presentation

Soft essentialism: Soft essentialism is from the book Kids (chapter 5). This term defines as how adults’ beliefs about gender differences, along with the ways that they treat boys and girls in youth sports, creates a professional class based gender ideology. Unlike the “hard” categorical essentialism created by sport in the pre-Title IX era, soft essentialism sees sports as a viable choice for girls, whose participation teaches them competitive values and physical skills that counter the limitations of their supposed feminine nature. Boys are simply assumed to be competitive and aggressive, their natures consistent with the values of sport.

Second-Shift: Second-Shift is from the book Kids (Chapter 2). This term was made popular by sociologist Arlie Hochschild, whose study of two-career, heterosexual families showed that women were still doing the vast majority of the housework in these families.