Detangling Gender Differences

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There is still much debate surrounding whether gender differences exist and if so, how they come about and if they matter. It is extremely hard to disentangle nature from nurture, especially in societies in which gender roles are inescapable. This Newsweek article references a study that found that our brains can actually be affected by our environment, further melding nature and nurture.

Recent surveys done by Pew Research Center show that there is no consensus among the American public on whether gender differences are due to biology or society. Women attribute gender differences to societal factor rather than biological factors more often than men do. Women also are more in favor than men of encouraging children to do gender non-normative activities. Both men and women were more in favor of girls doing “boy” activities than of boys doing “girl” activities. This reflects how masculinity is valued above femininity in American society, even if traditionally masculine traits appear in females.

These findings relate to C.J. Pascoe’s book Dude You’re a Fag. Many of the students at River High School seem to value masculinity above all else, so the students perform their gender according to certain scripts in order to fit in. While girls are expected to be “girly,” they do have slightly more freedom than boys do in terms of presenting in more gender non-conforming ways. This is because they are adopting masculinity, which in and of itself is respected at River and in America more generally.

The Pew surveys also find that 59% of adults think that boys are not encouraged to express their emotions enough. The repression of male emotion is seen clearly in Pascoe’s book. Adolescent boys are encouraged to display their heterosexuality at every chance in order to reinforce their masculinity but are not encouraged to be romantic about their relationships. Adolescent girls, on the other hand, are expected to be sexually available but are also often vilified for being too sexual. Most of the students at River clearly stick to gender norms, but do these norms have a basis in biology?

While some publications such as this book by David P. Schmitt suggest that “sex differences… [appear] not to result from patriarchy or sex role socialization,” there are also efforts being made to disprove biological determinist theories about gender differences. As reported by the Washington Post, there is evidence that although there are some tendencies of male and female brains to have different characteristics, brain biology, much like gender, exists on a spectrum. This means that it is hard to classify brains as strictly “male” or “female”.

This article discusses a book called Inferior by Angela Saini that seeks to combat “shoddy science” about gender differences. Although it is a widely held belief that women are naturally caretakers while men are not, the article and book claim that “there are primate communities where male animals look after the young, or equally share care,” which supports Judith Lorber’s claim (in her book Paradoxes of Gender) that human gender roles are socially constructed, not based on biology. Many sociologists and gender scholars subscribe to Lorber’s theory that “If gender differences were genetic, physiological, or hormonal, gender bending and gender ambiguity would occur only in hermaphrodites” (Lorber 1994, 6).

It is clear that more research will be necessary to keep up with changes in how societies think and feel about gender and gender differences (or lack thereof). This research must come from many different disciplines, including sociology, psychology, gender studies, and biology. Scholars must continue to grapple with the subjectivity of supposedly empirical scholarship and the challenging task of separating environmental factors from biological ones.