces. As globalization and economic restructuring transform structures of opportunity, and as state support for social welfare declines, families will continue to be of great importance for providing their members with resources, knowledge, support, and connections.
The program in family sociology at MSU is designed to study families and households in all their variation - from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives. The family program concentrates on the study of conventional and emergent families (in terms of race, ethnicity, immigration, sexuality, and other forms) in different structural contexts (poverty, international, spatial location, economics, restructuring), using different kinds of methodological approaches.
Sociologists recognize the centrality of gender as an ongoing principle in all social systems, including family, work, health, migration, and a host of other social domains. In the twenty first century, gender and other systems of inequality can best be understood in the context of global, economic, and social patterns. It is difficult to find a single place in the world where the workplace is not segregated by gender. Worldwide, women also do most of the work associated with housework, child, and elder care.
The gender specialization at MSU addresses the links between gender relations, race, class, and national inequalities across the globe. Such intersecting inequalities are increasingly located in current processes of globalization. Although the master images of globalization are gender-neutral (transnationalism, free markets, democratization), the world in which globalization is ascendant is gendered. Transnational corporations place strategic power in the hands of certain groups, affecting the lives of women and men in both developed and developing countries. The global division of labor has a strong gendered component, with women workers, usually from the poorest countries providing a cheap supply of labor for manufacturing products that are distributed in the richer industrial nations.
The sociology of gender at MSU views the world through the prism of difference as it intersects with other hierarchies and social forces. Gender operates at multiple social levels shaping institutions, interaction, and individuals, and race and class-specific ways. This perspective is consistent with initiatives of sociology throughout the country. Across the world, sociology departments are encouraging the full integration of theory and research on gender into the curricula as a whole. This trend is reflective of recent transformations in the discipline. For example, the largest and fast growing section of the ASA is "Sex and Gender." Increasingly, applicants to our own department list gender as an area of interest. Indeed, many of our currently enrolled doctoral students are specializing in gender. This is not a fad. It is reflective of larger trends in the field of sociology in particular, and the social sciences in general.
