Summary of Sociology of Gender SOC 603 (Chapters 2-12)
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Course
SOC 603 (SOC603)
Institution
Ryerson University (Ru
)
This document contains a comprehensive set of detailed notes taken from the textbook for SOC 603 (Sociology of Gender, Chapters 2-12). The notes summarize key concepts, theories, and findings discussed in the chapters required for the course, providing a structured and accessible resource for study...
Explanations of Gender
• Ordained by Nature
○ Biology Constructs the Sexes
▪ Biological explanations hold a place of prominence in our explanations of both gender
difference and gender inequality
□ First, biological explanations have the ring of 'true' science to them: Because
they are based on 'objective scientific facts', the arguments of natural scientists
are extraordinarily persuasive
□ Second, biological explanations seem to accord with our own observations:
Women and men seem so different to us most of the time
○ Biological Differences, Then and Now
▪ Prior to the nineteenth century, most explanations of gender difference had been the
province of theologians
□ God had created man and woman for different purposes, and those
reproductive differences were decisive
▪ By the late eighteenth century, scientists were beginning to join the debate
□ Published drawings of the male and female skeletons that exaggerated the
pelvises of women and the crania of men, thus arguing for the sexes' 'natural'
suitedness to their social roles
▪ The debate intensified later in the nineteenth century under the influence of Darwin
□ Those species that adapt well to their environment reproductively successful
□ Species are always changing, always adapting
▪ Many writers argued that women's efforts to enter the public sphere-to seek
employment, to vote, to enter colleges—were misguided because they placed
women's social and political aspirations over the purposes for which their bodies had
been designed
▪ Social scientists quickly jumped on the biological bandwagon—especially social
Darwinists
□ Distorting his ideas about natural selection to claim decisive biological
differences among races, nations, families, and, of course, between women and
men
□ Much of the debate centred on whether or not women could be educated
□ Clarke argued that women should be exempted from higher education because
of the tremendous demands made upon their bodies by reproduction
□ These arguments were often linked to regressive racist and classist views
□ The field of eugenics developed in the nineteenth century and spread its
influence to Canada in the early twentieth century.
□ 'Mentally defective' was used as a blanket term that covered many forms of
disability and mental illness)
□ The discrediting of such historical (if recent!) forms of biological determinism
should make us cautious about the conclusions we draw from biology
Biological arguments generally draw their evidence from three areas of
research:
◊ (1) evolutionary theory, from sociobiology to 'evolutionary
psychology;
◊ (2) brain research;
◊ (3) endocrinological research on sex hormones, before birth and
again at puberty
The Evolutionary Imperative: From I Social Darwinism to Sociobiology and Evolutionary
Sociology of Gender Page 1
,○ The Evolutionary Imperative: From I Social Darwinism to Sociobiology and Evolutionary
Psychology
▪ The new field of sociobiology
□ Edward Wilson, a professor of entomology at Harvard, helped to found this
school of thought, which studies the biological basis of social behaviour in all
animals, including human beings
□ All creatures, Wilson argued that' the 'biological principle', and all
temperamental differences (personalities, cultures) from the biological
development of creatures undergoing the pressure of evolutionary selection
□ Eventually, he confidently predicted, the social sciences and humanities would
'shrink to specialized branches of biology'
□ Stressed is the differences in male and female sexuality, which they believe to
be the natural outgrowth of centuries of evolutionary development
Tall members of a species consciously or unconsciously desire to pass on
their genes
Develop reproductive 'strategies' to ensure that our own genetic code
passes on to the next generation
Culture has little to do with it, as Wilson argues, because 'the genes hold
culture on a leash'
◊ For the male, reproductive success depends upon his ability to
fertilize a large number of eggs
◊ Toward this end, he tries to fertilize as many eggs as he can and
thus have a 'natural' propensity toward promiscuity
◊ By contrast, females require only one successful mating before their
egg can be fertilized, and therefore they tend to be extremely
choosy about which male will be the lucky fellow
What's more, females must invest a far greater amount of
energy in gestation and lactation and have a much higher
reproductive 'cost', which their reproductive strategies would
reflect
Females, therefore, tend to be monogamous, choosing the male who will
make the best parent
Women and men have different 'sexual psychologies' that drive women to
be 'more choosy and more hesitant,' while men are 'less discriminating,
more aggressive, and have a greater taste for variety of partners'
'Parental investment'
□ Other evolutionary arguments
➢ The separation of masculine and feminine spheres seems to have a basis
far back in evolutionary time
◊ Social requirements for the evolutionary transition to a hunting-
and-gathering society
The hunting band must have solidarity and co-operation,
which require bonding among the hunters
Women's biology-especially their menstrual cycle-puts them
at a significant disadvantage for such consistent co-operation,
and the presence of women would disrupt the co-operation
necessary among the men and insinuate competition and
aggression
Women also are possessed of a 'maternal instinct'
Make sense for men to hunt and for women to remain back
home raising the children
➢ Some sociobiologists have argued that rape is 'natural', a result of men's
failed competition for mates
◊ Is one example of sociobiology's biological determinism
Sociology of Gender Page 2
, ◊ Is one example of sociobiology's biological determinism
▪ The newest incarnation of sociobiology is called 'evolutionary psychology', which
explains psychological traits, including differences between women and men as
evolutionary adaptations
□ Our brains did evolve under vastly different conditions from those we live in
today
□ Comparisons with primates can help us understand many behaviours
□ In every society females placed a high premium on signs of economic prosperity,
whereas men placed their highest premium on youth and beauty, whose signal
traits were large breasts and ample hips—i.e., signs of fertility
□ The single trait most highly valued by both women and men was love and
kindnesa
➢ This suggests that when we choose mates, we are acting on a complex set
of impulses derived at least as much from our cultural influences as from
the demands of our genes
□ Women are the only primate females who do not have specified periods of
estrus
□ They are potentially sexually receptive at any time of their reproductive cycle,
including when they are incapable of conception
➢ Id if the reproductive goal of the female is to ensure the survival of her
offspring, then it would make sense for her to deceive as many males as
possible into thinking that the offspring was theirs
◊ So might not women's evolutionary 'strategy' be promiscuity?
□ One more bit of evidence is the difference between male and female orgasm
➢ Whereas male orgasm is clearly linked to reproductive success, female
orgasm seems to have been designed solely for pleasure; it serves no
reproductive function at all
➢ It orgasm is a reproductive strategy for promiscuous females
□ Women's cycles tend to become increasingly synchronous; that is, over time,
women's cycles will tend to converge with those of their neighbours and friends
□ 'Mate guarding' would enable IT to maximize his chances of impregnating the
woman and minimize the opportunities for other potential sperm bearers
▪ Sociobiologists have been criticized for their inability to locate the genetic imperative
for certain behaviours or for exaggerating the nature of genetic predisposition
□ Assume that only one interpretation is possible from the evidence but there
could be other's
□ Tl condemned for selective use of species when making comparisons between
animal and human behaviours
□ Sociobiology has often been used to provide us with what Rudyard Kipling called
a 'just-so story'—an account that uses some evidence to tell us how, for
example, an elephant got its trunk, or a tiger its stripes
➢ Just-so stories are children's fables, understood by the reader to be
fictions, but convenient, pleasant, and, ultimately, useful fictions
○ Testing the Gendered Brain: Sex Differences in Spatial and Verbal Skills
▪ When IQ tests were invented, women scored higher on those tests as well So the
experimenters changed the questions
▪ Christine Hoff Sommers argued that persistent gender differences in interests (which
she traces to innate tendencies) are the cause of women's underrepresentation in
SEM (sciences, engineering, and mathematics)
▪ Verbal ability was seen as higher in females
▪ Visuospatial abilities are, likewise, not one ability
□ Differences in these abilities begin to appear at about 4.5 years of age and
persist into adulthood, though they are not always significant
□ Still, girls tend to outperform boys in all subjects, including math, until senior
Sociology of Gender Page 3
, □ Still, girls tend to outperform boys in all subjects, including math, until senior
high school
▪ It is true that males widely outnumber females at the genius end of the mathematical
spectrum
▪ It seems that there is simply greater variability in male test scores; men outnumber
women at both ends of the spectrum
▪ There is a far greater range of differences among males and among females than
there is between males and females
□ The variance within the group far outweighs the variance between groups
○ His' Brain and 'Her' Brain
▪ In the eighteenth century, r, experts measured women's brains and men's brains and
argued that, because women's brains were smaller and lighter, they were inferior
□ Turned out that women's brains were not smaller and lighter relative to body
size and weight a
▪ More decisive methods had to be found to demonstrate that men's brains are
superior
▪ According to Geschwind, males tend to develop 'superior right hemisphere talents,
such as artistic, musical, or mathematical
□ Believes that men's brains are more lateralized, with one half dominating over
the other, whereas women's brains are less lateralized, with both parts
interacting more than in men's
□ Scientists can't seem to agree on which it is 'better' to have
Keep changing their minds about which hemisphere is superior and then,
of course, assigning that superior one to men
▪ Virtually all humans, both men and women, use both sides of their brains to
reasonably good effect
□ Levy, 'then males may be at a double disadvantage in their emotional life
□ They may be emotionally less sophisticated and because of the difficulty they
may have in communicating between their two hemispheres, they may have
restricted verbal access to their emotional world'
▪ Perhaps it's the connections between the hemispheres
▪ Some researchers have explored the bundle of fibres known as the corpus callosum
(cc) that connects the two hemispheres and carries information between them
□ The splenium,- significantly larger and more bulbous in shape in females
Less hemispheric laterization in females than in males and that this
affected visual and spatial functioning
▪ The larger comparative context, the similarities between human males and females
far outweigh the differences
▪ If these arguments rest on flimsy evidence and flimsier interpretations, why do they
persist?
□ Osborne points out that the palliative system justification motive allows us,
whether we are advantaged or disadvantaged, to justify and rationalize existing
social arrangements
○ Estrogen and T Testosterone: Hormonal Bases r Gender Differences
▪ Sex differentiation faces its most critical events at two different phases of life:
□ (1) development, when primary sex characteristics are determined by a
combination of genetic inheritance and the biological development of the
embryo that will become a boy or a girl; and
□ (2) puberty, when the bodies of boys and girls are transformed by a flood of sex
hormones that causes the development of all the secondary sex characteristics
▪ Goldberg writes that because men and women differ in their hormonal systems' and
'every society demonstrates patriarchy, male dominance and male attainment', it is
logical to conclude that 'the hormonal renders the social inevitable'
▪ Geschwind and Behan found that during fetal development it is the 'testosterone
Sociology of Gender Page 4
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