Doing gender

In sociology and gender studies, "doing gender" is the idea that in Western culture, gender, rather than being an innate quality of individuals, is a psychologically ingrained social construct that actively surfaces in everyday human interaction. This term was used by Candace West and Don Zimmerman in their seminal article "Doing Gender", published in 1987 in Gender and Society magazine. According to this research, an individual's performance of gender is intended to construct gendered behavior as naturally occurring. This façade furthers a system through which individuals are judged in terms of their failure or success to meet gendered societal expectations, called the accountability structure. The concept of doing gender was later expanded by authors such as West and Fenstermaker in the book Doing Gender, Doing Difference.