Bio: (1956-) American sociologist. Barbara Risman received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington, Seattle, taught at the University of North Carolina, and today teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Risman is best known for her theoretical approach to gender, where she sees gender as an aspect of social structure. She takes Giddens' theory of structuration as a macro-theoretical framework for her theory. Risman emphasizes that according to the theory of structuration, there are causal feedback relations between individuals and structures - structures affect individuals, but individuals as conscious, reflective, and competent actors change the structure by their behavior. The theory of gender as a social structure adopts this view of social structure. The relationship between the structure, which operates through cultural patterns, on the one side, and the reflective causality of individual behavior, on the other side, should be observed at several levels of analysis, to understand the social structure of gender.

Risman singles out three main levels of analysis: 1) individual level of analysis (socialization and identities); 2) interactional level (cultural expectations, common sense attitudes); 3) institutional level (distribution of material values, forms of formal organization, ideological discourse). Gender structure provides different opportunities and constraints, in different ways, at each of these three levels. At the individual level, the gender structure influences the creation of gender selves; at the interactional level, the gender structure creates different cultural expectations for each gender, even when individuals of both genders are in the same structural positions; at the institutional level, the gender structure, through cultural patterns and legal regulations, creates a different, gender-specific, distribution of material and other resources.

At the individual level, socialization in childhood leads to the internalization of gender roles in members of both genders and thus leads to the creation of gender (innate) selves. At the interactional level, the gender structure creates different status expectations for men and women, women are expected to be filled with empathy and care, while men are expected to be more active and successful in society. Cognitive prejudices enable the reproduction of gender inequalities in everyday life. Social institutions and organizations reproduce gender inequalities at the institutional level. The most important are economic structures that create and maintain different expectations and opportunities for women and men in employment and other aspects of work (earnings, advancement, commitment). The different distribution of material resources between the two genders also maintains structural gender inequalities. Formal legal inequalities are becoming rarer, but even when official laws are formally gender neutral, institutions and organizations (courts, churches, companies) still have different attitudes towards men and women. And, finally, often the official ideology, long after the introduction of formal legal gender equality, retains androcentrism.

Main works

Gender in Intimate Relations: A Microstructural Approach (1989);

Feminist Foundations: Towards Transforming Sociology (1998);

Gender Vertigo: American Families in Transition (1998);

„Gender As a Social Structure: Theory Wrestling with Activism“, in Gender & Society (2004);

Families as They Really Are (2010).