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Brendon Yoshino
English 115
Professor Beadle
14 September 2015

Two Genders and Seven Billion People

In society we have submitted our children, our family, and ourselves to specific categories
of gender, male and female. We go about life with the assumption that mere biology can define
who a person is instead of who they truly are, or desire to be. We then take that assumption, and
translate it to expectations of that specific person. For example, at birth (and sometimes before
birth) a girl is declared female by the appearance of genitalia. At that very moment everyone who
knows this have already made up specific expectations in which she must fall in line with in
order to receive approval. A double gender classification system leaves little room for variations,
which can better the human race. In Night to His Day, author Judith Lorber confronts the
differences in gender status within our society. Ruth Hubbard in her essay, Rethinking Womens
Biology, sets out to make her point that women may not be so physically different to men after
all. Aaron Devor in, Members of Society: The Social Meaning of Gender, writes about masculine
traits, and how culture has tied them to positions seen at the top of societies pyramid.
In this world we have many different normalitys and situations which we overlook every
day. Some are so engrained to our very being that not only do we fail to recognize them, we have
never thought about them all together. Within the human race we have developed a two gender
society which is used as a classification and sometimes identity given at birth. There is at first
look nothing wrong with having two genders, and classification is not always a bad thing. The
issue is that in order to maintain and establish this two gender society one must succeed at the
front of society, while the other one must take a back seat. Judith Lorber, a professor of sociology

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and womans studies at the University of New York, points out in her essay, Night to His Day,
that in a two gender society one must be more acceptable, and the other weak and less necessary.
As a computer science major, under the department of engineering, it is very rare that I ever see
any women in the department related classes. Engineering consists of some of the most
important positions in the world, not to mention the extremely high pay rates. There is over
seven billion people living on earth, roughly 49.6 percent of them are women (worldmeter.info).
It is absolutely astonishing that there is so many people, and so few women find their way to the
engineering field. Engineering has been long regarded as requiring traits which have been better
attributed to the masculine gender characteristics. For this reason most woman veer away from
this field. (Lorber)
In a lot of our everyday scenarios we naturally assert that there are things woman do better
than men, and visa-versa. This ideal stems from the assumption that people can only perform
tasks exceptionally well that are better suited to their gender classification. Many point to
professional sports as an example of male dominance in the physical aspect of performance. It is
true that in sports such as swimming, the men do indeed swim much quicker than women as is
the case in many other sports. Ruth Hubbard, a professor emerita of biology at Harvard
University, makes the point in her essay, Rethinking Womans Biology, that most to almost all
common assumed weaknesses are actually a result of inequality instead of a cause. She presses
her point with reference to the development stages of gender identity. On a playground you
might see girls jumping rope and boys digging in the sand playing sports on the field even quite
often a mixture doing some of the same things. For further comparison, imagine a teacher finds
that she needs help carrying something into her classroom, she would naturally refer to a boy in
the class as a common choice. If this one ideal is replicated numerous times throughout this

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boys life you could imagine his upper body strength development would certainly surpass that
of the girls. In this example alone we see the physical development effects of gender
presuppositions. The girls are seen as capable of developing leg strength by jumping, but not
wielding the ability to carry something for the teacher. In most cases we can make the
assumption that anything a prepubescent boy can carry, a prepubescent girl can carry as well. If
we were able to change this development flaw we most definitely see a shrink in the physical
margin of women and men. (Hubbard)
With this knowledge we can see that from the earliest stages of development there is large
differentiation of the two genders, and the way they play into society. We see a pattern of
favorable traits which are better associated with masculinity and femininity. To get a broader
understanding we need to first understand how these traits fit into the society at large. In
Becoming Members of Society: The Social Meanings of Gender, author Aaron Devor persuades
readers to the idea that masculinity better succeeds in our complicated social infrastructure
compared to femininity. Devor believes that this in large is because jobs and positions which
require traits that are better matched with those seen in masculinity are considered higher in
social status. This is not to say that woman cannot demonstrate these traits as we previously
looked at, but that they will not due to gender molds that make up the normal. Divergence from
this mold result in push back from society and thus success at the equal caliber as men almost
impossible. (Devor)
If indeed we are making jobs which at large require masculine biased traits, the pinnacle of
our social ladder, and restricting women from demonstrating masculine traits from as far back as
birth. We have not just built a society which is unequal, but a society which has doomed one

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gender to the lesser from the very beginning. A world which there is no avenue for variation of
traits amongst sexes. (Devor)
If we go back to my reference to the engineering field, and how I have seen few to no
woman in the department. With reference to everything that we have looked at. We begin to see a
pattern, and a result from these patterns. The few woman who are bold enough to enter the field,
in most cases are seen as inferior to their male counterparts. By allowing ourselves to be free of
the presupposition that women are indeed inferior in this field we can see societys flaws and
strengths from a broader point of view. Based on essays such as Rethinking Womans Biology we
can go ahead and make the natural assumption that out of the billions of woman in the world, at
least one of them is bound to exhibit the traits to be an excellent engineer. By continuing on this
common path of inequality we are not just segregating one sex to be eternally socially inferior.
We are rejecting adversity by segregating mankind from extraordinary individuals with much to
give. (Hubbard)
Adversity is one of the greatest assets to the human race. It is our greatest obstacle and at the
same time our greatest reward. We have billions of people living on the earth, with traits that
make such a number seem small. I believe that we may never see a perfect society, but I hope in
my lifetime I will see women succeed in workplaces, not because the position is best fit to their
gender. That we would see women and men succeed because of the wonderful traits which make
them individuals. If we limit one group of people to expectations and presupposition solely on
biological features at birth, we have truly lost a runner in the great relay race towards a better
world. In Ruth Hubbards own words, There is enough variability among us to
let us construct a society in which people of both sexes
contribute(Hubbard)

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Works Cited
Devor, Aaron. Becoming Members of Society: Learning the Social Meanings of Gender (1989).
Print.
Groner, Rachael. Composing Gender. Leasa Burton, 2014. Print.
Hubbards, Ruth. Rethinking Women's Biology (1990). Print.
Judith, Lorber. "Night to His Day": The Social Construction of Gender (1994). Print.
http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/