Overview

Are today's young adults gender rebels or returning to tradition? In Where the Millennials Will Take Us, Barbara J. Risman reveals the diverse strategies youth use to negotiate the ongoing gender revolution. Using her theory of gender as a social structure, Risman analyzes life history interviews with a diverse set of Millennials to probe how they understand gender and how they might change it. Some are true believers that men and women are essentially different and should be so. Others are innovators, defying stereotypes and rejecting sexist ideologies and organizational practices. Perhaps new to this generation are gender rebels who reject sex categories, often refusing to present their bodies within them and sometimes claiming genderqueer identities. And finally, many youths today are simply confused by all the changes swirling around them. As a new generation contends with unsettled gender norms and expectations, Risman reminds us that gender is much more than an identity; it also shapes expectations in everyday life, and structures the organization of workplaces, politics, and, ideology. To pursue change only in individual lives, Risman argues, risks the opportunity to eradicate both gender inequality and gender as a primary category that organizes social life.

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9780199324385

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Reviews

Provocative, timely, and lucid, Where the Millennials Will Take us provides a powerful framework for studying gender and inequality today. Addressing everything from trans kids, to 'hookup culture, ' to institutional forms of gender inequality, Risman shows us how Millennials think about how gender shapes their experiences and opportunities. So too does Risman rely on her participants' ideas and lives to identify cracks in gendered structures, helping us consider how we might exploit these to affect change. This book is bound to provoke conversation and, just perhaps, a bit of necessary controversy as well. -Tristan Bridges, Assistant Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara From the 'true believers' who remain gender traditionalists to the 'rebels' who hope to dismantle gender altogether, Barbara Risman's insightful analysis provides a roadmap for making sense of the dizzying array of gender strategies emerging in 21st century America. This important book extends and refines Risman's pioneering work on gender as a social structure. It belongs on the bookshelf of anyone who wishes to understand the fundamental changes transforming the very meaning of gender. -Kathleen Gerson, Collegiate Professor of Sociology, NYU The era of 'gender vertigo' is here: confusing, creative, unsettled, and unsettling. Bouncing between ideas as radically divergent as fundamentalist religion and queer theory, Millennials are forging their own gendered paths, sometimes undoing gender altogether. This is a first look at how young people are responding to the gender revolution they've inherited, one that reveals a kaleidoscope of identities and offers a new vision for the future. -Lisa Wade, Occidental College

Provocative, timely, and lucid, Where the Millennials Will Take us provides a powerful framework for studying gender and inequality today. Addressing everything from trans kids, to 'hookup culture, ' to institutional forms of gender inequality, Risman shows us how Millennials think about how gender shapes their experiences and opportunities. So too does Risman rely on her participants' ideas and lives to identify cracks in gendered structures, helping us consider how we might exploit these to affect change. This book is bound to provoke conversation and, just perhaps, a bit of necessary controversy as well. -Tristan Bridges, Assistant Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara From the 'true believers' who remain gender traditionalists to the 'rebels' who hope to dismantle gender altogether, Barbara Risman's insightful analysis provides a roadmap for making sense of the dizzying array of gender strategies emerging in 21st century America. This important book extends and refines Risman's pioneering work on gender as a social structure. It belongs on the bookshelf of anyone who wishes to understand the fundamental changes transforming the very meaning of gender. -Kathleen Gerson, Collegiate Professor of Sociology, NYU The era of 'gender vertigo' is here: confusing, creative, unsettled, and unsettling. Bouncing between ideas as radically divergent as fundamentalist religion and queer theory, Millennials are forging their own gendered paths, sometimes undoing gender altogether. This is a first look at how young people are responding to the gender revolution they've inherited, one that reveals a kaleidoscope of identities and offers a new vision for the future. -Lisa Wade, Occidental College

Provocative, timely, and lucid, Where the Millennials Will Take us provides a powerful framework for studying gender and inequality today. Addressing everything from trans kids, to 'hookup culture,' to institutional forms of gender inequality, Risman shows us how Millennials think about how gender shapes their experiences and opportunities. So too does Risman rely on her participants' ideas and lives to identify cracks in gendered structures, helping us consider how we might exploit these to affect change. This book is bound to provoke conversation and, just perhaps, a bit of necessary controversy as well. -Tristan Bridges, Assistant Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara From the 'true believers' who remain gender traditionalists to the 'rebels' who hope to dismantle gender altogether, Barbara Risman's insightful analysis provides a roadmap for making sense of the dizzying array of gender strategies emerging in 21st century America. This important book extends and refines Risman's pioneering work on gender as a social structure. It belongs on the bookshelf of anyone who wishes to understand the fundamental changes transforming the very meaning of gender. -Kathleen Gerson, Collegiate Professor of Sociology, NYU The era of 'gender vertigo' is here: confusing, creative, unsettled, and unsettling. Bouncing between ideas as radically divergent as fundamentalist religion and queer theory, Millennials are forging their own gendered paths, sometimes undoing gender altogether. This is a first look at how young people are responding to the gender revolution they've inherited, one that reveals a kaleidoscope of identities and offers a new vision for the future. -Lisa Wade, Occidental College

Author Information

Barbara J. Risman is Distinguished Professor of Arts & Sciences in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of Gender Vertigo: American Families in Transition, editor of Families as They Really Are, and a forthcoming Handbook on Gender (co-edited with Carissa Froyum and William Scarborough)

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