Sociologists of sex, gender, and sexuality explore changing gender relations, sexual practices, inequalities, and identities across national boundaries.
Read some of the works of our researchers:
Sexualities
- Ghaziani, Amin (2025). The Cultural Field of Queer Nightlife: Organizations, Artists, and Curatorial Activism. The Sociological Quarterly.
- Holmes, Andy & Ghaziani, Amin (2025). Situational Fluidity and the Use of Identity Labels in Interactions. Socius.
- Ghaziani, Amin & Abrutyn, Seth (2024). Renewal without replication: Expanding Durkheim's theory of disruptions via queer nightlife. The British Journal of Sociology.
- Karimi, Aryan (2024). Muslims on the Margins: Creating Queer Religious Community in North America. Contemporary Sociology.
- Karimi, Aryan (2021). Sexuality and integration: a case of gay Iranian refugees’ collective memories and integration practices in Canada. Ethnic and Racial Studies.
- Karimi, Aryan (2020). Limits of Social Capital for Refugee Integration: The Case of Gay Iranian Male Refugees' Integration in Canada. International Migration.
- Silva, Tony (2024). Self-Rated Masculinity and Femininity and Reported Number of Lifetime Sexual Partners Among Cisgender Heterosexual and LGBQ Men and Women. Archives of Sexual Behavior.
- Silva, Tony (2023). Daddies of a Different Kind: Sex and Romance Between Older and Younger Adult Gay Men. New York University Press.
- Silva, Tony (2022). Subcultural identification, penetration practices, masculinity, and gender labels within a nationally representative sample of three cohorts of American Black, White, and Latina/o LGBQ people. Archives of Sexual Behavior.
- Qian, Yue & Hu, Yang (2025). How couples meet and assortative mating in Canada. Journal of Marriage and Family.
- Qian, Yue & Hu, Yang (2025). Straight Jacket: The Implications of Multidimensional Sexuality for Relationship Quality and Stability. Sociological Science.
- Shen, Yang, & Qian, Yue (2023). How to Find Mr/Miss Right? The Mechanism of Search Among Online Daters in Shanghai. Journal of Family Issues.
Social Movements
-
Movahed, Masoud & Hirsh, Elizabeth (2022). The regional determinants of collective action in the era of American Resistance. Interface: A Journal for and About Social Movements.
- King, Brayden & Nelson, Laura (2023). Beyond Protests: Using Computational Text Analysis to Explore a Greater Variety of Social Movement Activities. Methodological Advances in Research on Social Movements, Conflict, and Change.
- Nelson, Laura (2022). The inequality of intersectionalities in Chicago’s first-wave women’s movement. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.
- Nelson, Laura et al. (2022). And the rest is history: Measuring the scope and recall of Wikipedia’s coverage of three women’s movement subgroups. Sociological Methods & Research.
Work & Family
- Berdahl, Jennifer & Bhattacharyya, Barnini (2024). Do White Women Gain Status for Engaging in Anti-black Racism at Work? An Experimental Examination of Status Conferral. Journal of Business Ethics.
- Berdahl, Jennifer et al. (2023). Workplace masculinity contests and culture. Routledge Handbook on Men, Masculinities and Organizations.
- Bhattacharyya, Barnini & Jennifer Berdahl (2023). Do you see me? An inductive examination of differences between women of color’s experiences of and responses to invisibility at work. Journal of Applied Psychology.
- Fuller, Sylvia et al. (2024). The Work/Care Interface and Parents’ Mid-Pandemic Mental Health: Inequalities at the Intersection of Gender and High-Risk Household Status. Society and Mental Health.
- Fuller, Sylvia, & Kim, Young-Mi (2023). Women Managers and the Gender Wage Gap: Workgroup Gender Composition Matters. Work and Occupations.
- Fuller, Sylvia & Yue Qian (2022). Parenthood, gender, and the risks and consequences of job loss. Social Forces.
- Hanser, Amy & Yue Qian (2022). Pregnant under quarantine: Women's agency and access to medical care under Wuhan's COVID-19 lockdown. SSM - Qualitative Research in Health.
- Hirsh, Elizabeth et al. (2020). Caregivers, gender, and the law: An analysis of family responsibility discrimination. Gender and Society.
- Movahed, Masoud & Hirsh, Elizabeth (2022). Mobilizing Equal Employment Rights: The Social and Political Determinants of Discrimination Complaints (2009–2018). The Sociological Quarterly.
- Nelson, Laura et al. (2023). Taking the Time: The Implications of Workplace Assessment for Organizational Gender Inequality. American Sociological Review.
- Brewer Alexandra, Nelson, Laura et al. (2023). Gender and Inconsistent Evaluations: A Mixed-methods Analysis of Feedback for Emergency Medicine Residents. Western Journal of Emergency Medicine.
- Qian, Yue & Yang Hu (2024). The digitalization of family life: A multilevel conceptual framework. Journal of Marriage and Family.
- Qian, Yue & Yang Hu (2021). Couples' changing work patterns in the United Kingdom and the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gender, Work & Organization.
- Qian, Yue & Jill E. Yavorsky (2021). The under-utilization of Women’s talent: Academic achievement and future leadership positions. Social Forces.
We offer the following undergraduate courses covering Sex, Gender, and Sexuality:
- 212: Introduction to Gender (currently in development)
- 312: Gender Relations
- 314: Sociology of Masculinity
- 369: Sociology of Sexualities
- 414: Feminist Theory
- 469: Queer Theory and Politics
Sex, Gender, and Sexuality Research News
About this research area:
Sociologists of gender and sexuality explore changing gender relations and sexual identities within historical and contemporary contexts across national boundaries.
A central theme within feminist sociology, the exploration of intersectionality, recognizes the mutually constitutive character of social processes, structures and identities (e.g., through race, class and gender).
An example of research by faculty in this field is the examination of gender differences in settlement experiences among immigrants and refugees.
Pivotal to this field of inquiry is the examination of queerness—lesbian, bisexual, trans, intersexed, pansexual—past and present, in addition to the social construction of heteronormativity and heterosexual non-conformity.
Examples of research by faculty in this area include burlesque, striptease, neo-burlesque, industries of sex workers and sex-related social movements.
This area of expertise excavates the transformation of gender over time, space and the life course.
Examples of research by faculty include the complexities of ‘girl cultures’, school-based youth cultures and care-giving for the elderly.
Some sociologists of gender analyze processes of globalization, the segregation of the labour force, unionization and social policy.
Examples of such research include struggles for pay equity, service work and consumer culture, and single parenting in neo-liberal contexts.