Gender and Interaction.

Gender is a system of social practices within society that constitutes people as different in socially significant ways and organizes relations of inequality on the basis of the difference. Like other systems of difference and inequality, such as race or class, gender involves widely shared cultural beliefs and institutions at the macro-level of analysis, behaviors and expectations at the interactional level, and self-conceptions and attitudes at the individual level of analysis. Although each component is important, events at the interactional level may be especially important for the maintenance or change of the gender system. Compared to people on opposite sides of class and racial divides, men and women in the United States interact with one another frequently, often on familiar, even intimate terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]