Gender & Sex

Social Construction of Gender

Sex and Gender
• The term ‘sex’ is used to denote the biological differences between
women and men, while ‘gender’ indicates the socio-cultural attributes
that society associates with each sex. Similarly, while the terms ‘male’
and ‘female’ are used to denote biological differences, ‘masculinity’
and ‘femininity’ are socially constructed gendered attributes which
are assumed to be ‘natural’ to each sex. For example, ‘maternity’ is a
biological phenomenon, but the roles and attitudes that are assumed
to be fitting a mother, are social constructions (Bruce and Yearley
2006). As Connell defines it, ‘Gender is the structure of social relations
that centres on the reproductive arena, and the set of practices that
bring reproductive distinctions between bodies into social processes.
• The distinction between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, which came to dominate theorisation in the
sociology of gender in the 1970s, is premised upon the idea of universality of ‘sex’ and
variability of ‘gender’. Ann Oakley’s Sex, Gender and Society (1972) made the sex-
gender distinction very popular in sociology. For Oakley, sex is a word that refers to the
biological differences between male and female: the visible differences in genitalia, the
related difference in procreative function.
• Simone De Beavoir supports the social construction view stating that ’one is not born a
woman, but becomes one’.
• Contemporary sociology of the body has been influenced much by feminist theories.
The propounding works of Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex, 1972) describes how
the female body is regulated by patriarchal norms and structures. Beauvoir has pointed
out that ‘one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’ through various socio-
psychological processes that ‘construct’ one as fundamentally female (or male). She
explained the differences between biologically determined sex and the social construct
of gender. Feminist social theories on the body tend to analyze how the ‘essential’
socio-cultural differences between women and men, which we consider to be ‘natural’,
or take for granted, are in fact socially constructed.
Gender identity construction
• According to Ann Oakley, Gender is a matter of culture; it refers to the societal classification into
Masculine and Feminine. In other words, gender refers to a specific cultural meaning system that
attaches to being a male or a female. Gender is a sexualised identity of individuals in relation to the
customs, traditions and ways of life.
• Margaret Mead’s (1935) study of the three societies in the New Guinea Islands, though contestable
on several grounds, contributed significantly to the shaping of the concept of gender in the latter
half of the 20th century. The functionalist notion of ‘sex-role’ was also a crude precursor of the
concept of gender. It suggested that men and women are socialised into sex-specific roles, namely
‘instrumental’ and ‘expressive’. These roles were regarded as the basis of a complementary relation
between men and women, which along with the sexual division of labour, contributed to a stable
social order. Scholars have questioned the focus of this conceptualisation upon ‘individual’ men
and women who are socialised into sex-specific roles.
• Critics have also pointed out that socialisation is always a precarious achievement and that agency,
interpretation and negotiation are a part and parcel of how gender identities are actually
constituted.
Gender Development Theories
• These theories can be generally divided into three families: evolutionary, biological, social, and
cognitive – gender schema theory.
• Evolutionary Theory Perspective - According to biological approaches, psychological and
behavioral gender differences are due to the biological differences between males and females.
Within this family of approaches, researchers have focused on historical explanations (such as
evolutionary processes) and proximal explanations (such as genes and sex hormones).
Evolutionary theorists, such as David Buss and David Geary, emphasize that the survival of the
human species is dependent on successful reproduction; genes responsible for the strategies
that lead to successful reproduction are more likely to be passed on to our descendants than the
strategies that do not lead to reproductive success. This evolutionary process is believed to lead
to psychological gender differences because the behaviors needed for successful reproduction
are differ-ent for males and females. Women have the physical responsibility of gestating and
nourishing their offspring and, therefore, are only able to have a limited number of children.
Males are also viewed as more aggressive than females because they are required to compete
with other males for females who are choosey in selecting their male partners.
• evolutionary principles have been used to explain gender differences
in sex-typed toy preferences, and spatial abilities. Gerianne Alexander
proposes that the strategies needed for successful hunting have led
the visual system of males to be sensitive to tracking the spatial
movements of objects, which explains why boys prefer objects that
elicit motion (e.g., cars). In contrast, the skills needed to forage for
plant food (e.g., ability to discriminate red wavelengths) and take care
of infants (e.g., ability to process facial expressions) has led females to
be highly sensitive to the features of objects, which is consistent with
females’ preferences for dolls and warm color .
• Biological Theories
• When examining the role of genes in gender development, researchers have
studied the effects of differences in the number and type of sex chromosomes. For
instance, researchers who have manipulated genes in rodents have found
evidence that genes on the Y chromosome affect the brain and behaviour.
• sex differentiated exposure to prenatal and/or postnatal hormones is responsible
for gender differences in abilities and behaviors. Much of the evidence supporting
this view has come from studies examining the role of androgens. Androgens are a
group of hormones that play a role in the development of male traits and
reproductive activity. Although androgens are present in both males and females,
males have much higher levels than females. There- fore, research has explored
whether naturally occurring variations of androgen levels or direct manipulation of
these levels are responsible for changes in gender-typed behaviors; increases in
androgens are expected to make behavior more male-typical and decreases in
androgens are expected to make behavior more female-typical.
Social Approaches
• Social approaches to gender development view gender differences as a by product of the
different treatment girls and boys receive from the people in their lives and the pervasive
gender stereotyped messages that children are exposed to in their environment. This
approach emphasizes socialization in the family, schools, and wider culture.
• According to this view, females and males develop gender-typed behaviors because they are
reinforced for displaying behaviors that are consistent with gender norms and pun- ished for
displaying behaviors that are not consistent with gender norms.
• social learning theory by Albert Bandura, began to recognize the importance of imitation and
modeling in the development of social behaviors. The application of social learning theory to
gender development was presented in a chapter by Walter Mischel in the 1966 book, The
Development of Sex Difference. When applied to gender development, modeling, or
observational learning, refers to a person’s tendency to learn vicariously by observing other
people engage in gender-typed behaviors and witnessing the responses (e.g., rewards or
punishments) that these people receive from others.
• During the 1980s, social learning theory was revised again by Albert Bandura to place more
emphasis on the cognitive processes that mediate learning. This theory is now known as
social cognitive theory and it was formally applied to gender development in 1999.
• Here, children are also viewed as active participants in their gender development as they
develop regulatory self-standards and beliefs that guide their own behaviors. According to
social cognitive theory, gender-typed behavior is promoted by modeling, experiencing the
consequences of gender-typed behaviors, and by direct teaching of gender roles; through
these experiences, children are believed to develop outcome expectancies, self-efficacy
beliefs, and self-sanctions that also regulate and guide their gender-typed behaviors.
• social cognitive theory posits a reciprocal model of causation in which personal (e.g.,
cognitive, affective, biological factors), behavioral (e.g., gender-typed activity patterns), and
environmental factors (e.g., social influences) interact to determine gender-typed conduct.
Cognitive Theories
• The cognitive approach to gender development was initially presented by
Lawrence Kohlberg when he outlined his cognitive- developmental theory in
Eleanor Maccoby’s 1966 book The Development of Sex Differences.
• Kohlberg proposed that as children develop an understanding of gen- der,
they become more motivated to match their behavior to gender norms.
Kohlberg emphasized the significant motivating role of gender constancy,
which is the developing understanding that gender is a permanent and
immutable category. Gender constancy knowledge is believed to develop in
three stages: knowledge of whether you are a boy or a girl (i.e., gender
identity), knowledge that gender remains the same throughout life (i.e.,
gender stability), and knowledge that gender doesn’t change despite
superficial changes in appearance or activities (i.e., gender consistency).
Gender Schema Theory
• gender schema theory posits that self-driven qualities play an integral
role in the development of gender-typed behaviors such that children
intentionally pursue and construct information about gender. In this
view, people develop gender schemas, which are organized
knowledge structures containing a person’s attitudes and knowledge
about gen- der, as they interact and seek out information in their
environment; their gender schema
• Sandra Bem (1981) emphasized that the development of gender
schemas is due to the pervasive gender messages in our society and
that gender-typed behavior emerges as children’s self-concept and
self-esteem gets assimilated in their gender schemas.
• gender schema theory focuses on the ways that gender schemas organize, bias, and
regulate thinking and behaviors. According to this perspective, children’s inherent need
for cognitive consistency and self-definition motivates them to seek out gendered
information and adjust their behavior to match their perceptions.
• More recently, a third gender schema was proposed by Lynn Liben and Rebecca Bigler
(2002) called the dual-pathway gender schema theory. This theory extends earlier
gender schema theories by highlighting the role of individual differences.
• Halverson’s theory, the attitudinal pathway model indicates that gender attitudes predict
behaviors. For instance, if a girl believes that dolls are for girls and trucks are for boys,
she is more likely to approach the doll and avoid the truck. The second pathway is a
personal pathway model that suggests that interests affect attitudes and behaviors. For
instance, if a boy had the opportunity to play with a kitchen set and enjoyed it, he might
adjust his gender schema to include the view that kitchen sets are for boys or for both
boys and girls.
• Judith Butler states, ‘The category of "sex", from the start, is
normative’. ‘Sex’, as a norm, not only regulates but also produces ‘the
bodies it governs’. Sex is not a static fact of the body, but rather a fluid
process through which ‘regulatory norms’ are materialized and
reiterated. This concept of ‘materialization’ is further linked with the
notion of ‘gender performativity’. The ‘regulatory norms of sex’, by
means of materializing the body and sexual differences, ultimately
strengthens normative heterosexuality (Butler 1993). Thus one
acquires the social identity of either masculine or feminine. Through
various regulatory forces (for e.g. socialization), one learns her/ his
gender identity, as also shaped by class, caste, ethnicity, religion, race
etc. These gender identities, in turn, get stereotyped as ‘typical’ to a
particular sex. For e.g. a woman being caring, loving, emotional,
passive, submissive, docile, dependent etc; while the man has to hide
emotions and be active, tough, strong, practical, dominating etc
Nature v/s culture
• Sherry Ortner (1972) in her famous essay ‘Is female to male as nature is to
culture?’ initiated a powerful framework for studying the basis of gender
construction. She argued that female subordination is universal and that
this could not be explained in terms of biological factors because this
condition is not inherent. She located the problem within culturally defined
value systems and cultural ideologies. All cultures recognize and make a
distinction between human society and the natural world. Culture attempts
to control and transcend nature and use it for its own purposes. Culture is
therefore superior to the natural world and seeks to socialize nature.
Ortner suggests that women are identified with nature while men are
associated with culture, since culture seeks to control and transcend nature
it is natural that women should also be controlled and contained.
• This formulation that nature is to culture as female is to male provided social
anthropologists with a powerful analytical framework since it provided a way of
linking sexual ideologies and stereotypes to social roles and cultural symbols. The
differences between men and women can be conceptualized as a set of opposed
pairs. Thus men may be associated with ‘up’, ‘right’, ‘high’, ‘culture’, and ‘strength’;
while women are associated with their opposites, i.e. ‘down’, ‘left’, ‘low’, ‘nature’ and
‘weakness’. These associations are cultural constructs, which are powerfully
reinforced by social normative strictures. Different, in fact opposite, social roles are
prescribed for men and women in most of the societies, accompanied by patterns of
rewards and punishment. It has been further argued that since men and women
have contrasting attributes, they must perform social roles which are contrasting too.
For example, since women are emotional, they must perform familial roles including
the bearing and rearing of children, taking care of the elderly, discharging social
obligations and so on. Conversely, men, who are supposed to have rational and
logical temperaments, must manage important affairs of home and public life. It
automatically followed that men’s tasks are socially more significant in comparison to
women’s. Thus men’s and women’s roles came to be recognized as not only different
but unequal also. Differentiation therefore gave way to a hierarchy that has persisted
for ages in almost all societies.
• Women have been associated with nature, implying thereby that they tend to be emotional,
while men are rational. Further, almost all societies specify the tasks to be performed by women
and then rate these tasks as inferior and unproductive, while those performed by men are
treated as very important and productive. For ages, therefore, women in societies like India
were informally trained within families to perform domestic chores, and were denied
acquisition of other skills including education, a prerogative of men only. In patrilineal societies,
where daughters move to their husbands’ homes after their marriage, girls have been treated as
temporary members, often a liability on the parents. Because of such role expectations, the
world of women was usually restricted to the four walls of home, where they were totally
dependent upon their fathers before marriage and on husbands later. This is the reason why
women comprise a very small proportion in the workforce
• in many developing countries including India. Educating a daughter was considered to be
watering a plant in a neighbour’s courtyard; a waste of money. As a result, when compared to
men, , studies show that all over the world women lack the skills, education and employability,
keeping them out of the highly paid jobs. Even today, after so much of inputs into women’s
advancement, women are segregated in low paid jobs and comprise a large proportion of the
poor. It has now been realized at the global level that by disallowing women develop their
capabilities the way men are allowed, societies have had enormous financial and manpower
loss. By not building the capacities of women for ages, huge human resources have been wasted
to the disadvantage of societies at large.
Socialization – Process of Gender
Construction
• Gender role programming evidently starts immediately after birth, in the
different ways in which adults treat girl and boy babies and in the
different behaviours the children perceive in female and male adults. It is
confirmed and extended in schools, at universities and in societies at
large. Families, schools, universities and societies are products of culture,
and their socialization processes are culturally constructed. In the Indian
context, there is a strong preference for sons in comparison to
daughters. This cultural preference tends to exercise a very powerful
impact on the gender formation of boys and girls. A preferential
treatment given to a son at the cost of his sister often goes a long way in
reinforcing masculinity in him; in that he acquires a sense of superiority
over the opposite sex.
• Thus if women tend to be more patient, sacrificing and submissive and men
are more assertive, dominating and expressive, it is not because they are born
like that, but because of the socially acquired behaviour, which is reinforced
at home, at school and in larger society. The text books showing the mother
cooking or washing and the father reading or going to work have a deep
impact on the child who starts associating different tasks with males and
females. Gender is therefore, constructed in the process of socialization.
• The media which is the most prominent influence upon the children and
youth of today plays a major role in gender construction by presenting
stereotyped images of men and women in advertisements, serials and films.
Film stars have always been the role models for young boys and girls and
therefore a hero is always loved by them for being tough, aggressive, strong,
rational and dominating. The heroine is obsessed with her physical
appearance and is often emulated for her looks, femininity and emotional
appeal. Girls who cannot cook well are not appreciated while men who feel
shy of public dealing are ridiculed.
• Agencies of Socialization The process of socialization takes place through a
number of agencies or social institutions. These are:
1. Family - The first lessons of life, language, normative behaviour and
gender roles are learnt in the family. A child takes the role of mother or
father, depending upon his/her gender, within the family. What society
expects from a boy or a girl, what is implied by masculinity or femininity,
are all learnt in the family.
2. Peer group - The child then gets maximum exposure to his/her friends or
peer group. In contemporary societies, it is the peer group, which is the
most influential agency of socialization. Many a times, the peer group is
considered much more important than the family because a child today
spends more time with friends in comparison to his/her family. Studies
have shown that as a child grows, he/she gathers information about his
adolescence and physical changes thereon from the peer group.
3. Religion - Every religion prescribes specific kinds of values, roles and
standards of behaviour for men and women. Most of the religions for
example legitimize the patriarchal pattern of society, granting a
subordinate status to women. The dress, food, mannerism and rituals
that women are supposed to follow, come from the religion they belong
to.
4. School/Education - another extremely important agency of
socialization is education. School happens to be the first exposure for the
child where he/she internalizes the way in which different genders are
expected to behave. In traditional societies, school reinforced the
patriarchal mindset introduced by the family in the first place. Studies
show that girls and boys are encouraged to opt for different subjects and
they are also inducted into different kinds of extra-curricular activities.
Most of the text books present the family as a patriarchal unit, headed by
the father, while the mother is projected as a homemaker, even if she is
working.
5. Media - media happens to be a most influential agency that
socializes a child as a man or woman. Films project the images of
masculinity and femininity very strongly and the young boys and girls
grasp them readily, taking the film actors as their role models. Women
have mostly been presented as delicate, submissive, beautiful
homemakers, who lose their femininity by getting into masculine roles.
Most of the television serials in India for example reinforce the
gendered division of labour within and outside families.
Advertisements particularly, strengthen the gendered images, showing
the obsession of girls for beauty products and physical appearance,
while projecting men as professionals.
Stages of Socialisation
• Infancy - In the words of Mary Holmes (2009), when a child is born and the doctors
say ‘it’s a girl’ then that child becomes part of a whole social framework in which
whatever she does will be understood in relation to ideas about gender. Butler
(1990) calls this process ‘girling of the girl’. According to Chodorow (1994), most
children, girls and boys, are cared for in the early years of their lives by their
mothers. Contact with the mother is the dominant feature of the infant’s early
experience and central to her/his sense of self. Gender identity is not a given, but
develops as part of the very process of self-formation. The dynamics of maleness
differ substantially from those of femaleness. It is in fact, masculinity which is more
stressful and ambiguous. For the boy must be defined as ‘not female’ (in the
Freudian sense) and he must break his association with the mother. According to
Chodorow, men tend to reject feminine feelings within themselves unconsciously,
they have less access to their emotions, reject dependence, take an instrumental
relation to the world and find intimate relations difficult. Girls on the other hand are
able to maintain a closer identification with the mother and are therefore more
comfortable with their own feelings and with emotional identification with others. -
• Childhood and Adolescence - According to G.H.Mead, a famous social psychologist,
who has proposed an important theory of socialization, a child passes through the
play and game stages during the process of socialization. In the Play stage, the child
takes the role of the significant other and imitates his/her behaviour. For instance, a
girl child often imitates her mother. Later, she imitates her teacher and plays her role.
By role playing, the child gets into the specific role and learns the role expectations. A
young girl thus starts playing the role of her mother at an early stage and internalizes
the role expectations. In the Play stage, the child begins “taking the role of the other”,
perceiving herself from the perspective of another person. Mead further argues that
taking the role of the other is a cognitive process that permits the child to develop a
self-concept. Self-concepts develop by interacting with other people and out of
learning to perceive how others look at us and expect from us. The people who are
most important in the perception of the child and with whom she interacts are called
by Mead “significant others” and they are ‘mother’, ‘father’, ‘siblings’, ‘teacher’ and
this number goes on multiplying as the child grows. By playing “Mummy”, a little girl
child learns the social definition of this role and the expectations society has from this
role. This helps her in taking up the role of mother later in her life without much
effort.
• According to G.H.Mead, a famous social psychologist, who has proposed an important
theory of socialization, a child passes through the play and game stages during the
process of socialization. In the Play stage, the child takes the role of the significant
other and imitates his/her behaviour. For instance, a girl child often imitates her
mother. Later, she imitates her teacher and plays her role. By role playing, the child
gets into the specific role and learns the role expectations. A young girl thus starts
playing the role of her mother at an early stage and internalizes the role expectations.
In the Play stage, the child begins “taking the role of the other”, perceiving herself
from the perspective of another person. Mead further argues that taking the role of
the other is a cognitive process that permits the child to develop a self-concept. Self-
concepts develop by interacting with other people and out of learning to perceive
how others look at us and expect from us. The people who are most important in the
perception of the child and with whom she interacts are called by Mead “significant
others” and they are ‘mother’, ‘father’, ‘siblings’, ‘teacher’ and this number goes on
multiplying as the child grows. By playing “Mummy”, a little girl child learns the social
definition of this role and the expectations society has from this role. This helps her in
taking up the role of mother later in her life without much effort.
• Adulthood and Old Age - The process of socialization continues as one grows
as an adult and then in old age. Although gender identity is formed quite early
in life, during childhood, an individual keeps on learning new roles as he/she
keeps getting into new roles with varying expectations. For instance, as a child
grows into an adolescent and then an adult, she enters into marriage and
attains the status of a wife, daughter-in-law and mother. Socialization prepares
her for these roles and she normally gets into these roles without much effort.
She understands what is expected from her and she learns that from her
mother and other women around her. Of course this learning by an adult
woman is culture specific in that adult women in different cultures are likely to
perform their roles differently due to varying role expectations. Ageing, which
is a natural and inevitable process, prepares an individual for new roles
coming up. Ageing was less problematic in traditional societies where families
were joint and care for the elderly was available within the family. However,
with nuclear families and dual earner couples, ageing has become a problem.
Studies have shown that the experience of ageing may be different for men
and women.