“What’s Wrong With That?” Legitimating and Contesting Gender Inequality

Abstract

While there are generally strong cultural norms against discrimination based on individual characteristics, there is a dearth of research on exactly how people understand a particular act to be an instance of (non)discrimination. This research examines 285 online posts discussing differential pricing of health insurance by gender to see how this is constructed, and disputed, as an instance of discrimination. Arguments legitimating differential pricing are based on statistical rhetoric and the invocation of a norm of differential pricing across insurance contexts. These arguments are contested by undermining the constructions of “risk” that statistics are based on, and disputing equivalence of insurance contexts. These findings suggest that straightforward claims about what is and what is not discrimination are difficult to make in practice. Highlighting the various ways that gender differentiated treatment can be legitimated and contested provides insight into the ways in which inequality is maintained and resisted within everyday situations.