College of the Social Sciences and Development

Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Introduction to Sociology
Sex and Gender

Perspectives on Sex and Gender

View prior to the Sex and Gender distinction

Biological Determinism

The social, psychological, and behavioral traits (of both sexes) were caused by anatomical/physiological attributes.

Example: Geddes and Thomson (1889)

The differences in social and behavioral traits between the sexes were determined by their metabolic state.

Women conserve energy making them anabolic (Passivity, conservatism, sluggish, stable and uninterested in politics)

Men expend surplus energy making them katabolic (Eagerness, aggressiveness, passionate, variable and thereby interested with
politics and social matters)

Thus, according to Geddes and Thomson:

What was decided among the prehistoric Protozoa cannot be annulled by an Act of Parliament. ( quoted from Moi, 1999)

Simone de Beauvior

One is not born but rather becomes a woman.

Social discrimination produces in women moral and intellectual effects so profound that they appear to be caused by nature. (1972
originally 1949)

Feminists employ the term gender to distinguish biological differences from social/psychological factors. The first to employ the term were
psychologists studying the phenomenon of transsexuality.

Dr. Robert Stoller (Sex and Gender, 1968)

Sex
o Denotes human females and males depending on biological features.

Chromosomes

Sex organs

Hormones

Gender
o Denotes women and men depending on social factors.

Social roles and positions

Behavior

Identity
Gayle Rubin

Sex / Gender system

set of arrangements by which the biological raw material of human sex and procreation is shaped by human, social
intervention. (1975)

Gender as socially imposed division of sexes

College of the Social Sciences and Development

Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Introduction to Sociology
Sex and Gender

Different perspectives on Sex and Gender

Gender as social interpretation of sex

o

The Coat Rack view

Gender conceived of as masculinity and femininity is superimposed upon the coat rack of sex as each society imposes on sexed
bodies their cultural conceptions of how males and females should behave.

Gender as socially constructed

Gender socialization

Masculinity and femininity are thought to be products of nurture or how individuals are brought up. They are causally
constructed (Haslanger 1995) : social forces and they have a causal role in bringing gendered roles into existence.

Kate Millet

Gender differences are essentially cultural, rather than biological bases (it is) the sum total of parents, the peers, and
the cultures notions of what is appropriate to each gender by way or temperament, character, interests, status, worth,
gesture, and expression. (1971)

Socialization is the backbone of structured gender roles. It is where the established roles of gender in every society is
produced and reproduced.

Gender as feminine and masculine personalities

Ego boundaries determine men and womens stereotype personalities.

o
o

Woman

Man

Ego boundaries are selfless and altruistic.

Ego boundaries are well defined. Can function based on pride, nobility, and prestige.

Gender as feminine and masculine sexuality

Catherine MacKinnon

The social meaning of sex and gender is created by sexual objectification of women whereby women are viewed and treated as
objects for satisfying mens desires. (1989)
o
o

Masculinity (sexual dominance)

Femininity (sexual submissiveness)

Genders are created through the eroticization of dominance and submission. The man/woman difference and the
dominance/submission dynamic define each other. This is the social meaning of sex. (1989)
Gender is constitutively constructed. In defining gender, we must make reference to the position one occupies in the sexualised
dominance/ submission relationship. Genders are hierarchical and are tied to sexualised power relations.
For MacKinnon, the notion of gender equality is pointless. If sexuality ceased to exist to be a manifestation of dominance,
hierarchical genders would cease to exist.

College of the Social Sciences and Development

Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Men have been conditioned to find womens subordination sexy and women have been conditioned to find a particular male
version of female sexuality as erotic.

Pornography portrays a false picture of what women want. Male dominance forces the male version of sexuality to females.

Male dominance is not a result of social learning, rather, socialization serves as an enduring expression of power.

But socialized differences between masculine and feminine traits, behavior, and roles are not responsible for power inequalities.
Females and males are socialized differently because there are underlying power inequalities.

Dominance is prior to difference. (2006)

Gender and Economics

Introduction to Sociology
Sex and Gender

Maureen Mackintosh (1984)

Mackintosh acknowledges how Marxist - Feminists explain the conditions of the working class in capitalist societies; how class
conditions are constantly produced and reproduced; though it has to be noted that gender oppression adds to the detriment of females
in terms of gender based ascribed status in society.

According to feminist theorists, the constant appropriation of domestic laboran unpaid form of labor that ties women inside
households and excludes them in the economic market, undervalues the labor power of women.

Marxist analyses, according to its critics, are not incorrect, but it is insufficient and it lacks to explain the origins of the patriarchal
dominance.

Capitalism benefit largely from the position of female in gender relations, but it is also to be cited that capital seized the pre-existing
inequality between men and women, hence there only is a coexistence of patriarchy and capitalism.

Female oppression predates capital exploitation, which makes its existence hard to explain in terms using the inherent logic of
capitalist system. More so, since women subordination existed across (and has endured) different modes of production, this
phenomenon cannot be solely explained as a result of a particular production process.

To create a comprehensive distinction between the two, a more elaborate concept of material analysis should transcend the
economic and production relations and it should encompass even the relations of sexuality for it is also entailed in the material
process.

Economics of Reproduction

Not only comprised of human reproduction but also care and socialization.

Domestic tasks are not always in all societies allocated to women, but they are predominantly female tasks.