Sex and Gender

(Extract taken from Andrew Heywood, Political Ideologies, p198-199)

The most common of all anti-feminist arguments, most commonly advanced by conservatives, asserts that gender divisions in society are ‘natural’: women and men merely fulfil the social roles that nature designed them for. A woman’s physical and anatomical make-up thus suits her to a subordinate and domestic role in society; in short, ‘biology is destiny’. In practice, all such biological arguments are hollow. A woman’s brain may be, as male chauvinists point out, smaller than a man’s, but in proportion to her body it is relatively larger, which is usually a more accurate indication of intelligence. Women are generally physically less powerful than men, with less developed musculatures. To some extent, this simply reflects social factors: men have been encouraged to undertake physical and outdoor work, to participate in sport and to conform to a stereotypical ‘masculine’ physique. However, although physical strength is important in agricultural or industrializing societies, it has little value in developed societies where tools and machinery are far more efficient than human strength. Indeed, the heavily muscled male may simply be redundant in a technological world of robots and microchips. In any case, physical hard work, for which the male body may be better suited, has traditionally been undertaken by people of low status, not by those in authority.

The biological factor that is most frequently linked to women’s social position is their capacity to bear children. Without doubt, childbearing is unique to the female sex, together with the fact that women menstruate and have the capacity to suckle babies. However, in no way do such biological facts necessarily disadvantage women nor determine their social destiny. Women may be mothers, but they need not accept the responsibilities of motherhood: nurturing, educating and raising children by devoting themselves to home and family. The link between childbearing and child-rearing is cultural rather than biological: women are expected to stay at home, bring up their children and look after the house because of the structure of traditional family life. Domestic responsibilities could be undertaken by the husband, or they could be shared equally between husband and wife in so-called ‘symmetrical families’. Moreover, child-rearing could be carried out by the community or the state, or it could be undertaken by relatives, as in ‘extended families’.

Feminists have traditionally challenged the idea that biology is destiny by drawing a sharp distinction between sex and gender. ‘Sex’, in this sense, refers to biological differences between females and males; these differences are natural and therefore are unalterable. The most important sex differences are those that are linked to reproduction. ‘Gender’, on the other hand, is a cultural term; it refers to the different roles that society ascribes to men and women. Gender differences are typically imposed through contrasting stereotypes of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’. As Simone de Beauvoir (see p. 258) pointed out, ‘Women are made, they are not born’. Patriarchal ideas blur the distinction between sex and gender, and assume that all social distinctions between men and women are rooted in biology or anatomy. Feminists, in contrast, usually deny that there is a necessary or logical link between sex and gender, and emphasize that gender differences are socially, or even politically, constructed.

Most feminists believe that sex differences between men and women are relatively minor and neither explain nor justify gender distinctions. As a result, human nature is thought to be androgynous, incorporating the characteristics of both sexes. All human beings, regardless of sex, possess the genetic inheritance of a mother and a father, and therefore embody a blend of either female and male attributes or traits. Such a view accepts that sex differences are biological facts of life but insists that they have no social, political or economic significance. Women and men should not be judged by their sex, but as individuals, as ‘persons’. The goal of feminism is therefore the achievement of genderless ‘personhood’. Establishing a concept of gender that is divorced from biological sex had crucial significance for feminist theory. Not only did it highlight the possibility of social change – socially constructed identities can be reconstructed or even demolished – but it also drew attention to the processes through which women had been ‘engendered’ and therefore oppressed.

Although most feminists have regarded the sex/gender distinction as empowering, others have attacked it. These attacks have been launched from two main directions. The first, advanced by so-called ‘difference feminists’, suggests that there are essential differences between women and men. From this ‘essentialist’ perspective, social and cultural characteristics are seen to reflect deeper biological differences. However, such a view differs from conservative anti-feminism, in that it takes ‘womanly qualities’ to include positive attributes, such as a capacity for nurturing, cooperation and intuition, rather than negative ones associated with submission and subordination. The second attack on the sex/gender distinction challenges the categories themselves. Postmodern feminists have questioned whether ‘sex’ is as clear-cut a biological distinction as is usually assumed. For example, the features of ‘biological womanhood’ do not apply to many who are classified as women: some women cannot bear children, some women are not sexually attracted to men, and so on. If there is a biology–culture continuum rather than a fixed biological/cultural divide, the categories ‘female’ and ‘male’ become more or less arbitrary, and the concepts of sex and gender become hopelessly entangled.