Pluralizing Gender’s Barriers and Boosts: Intersections with Race and Age

Abstract: U.S. demographics are rapidly becoming older and more racially diverse. Given these changes, studying how gender interacts with other social categories (i.e. intersectionality) is critical to understanding how gender impacts women in American today. This symposium brings together five presentations that adopt an intersectional perspective on gender in the United States, revealing pluralities based on race and age in gender’s barriers and boosts to getting ahead. The speakers present evidence that gender’s influence on how people evaluate each other, how they offer help, and who gets promoted is not monolithic; rather, gender insects with race and age to influence important outcomes. Presentations 1 and 2 examine how race shapes positive and negative perceptions of women who conform to gender stereotypes. Presentations 3-5 focus on gendered evaluations and outcomes in professional settings, exploring the mutual influence of gender and race (Presentations 4 and 5), and gender and age (Presentation 5). Taken together, this work shows how factors such as race and age intersect with a person’s gender to influence the burdens and boosts they face in social and professional spaces.

Keywords: gender, sexism, intersectionality, inequality, race, age