In the social sciences, since the 1980’s we have been using the word “gender” instead of sex. The use of the term “gender” is not only politically correct – it is more precise, acute and scientifically accurate. The use of the term first and foremost conveys the idea that differences are not natural, nor biological or physically located in the body, but they are socially and historically constituted. What it means to be a man or a woman is not in any way determined by our bodies – whether you might think of genitals, brains, muscles or genes – because our bodies are also socially trained and constituted.
As social anthropology has shown, humanity is varied in culture and society, but biology and “natural” needs do not explain social lives or the differences among cultures, nor genders, nor race. Being a woman (or a man) in 21st century London means and accounts for different possibilities and features than being a woman in Brazil, or two centuries ago in London, but there are also differences in terms of race, social class, education, religion, age, and so on. We are all an intersection of social markers of difference – there’s no such thing as “a woman”, or “a man”, in general. Therefore, gender is a better word.
More than just allowing us to see that biology is not a destiny, gender theory also reflects on classificatory patterns: the fact that “feminine” and “masculine” are classificatory aspects of the social world, and they are used to classify activities, places, goods, and professions. Some sports or jobs are masculine, as other professions are seen as feminine – and those categorisations change in time. Some people still think of washing machines or taking care of children as “naturally” women’s capacities, as consumption itself is classified as feminine, and so are romantic films. Finance – as action movies – is a more masculine field than, let us say, marketing – although you do not need any part of a man’s body, as one could think when seeing some sports as “masculine” (rugby, for instance), or ballet as feminine. Doctors, engineers, construction workers are usually seen as a male activities, as nurses, primary school teachers or secretaries are more imagined to be females. Even a male nurse is seen as more “feminine”, or the activity of taking care of someone is also categorised as feminine, even though there may be male caretakers.
But some women can be much stronger physically than some men – gender is not intrinsically defined by body capacities. And inequalities appear visibly when a former masculine field gets more feminised, and tend to be devalued, and salaries get lower in that area. This was very clear in Brazilian history – when education was a masculine field, teachers had better salaries, as in the first half of the 20th century. As teaching, particularly in primary schools, got more and more feminised, education itself was devalued, and salaries got worse.
Gender allows us to understand other matters in social life, such as the fact that there’s a proportion of people who are born neither a girl nor a boy (intersex); or that there are people who, being born with one genital, feel as belonging to the other gender. Intersex people were formerly called hermaphrodites, and are still quite invisible as a social group – not even nature is so binary. The acknowledgement (and recognition) of intersex is a growing concern in gender studies, and there are also the multiple possibilities of trans people, those UK law names as transsexual (nomenclatures vary in each country), or people who fight for the right of gender reassignment — the T, in LGBT. We could add Q for queer and I for intersex.
For social scientists, issues of sexual orientation have a similar aspect. Sexual intercourse between people of the same gender has always existed in history (ancient Greeks are often the example that comes to mind), and so have people living lives imagined for the other gender. Nevertheless, the idea of a gay or lesbian identity and way of living is something a little more recent in history. In the UK it was a crime not so long ago, but nowadays laws such as the Equality Act are designed to guarantee survival, respect and rights for gays, lesbians or bisexuals.
However, as gay and lesbian couples and same-sex marriage get more socially accepted, with formal laws in many European countries, there is also a growing attack on those rights, and many forms of violence persist in many societies – and in schools, workplaces, public spaces as well. Even nowadays it is not unusual that people feel they cannot mention their sexual orientation in their jobs, and a whole set of traditional jokes and threats persists in many social settings.
Particularly when dealing with trans people, prejudice can be stronger and more pervasive in everyday unthinked actions, such as the division of men’s and women’s toilets. Therefore comes the importance of the right to choose the bathroom of the gender the person feels they belong to (no matter the genitals at birth), and creating a respectful environment.
Rights for equality both in terms of gender and sexuality are still a contentious struggle, and there is a gap on what the law says and what is lived daily. Gender theory itself is being attacked in the anti-gender campaigns, particularly one that started in the heart of the Catholic church. Inequalities in terms of gender are expressed largely in unequal payment, rates of domestic and sexual violence, lack of childcare, and strong and minor prejudices that take form in everyday settings, from “mansplainning” to sexual harassment.
In LGBT groups, prejudices also account for higher rates of suicide among non-heterosexual youngsters, intrafamilial violence, and we still see in many settings, including schools, “jokes” against a “too feminine boy”, or a “masculine girl”, or any other that does not fit the heterosexual imaginary pattern. Those jokes, nevertheless, can be classified as violence and harassment.
(Hence the importance of celebrating LGBT History Month.)
♣♣♣
Notes:
- The post gives the views of its author, not the position of LSE Business Review or the London School of Economics.
- Featured image: Chevalier d’Eon, painting by Thomas Stewart (c.1758-c.1801), after Jean-Laurent Mosnier, detail of a photograph by Philip Mould, in the public domain. More information here.
- When you leave a comment, you’re agreeing to our Comment Policy
Heloisa Buarque de Almeida is a visiting fellow at LSE’s department of media and communications, professor of anthropology at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, and a member of the Centre for the Study of Social Markers of Difference. She was regional director of the Brazilian Anthropological Association, where she is also a member of the gender and sexuality committee.
Print Friendly
Ótimo texto, acredito que seja importante a disseminação desses conhecimentos em portugês para o o público brasileiro. Você faz parte da rede não cala? Talvez vocês pudessem ter um blog colaborativo onde disponibilizassem textos como esse periodicamente. Outra cosia que sinto muita falta é de ter acesso: as políticas da USP para lidar com os casos de discriminação e abuso. O blog também poderia ter informações para vítimas de como e onde procurar ajuda. Ainda, disponibilizar dados sobre a atual situação das mulheres na universidades: quantas professoras, quantas alunas, quantas diretoras, quantos casos de assédio registrados, quanto casos de assédio que foram tomadas as devidas providências.
Mariana, sim, sou parte da Rede Não cala, mas não temos como fazer tudo isso. Temos uma pagina no facebook, e auxiliamos o escritório USP Mulheres a fazer cartilhas sobre como e onde recorrer, assim como a pesquisa do USP Mulheres traz alguns dados sobre a USP. Mas são poucos os casos denunciados e não temos acesos a todos eles – lembre que a USP tem 50 unidades e isso pode ser interno a cada unidade e correr em sigilo. E como somos apenas um movimento social (e não parte da estrutura institucional) não temos acesso aos casos!! Lutamos muitas vezes com a própria estrutura da instituição e sequer conseguimos efetivamente implementar um local de acolhimento – fizemos esse planejamento, mas a reitoria não implementou. Nós somos um movimento social autônomo, não temos verba, nem funcionários!
Goodness me! Most of us know that in the 80s Universities started the backlash against women’s liberation.
Most of the points about gender being a social construct and therefore subject to the society it occurs are of course correct. But what doesn’t change is that globally, however equal a society might think it is, the reality of biological sex is the basis of unversal discrimination against women.
To try and pretend that sex isn’t the major contributing factor to discrimination against women is as absurd as trying to pretend that racism doesn’t happen because white people are prejudiced against people of colour.
It is extraordinary that people can live in such a bubble of group think that they can apparently not see what is happening in the real world around them.
Gender is a social construct and should be abolished. So perhaps someone who is making a living peddling ideas about gender is best placed to analyse the problem.
But gender roles are formed on the back of the prejudices of sexism, and althouhg effect men as well, do not do so to the extent of the sex (note the word sex) discrimination that women face.
It is such a shame that so many young people are going into to debt to gain a so called higher education, only to be palmed off with this half baked science. A bit like thinking your child is going off to study geography and finding that the geography department has been over run by flat earthers.
The queer agenda of gender politicies is just part of the backlash against women’s liberation. And unfortunately to many women see happy to be the spear carers of the patriarchy that they are a subject of.
I agree with you 100%. Gender is a social and cultural construct and while there is no one way of being a man or a woman to believe that sex is irrelevant to our experiences and the way we are treated is both naive and displays a narrowness of academic understanding which I find shocking.
The Taliban know what sex is when they ban women from education. FGM is not practiced by pot luck. That females still do better in education in the U.K. up to and including first degree yet earn only 70% over their lifetime as a similarly capable man. Over 80% of sexual assaults are practiced on those if the female sex, 99% of those who commit those crimes have a penis. The last time I looked a penis wasn’t a social construct.
I have three children and I was sacked twice because of my pregnancy.
We are a sexually dimorphic species as are Raptors, cetaceans, Elephants, stag beetles ( the list goes on for ever) this has affected how our social roles are enacted
Whilst some of this treatment of women is bound up with how society views women ( the contrast between Europeans and women in Afghanistan is a case in point) much of our lives and even our deaths ( historically puerperal fever, now reproductive cancers) are determined by sex not gender.
To conflate and confuse the social with the biological is dangerous and ideological
“What it means to be a man or a woman is not in any way determined by our bodies – whether you might think of genitals, brains, muscles or genes – because our bodies are also socially trained and constituted.”
To the extent that the male and female bodies differ, it follows that that those bodily differences, and people’s reactions to them, wholly determines what it means to be a man or a woman.
I am a molecular biologist, and object to being told that genes have no import on what it means to be a man or a woman.
The genomic knowledge we are acquiring is increasing exponentially. This knowledge is inevitably leading to a situation where the entire contents of a cell, and their interactions, can be modelled as the human interactome.
It shouldn’t be too long before transwomen are demonstrably shown to be men.
‘What it means to be a man or a woman is not in any way determined by our bodies’. Well that is utter, utter nonsense. I can’t read any further. Shame on you.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/abortion/medical/infanticide_1.shtml
Aborted for no other reason than being biologically female.
Sex matters. But cheers for boiling down our lives to a set of stereotypes.
LSE seriously?
I studied social anthropology and this essay is totally incoherent and waffles from one thing to another. Elevating social constructs above biology is a very basic error
Thank you man for clarifying what is wrong in this essay, although she is an incredible scientist and has been studying this theme for almost 20 years now, you must be right, because you are a man….
I agree with him and I’m a woman, and a scientist. Do I win?
And how do you know Mark is a man? He may identify as a woman. He may be a woman who identifies as a man.
The “information” about intersex in this article is inaccurate and misleading, to the point of being offensive. Intersex has nothing to do with gender. It is an umbrella term for a variety of medical conditions that affect the development of the reproductive tract. To suggest we are not “real girls and boys,” because of this, is repeating and enforcing the social stigmas we face on a daily basis. It is also perpetuating the mind set and beliefs that lead to unnecessary medical interventions on intersex infants, to make our bodies fit into societies “norms”.
For historical context, “gender identity” was invented by John Money to justify his horrendous experiments on intersex infants. To then use us, as a human shield and a prop, to push this concept, is disingenuous and entirely damaging to intersex people who have undergone structural violence in its name. Gender ideologists, as the author here so clearly is, need to leave us out of their arguments, as they are built on the back of harm and abuse and they do not speak for us.
Biology IS a destiny for many girls around the world. Parents who have selected their child for abortion, infanticide or placement in an institution have done so on the basis of their child’s sex. They have not waited until that child grew up and asked them how they identified.
Gender is, in my opinion, rubbish, and used to support ridiculous ideas that it’s possible to have a women’s brain in a man’s body. You have absolutely overreached in saying that biology is of no consequence.
Is a woman:
a) A person with female biology and any personality?
b) Any biology and a female personality?
It seems simple enough to me. By the way, you mention toilets. Amnesty campaigns for single sex toilets in other countries, particularly refugee camps, because it recognises the risk to women and girls of sharing spaces with male bodied people. Why it does not do so here in the UK is confusing to me.