Doing gender

In sociology and gender studies, "doing gender" is the idea that in Western culture, gender, rather than being an innate quality of individuals, is a psychologically ingrained social construct that actively surfaces in everyday human interaction. This term was used by Candace West and Don Zimmerman in their seminal article "Doing Gender", published in 1987 in Gender and Society magazine. According to this research, an individual's performance of gender is intended to construct gendered behavior as naturally occurring. This façade furthers a system through which individuals are judged in terms of their failure or success to meet gendered societal expectations, called the accountability structure. The concept of doing gender was later expanded by authors such as West and Fenstermaker in the book Doing Gender, Doing Difference. As of 2009, "Doing Gender" was the most cited article published in the journal Gender and Society.

The concept of "doing" gender came from conversations of gender from sociology and gender studies. The specific term "doing gender" was used in West and Zimmerman's article by the same title, originally written in 1977 but not published until 1987. West and Zimmerman illustrate that gender is performed in interactions, and that behaviors are assessed based on socially accepted conceptions of gender. Rather than focusing on how gender is ingrained in the individual or perpetuated by institutions, West and Zimmerman emphasize the interactional level as a site where gender is invoked and reinforced. They begin by differentiating sex from sex category and gender. In this piece, sex is the socially agreed upon criteria for being male or female, usually based on and individual's genitalia at birth or chromosomal typing before birth. Sex category is the assumed biological category, regardless of the individual's gender identification. This is "established and sustained by the socially required identificatory displays that proclaim one's membership in one or the other category" (p. 127). Gender is the degree to which an actor is masculine or feminine, in light of societal expectations about what is appropriate for one's sex category.

Doing gender according to west and Zimmerman "is to advance a new trap house understanding of gender as a routine accomplishment embedded in every day interaction". Essentially, West and Zimmerman argued that gender is something that humans created. As humans, we have categorized and defined many aspects of life. If someone was not in favor of their gender role or did something that was not deemed "correct" for that gender this person would be committing an act of social deviance.

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