L’objectif central de cette thèse consiste à étudier les effets des couleurs associées au genre, particulièrement bleu et rose, sur la perception du sexe des visages. Les enregistrements électrophysiologiques de surface (potentiels évoqués cérébraux) et les données comportementales issus de mon travail indiquent que la perception du visage, au-delà de sa dimension physiologique, est soumise à l’influence de processus top-down induits par le stéréotype de la couleur bleue pour le genre masculin et de la couleur rose pour le genre féminin. Ces influences s’observent précocement au cours de l'étape d'encodage perceptif des visages. / The present thesis aims at studying the impact of the colors associated to gender, particularly blue and pink, on the perception of face gender. Our electrophysiological and behavioral data indicate that the perception of the face, beyond its physiological dimension, is subject to the influence of top-down processes induced by pink for female and blue for male stereotype. These influences are evident at early perceptual stage of face processing.

Of the many systems of social organization which members of US society use to categorize other members, gender is one of the most important. The gender system operates to place members of US society into categories, and then allocate labor and resources to those members on the basis of their category membership. In order to better understand the gender system, this study examines the methods by which members of US society use the gender system to place other members into a gender category. First, full facial photographs were taken of a group of participants of varying gender, race, ethnicity, and age. Then, parts of each participant's face were isolated digitally and shown to a second group of participants. This second group was asked to identify the sex and/or gender of the individual in the image, indicate how confident they were in this identification, and then write a brief explanation for why they identified the individual in the image as they did. The analysis conducted by this study supports three findings. First, though the gender categories "male" and "female" are still widely predominant, other categories such as "genderqueer" are seeing use as well. Second, the mouth and lips tend to be seen as more important indicators of gender than other facial features. Finally, while the race and gender category membership of the member doing the categorizing has little or no interaction with the gender categorization process, the race and gender category membership of the member being categorized does have a significant interaction.

The purpose of this essey is to investigate whether and if so how women's separatist music rooms can create an extended acting space for female musicians. To do this, I have conducted an interview study of organizers and former music participants at the organizations Popkollo and Femtastic. The analytical discussions is held with the theoretical approach of Judith Butler's "heterosexual matrix" and Cecilia Björck's interpretation of Michel Foucault's "The gender disciplinary gaze". The results show that the main reason to choose women's separatist music room has been a longing to ”take place” and to ”get to the be yourself". Furthermore, the results show that the room enabled a liberation from outsiders ideal images of the "mild" and "fragile" female musician, whereupon more expressive positions was made possible. The study also reveald a dilemma in a balance to be liberated, but at the same time adapt to popular music gender-coded ideals. Furthermore the results show that in this context it is sometimes perceived as disfavouring to be coded as both a female artist and a feminist. This is because of the tendency to be seen and treated as a homogenous group with a common political agenda. Finally, I note, however, that women's separatist music room at least can create possibilities for an extended acting space as the informants has expressed a development both personally and musically.