West and Zimmerman (1987) argue that the complex, socially guided activities that express masculine and feminine natures can be revealed in scholarly methods such as ethnomethodology and symbolic interactionism. West and Zimmerman (1987) indicate that the major argument of the doing gender theory presumes that social interactions and interpretations make social realities. Furthermore, social actors construct these realities and the realities later become accepted and are not questioned. According to West and Zimmerman (1987), the concept of doing gender shifts gender from the essentialist view of male and female as ascribed traits to viewing gender as a social process that is constantly redefined and negotiated in everyday interactions, a viewpoint
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For example, Butler (2004) argues that gender can be undone by ignoring the gender binary “male-female” assumptions underlying the theory of doing gender or by destabilizing it. Coming back to Pullen and Knights’ (2007) argument, when individuals resist the norms or fail to appear credible, they deny their gendered authenticity. For example, women in the mining industry who exhibit masculine or aggressive behaviors find themselves in a double bind because they correspond to women who deny their gendered authenticity. Women miners who attempt to shift into other jobs, negate their gender authenticity or undo their gender. Azuma and most of the other women fight with men who come to take their pits away from them. Azuma was aggressive, assertive, and excessively confident when she initially refused to hand over her deep mining pit to her male attackers. She also made sure she collected the entire sample (rock ore with gold) and left the waste (rock ore with little gold content) for the men. Based on Pullen and Knight’s views, Azuma’s attitude and behavior can be perceived as undoing gender. As Talensi women perform the same type of manual labor and physically strenuous work as men, they undermine the customary ideologies that create gender role differentiation. Even though men are the only workers allowed to work in deep mining pits, most salmabalga women dig their pits until they get to the level where they find it difficult to continue digging alone. Sometimes, the salmabalga workers hand over the pits to men voluntarily so that they become future shanking
For example, Butler (2004) argues that gender can be undone by ignoring the gender binary “male-female” assumptions underlying the theory of doing gender or by destabilizing it. Coming back to Pullen and Knights’ (2007) argument, when individuals resist the norms or fail to appear credible, they deny their gendered authenticity. For example, women in the mining industry who exhibit masculine or aggressive behaviors find themselves in a double bind because they correspond to women who deny their gendered authenticity. Women miners who attempt to shift into other jobs, negate their gender authenticity or undo their gender. Azuma and most of the other women fight with men who come to take their pits away from them. Azuma was aggressive, assertive, and excessively confident when she initially refused to hand over her deep mining pit to her male attackers. She also made sure she collected the entire sample (rock ore with gold) and left the waste (rock ore with little gold content) for the men. Based on Pullen and Knight’s views, Azuma’s attitude and behavior can be perceived as undoing gender. As Talensi women perform the same type of manual labor and physically strenuous work as men, they undermine the customary ideologies that create gender role differentiation. Even though men are the only workers allowed to work in deep mining pits, most salmabalga women dig their pits until they get to the level where they find it difficult to continue digging alone. Sometimes, the salmabalga workers hand over the pits to men voluntarily so that they become future shanking