The chapter starts with a brief description of sex and gender, which are qualities differentiating men and women on a biological or behavioral level, respectively. According to the author, although sexual characteristics are inherited, gender identity develops during childhood. Families teach their children how to behave in a certain way that fits the expectations for a given gender, which make up the gender roles.
In the next section the author introduces the Nature-Nurture debate. The nature side supporters indicate that gender-related behaviors are fixed, innate, largely heredity behaviors that are physiologically-determined. The nurture proponents claim that these behaviors are flexible and learned psychological behaviors, driven by the social environment of the individual. The author briefly introduces that on the biological level men and women differ in health/disease conditions an hormones. She also mentions that unsuccessful sex reassingment cases support that biological basis of gender. Next she discusses cross-cultural variations in gender roles and male violence. Since these behaviors vary among studied populations, they seem to be acquired rather than fixed, therefore support the nurture side. The author concludes that there are not many differences between men and women biologically, but socially. Scientist try to explain the existence of gender roles using various theoretical perspectives, which are sociobiology, social learning, cognitive development, symbolic interaction, and feminism.
In the next section, we learn that there are four main sources where children acquire gender roles, parents, peers, schools, and media. Parents teach gender roles subconsciously and consciously by talking differently to their sons and daughters, setting different expectations for boys and girls, or by providing opportunities as well as discouraging non-typical activities for a given gender. Play and peers can be also very effective; toy companies target boys and girls differently, and children may acquire gender roles by socializing with same-sex peers. Schools also deal with children differently depending on their gender, and apparently female students end up choosing female-dominated majors which may be due to their lower exposure to math and science courses. In addition, to these three factors, pop culture and media further teach young girls and boys about gender roles and stereotypes through magazines, advertisements, movies, and TV shows.
Most of us end up learning the traditional gender roles through one or more of these sources. According to traditional views, men are assigned instrumental and women are assigned expressive roles. Accordingly, men are expected to be the leaders and financial supporters of their family and women are expected to be submissive, caring and in charge of running the house. If there were no benefits, traditional roles would not last. Such benefits include division of family labor, that allows both spouses to focus on their task without stressing out about juggling duties. However there are also associated costs that may become more problematic for one of the spouses at a time of crisis (such as loss of a job for husband, no financial security after divorce for wife, etc.). Other reasons while traditional families exist can be political, macroeconomical/corporal, and religious or cultural.
Next, we learn about gender roles in various settings. In the family, it seems that men are doing more chores however most of the burden still remains to the women as a double-shift day for many working mothers. At the workplace, even though there is a greater gender equality nowadays, there are still discrimination and sexual harassment problems. In politics, more women are taking the floor but there is still room for progress. In academia, women are still discriminated against and have more difficulties obtaining tenure. In addition, religion also reinforces and assigns certain gender roles. Last, women and men tend to have different communication styles where men are more interruptive and directive rather than tentative. Some scientists proposed androgyny as a solution for inequalities in gender roles, which involves blending both female and male characteristics in one person, however this approach seems to benefit men more than women.
Last, the chapter focuses on variations of gender roles among different cultures. According to GGGI list, Northern and Western European countries have most gender equalities whereas middle eastern countries seem to have the most inequalities.
- Novel/interesting aspects
I found it very scary that school officials and teachers take advice from Michael Gurian (p.118), who does not seem to have academic credibility to support his credibility, except his ties to several religious groups as linked on his website. See his CV here http://www.michaelgurian.com/academic.html
I am also aware of the maltreatment of the women in many societies in different parts of the world. I am very sad that women are still killed for family honor in countries including my country of origin.
- Discussion points
To be honest, I thought the nature/nurture portion was weak. Especially, the "how important is nature?" (p 108-109) wasn't informative for the following reasons:
- It was very short (6 short paragraphs) and the message was generally unclear. For example, the first paragraph indicates that biologists propose that health differences, hormones and unsuccessful sex reassignment cases are evidence that biology shapes behavior. However when you move to the next paragraph and read the health differences you are left wondering what those diseases have anything to do with gender-specific behaviors.
- The author left out the hormone/development literature. Instead, she briefly described the three sex hormones (in which progesterone seemed hanging in air) and did not mention any studies from the HUGE field of sexual development. It seemed to me she did not read any literature on this topic, otherwise we would read a better constructed section. Anything I mention here can be found in upper level endocrinology textbooks since most are common knowledge, and some are from personal experience from the times I worked in the laboratory of Dr. Sandy Petersen at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst between 2002-2005 (http://www.umass.edu/neuro/faculty/files/petersen.html). Still, a very good review article is the following: Melissa Hines, Gender development and the human brain. Annu. Rev. Neurosci. 2011. 34:69–88
Briefly, during pregnancy the fetus starts secreting hormones. Presence of testosterone leads to enlarging of some brain regions such as preoptic area (PoA) in the hypothalamus and in women we see a larger anteroventral periventricular nucleus (AVPV). Larger the PoA, the more the person is attracted to females. Similarly, the larger the AVPV, the more the person expresses caring-motherly behaviors. Due to some genetic differences, conditions, diseases, infections, etc. a disturbance in these hormone-induced changes may lead to altered behavior. For example, male rats sheep etc. may try to mate with males if this is disturbed. (I have personally disrupted male rat fetuses during pregnancy and yes, they did behave differently after birth.)
- In the nurture section, she mentioned literature about raising hermaphrodite children as either boys or girls successfully. Although some parents may choose raising a child with absent/almost nonexistent penis as a boy but most seem to raise such a child as a girl. It may be successful to raise this kind of a baby as a girl not only because of nurture playing a major role in gender identity but also it is very likely that these children did not have adequate exposure to testosterone during pregnancy. In this case their brain could possess both boy and girl characteristics and the child could easily be trained as either.
- She does not mention congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) females. You can read the Wikipedia description of the general CAH condition here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_adrenal_hyperplasia
The important part for the female offspring that are born with this condition is that they are exposed to high levels of male-like hormones as fetuses during critical periods of development. After birth, even though they are raised as girls, they seem to prefer boy toys, boy peers, act more aggressive etc. In addition, they are 600x more likely that a woman from the general population to experience severe gender dysphoria (they want to become men).
In conclusion, I am not saying that all behavior is fixed at birth but most of the hardware is fixed. If you think as the brain as a computer, to install a program (nurture) you need appropriate hardware (nature). If the hardware is not compatible with a given program, it is doomed to crash, as seen in Brenda/David example or CAH females. There may be some transitionary hardware (hermaphrodites etc) that may run less errors for multiple programs.
An excellent blog post :)
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