PROGRESSION TO WOMEN EMPOWERMENT
STATE & VIOLENCE
MEDIA & POPULAR CULTURE
Social Institutions exert a powerful influence on our everyday life and are important channels for societal penalties and privileges Institutions are both sources of support as well as repression. They are the determinants for the types of job(s) one gets, ones family structure, whether ones religion is socially accepted or further scrutinized, ones educational experience, how one might be portrayed in the media, and most importantly how one is treated by ones state. Social institutions are established societal patterns of behavior organized around particular purposes and the specific societal conditions in which groups live. Most importantly across all societies, institutions are pattered by intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity and disability, therefore that is why no one society is the same.
Sexism in Institutions
Various products of cultural institutions explain in part why race, class and gender relations are obscured These products are instruments of the media such as movies, books, television advertisements, textbooks, statistics and governmental documents, and teaching methods and curriculum materials of schools. Cultural institutions in general replicate ideas by identifying which ideas are valuable; ideas of the privileged within groups according to race, class, and gender relations are more often heard while the others who are disadvantaged are silenced, ignored. Images in the media often go unquestioned and many times these media and cultural institutions have the capacity to harm those stigmatized by them, and are far from benign because the uphold social policies and affect individuals.
The United States has a pressing issue when it comes to violence and its justice system. We develop more profound questions dealing about the violence and its relationship with how state power organizes race, class, and gender relations. "Violent acts, the threat of violence, and more generalized policies based on the use of force find organizational homes in state institutions of social control-- primarily the police, the military, and the criminal justice system.(Anderson and Collins, 275)" The United States is built on a violent platform and uses violence to accomplish ones freedom from other nations, individuals, etc. The criminal justice system punishes certain forms of violence while others are unnoticed. The targets of violence are also determined by race, class and gender. An example of this would be hate crimes which are quite harmful to the groups experiencing the acts of violence. Those disadvantaged by either their race, class, gender and often times religion are subjected to be victimized by said horrific acts.
Education in America has recently become an institution in crisis. High School drop out rates are deplorable and prevalent among students from poor and/or working class families of color. People worry that the children aren't learning in school revealing deep problems of the education system. Schools may reproduce inequalites of race, class, gender but they are a reflection of the inequalities in the society. Schools have always been a site of inequality but has evolved over the years. At a point only white males were permitted to get an education while people of color, slaves at the time weren't even allowed to learn how to read and write, while white women only had the option of being housewives. Although there was an elimination of formal segregation it doesn't mean that desegregation as a policy is geared towards educational equity.
FAMILY
EDUCATION
Families are profoundly influenced by interesting systems of race, class, and gender. The ideology of the family according to Anderson and Collins, "purports that families are places for nurturing, love, and support--characteristics that have been associated with women. This ideal identifies women with the private world of the family and men with the public sphere of work. (270) This ideology is class and race specific, it places irrelevance on the family experiences of minorities families and most white families. The historical context of this ideology also presumes that families are formed around the heterosexual norm but ignores the fact that gays and lesbians also participate in their families origin, later forming families of their own.
Anderson, Margaret L., and Patricia Hill Collins. "The Structure of Social Institutions." Race Class & Gender. 8th ed. California: Wadsworth, 2010. 265-76. Print.