Reddit reviews Woman, Culture, and Society

Explicitly feminist theory:

• Alexandra Kollontai
  
• I haven't read it, but I get the sense that Silvia Federici's Caliban and the Witch touches on these themes.
  
• A lot of mother-goddess archaeological work, feminist anthropology, etc. deals with this; specifically, Evelyn Reed, and several essays in this 1974 reader.
  
  Other things that might be of interest:
  
  
• Jewish kibbutzim anti-family child-rearing practices that I imagine are based in some body of theory, but I'm not familiar enough to cite anyone here. Other utopian communities may also have similar practices.
  
• Lewis H. Morgan, who was making broadly similar arguments to Engels but more through an anthropological lens comparing the western patriarchal family to matrilineal cultures.

As an intro, you might be interested in reading the studies cited under the gender socialisation section in the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-gender/#GenSoc.

Secondly, The Gendered Society by Michael Kimmel would be a good reference point as I know there are several large studies cited throughout that book.

But then I'm not exactly sure what you're looking for as I feel a lot of the material linked in this thread already has been relevant to your question.

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One area of study I'd possibly recommend is at how gender expectations differ across cultures. If gender differences are innate, then these differences should presumably remain fairly static. So it may be worth looking at how gender expectations are framed within their cultural environment.

Firstly I'd recommend Gender and Emotion: Social Psychological Perspectives, which is available on Google Books and has a fantastic chapter on the relation between gender and emotions in different cultures. (https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tS1C8Sl5ysEC&redir_esc=y)

If you're looking for the actual studies themselves, then this fairly recent study looking at the different gender expectations in America & South Korea - http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/10-097.pdf

Annoyingly, this study is behind a paywall, but the abstract is a worthy read - Gender differences in personality traits across cultures: http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/81/2/322/

There's also Women, Culture and Society ( https://www.amazon.com/Woman-Culture-Society-Michelle-Rosaldo/dp/0804708517). Which (at least IMO) is a fantastically well researched book, but worth remembering that this was published in 1976.

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In response to your main question looking at 'big effects', it's probably worth concentrating your research on subjects where significant gender differences still exist.

On that regard, this article looks into cultural gendered attitudes towards female murderers and serial killers. I know this doesn't answer your question directly, but does touch on how women convicted of murder have use gendered expectations to their advantage, certainly a good reference point for further research: http://www.all-about-forensic-psychology.com/support-files/female-psychopathic-killers.pdf

While not directly relevant to gender itself, there are plenty of studies looking at the environmental causes of crime, which may go some way towards explaining why women are largely absent from some criminal behaviours. Gender differences in violent crime is just one obvious example...

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However, I really don't think you're necessarily going to find any research that directly answers your question since research in this field tends to look at sub-conscious ways in which individuals and/or society at large influences gender roles and identity. By their definition, these are going to be small. It's not that 'one' thing determines differential treatment between boys and girls, it's more that numerous subconscious actions permeate through our culture causing large rifts between the sexes.

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Some other possible areas of research:

(non-grammatical) gender differences within linguistics (/u/SagaciousUmbrella has already covered this brilliantly, below.) I've spent way too much time on this reply all ready to look for references, but there are plenty of studies out there looking at the differences in how men and women talk, both to each other and within their own groups. This should easily demonstrate how small subconscious differences in gendered socialisation can cause 'large effects' on a societal level.

Of the top of my head, there's also research looking at perceived gender differences within classical music - worthy since these differences disappear when performers are judged blindly.

& I'm assuming you've looked at the studies relating to the 'resume gap': Jennifer seen as significantly less competent than John etc... http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2014/why-does-john-get-stem-job-rather-jennifer

There's also studies looking at gender biases in literature (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/10/if-you-doubted-there-was-gender-bias-in-literature-this-study-proves-you-wrong).

Plenty of studies on gender bias in education as well. From memory, there should be lots of research out there looking at this from both student and teaching perspectives.

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I can think of lots of other things that might be relevant, but it's difficult to know exactly what you're after.

I'm going to stop writing now, but I do want to stress that cultural attitudes towards gender often don't seem apparent until the concepts themselves becomes outdated. Perhaps it might be worth looking at historical ideas related to gender differences as an initial reference point?

Edit: Obviously I wasn't going to get this wall of text right first time.

No problem!

I'm afraid I tend to focus more on LGBT issues and the anthropology of men/homophobia rather than feminist anthropology or the anthropology of women, so I'm likely not the best person to ask. If you haven't already checked out /r/Anthropology or /r/askanthropology I'd recommend it - there may be someone more qualified over there.

As for Ortner and the entire "man:woman::culture:nature" bit, it's a very influential and interesting essay, though at this point perhaps a little bit outdated. I'm a bit more partial to something like man:woman::public:domestic, or put less arcanely, the fact that men tend to dominate the public sphere (however you may define that), or even that how we think about something as public rather than private is tied into our ideas of masculinity and femininity, though this has its own set of issues. This is sort of something we see in how nationalist politics often tend to be, either explicitly or implicitly, politics of masculinity.

For example, in her book on the Partition, Veena Das (assuming I remember this correctly) describes how Pakistan and India's efforts to rescue abducted women was conducted through, and reinforced, how these states saw themselves and governance as something paternalistic - exchanging women as fathers give away daughters.

There's also Lila Abu-Lughod's Veiled Sentiments which is a personal favourite, though its been a while since I've read it. It's a fairly clear example of a situation where 'the public' is essentially masculine, and public/cultural virtues are fundamentally masculine virtues.

Full ethnographies aside, I'd also generally recommend Gayle Rubin's work - specifically her essay "The Traffic in Women: Notes on a Political Economy of Sex". I think you can find this in her book Deviations, but it's probably also available elsewhere. And also Michelle Rosaldo, especially her stuff in Woman, Culture, and Society, though I suppose this is a bit outdated also.