claims depend on truant evidence (Fausto-Sterling, 1985), and that any immediate normative implications follow from whatever differences might exist between men and women.
In what follows we proceed on the assumption that the more plausible course is to take some version of the second as true. To follow this line in investigating the ways in which women are systematically disadvantaged is to investigate sexism. We begin with a characterization of sexism. We then offer a brief history of its social recognition. We turn then to the levels at which sexism conditions human social life, and discuss some paradigm examples of sexism. We then set out the two principal types of feminist theories of sexism, and conclude with a brief discussion of three objections to struggles against sexism.
What is Sexism?
It is important to note at the outset that sexism is a highly complex notion. It is thus much easier to define conceptually, though this is no small task, than to concretely and unequivocally identify. Though there are certainly patent cases of sexism, on many definitions sexism is often only identifiable by its symptoms or consequences. We can quite readily explain that, if some distribution of opportun ities systematically deprives women of what is offered to men, and there is no apparent overriding reason which justifies such a distribution, then we have a clear prima facie case of sexism. As a general claim this seems to us both undeniable and unassailable. The idea that sexism involves systematic inequality is, in short, a commonly recognized working definition. Yet those who deny that there is (much) sexism in the world, or in a particular case, often demand clear, ostensible evidence. Objective, operational criteria would be helpful here, and helpful for doing research or making policy as well. The task of finding such criteria is often quite difficult and comes from a wide array of theories covering the gamut of the social and psycho logical world. For sexism happens not only in explicitly institutionally structured settings, such as, for example, the denial of equal opportunity for jobs, but also in the daily and presumably much more spontaneous interactions between persons. As these latter interactions involve a wide variety of motives and causes, they may appear to be idiosyncratic and individualized rather than socially constructed. In such cases the charge of sexism might then appear less apt because less than obvious. Thus, the conceptual work of clarifying the nature of sexism is a far easier task than the practical work of showing that some particular concrete instance involving the mistreatment of women is the result of sexism or an instance of sexism. It is for this reason that much feminist work focuses on conceptual clarifica tion and the organization of women's experience.
In its widest sense the term "sexism" can be used to refer to anything that creates, constitutes, promotes, sustains, or exploits an unjustifiable distinction between the sexes (Frye, 1983: 18). In this wide sense the term "sexism" (and its nominative "sexist") can be used to refer to any purported though mistaken difference between the sexes. This neutral descriptive use of the term, however, is deeply unsatisfactory. First, because the history of the term (brief as it is) shows it to have been intentionally