As gender stereotypes evolve, a trait may no longer be seen as the exclusive domain of a single gender. For example, many people have been trying to change our current stereotypes of men as “unemotional” and women as “emotional.” The constellation of traits that has been traditionally seen as masculine and feminine may be becoming less rigid. For many centuries, these types of gender traits were seen as innate, immutable, part of the biological makeup of the sexes. Few scientists suggested that the differences between men and women were primarily social; most believed that women and men were fundamentally different.
Not only did they believe that the differences in the sexes were innate, but they also believed that men were superior—having developed past the “emotional” nature of women (Gould, 1981). Unfortunately, these attitudes still exist, both subtly in cultures like our own and overtly in cultures where women are allowed few of the rights granted to men.
How many of our gender behaviors are biological, and how many are socially transmitted? The truth is that the world may not split that cleanly into biological versus social causes of behavior. Behaviors are complex and are almost always interactions between one’s innate biological capacities and the environment in which one lives and acts. Behaviors that are considered innately “male” in one culture may be assumed to be innately “female” in another. Even when modern science suggests certain gender traits that seem to be based on innate differences between the sexes, culture can contradict that trait or even deny it.
For example, most researchers accept the principle that males display more aggression than females; adult males certainly demonstrate this tendency, which is probably the result, in part, of higher levels of testosterone. When female bodybuilders, for example, take steroids, they often find themselves acquiring male traits, including losing breast tissue, growing more body hair—and becoming more aggressive. However, the difference is also demonstrated in early childhood, when boys are more aggressive in play whereas girls tend to be more compliant and docile.
Yet Margaret Mead’s (1935) famous discussion of the Tchambuli tribe of New Guinea shows that such traits need not determine gender roles. Among the Tchambulis, the women performed the “aggressive” occupations such as fishing, commerce, and politics, whereas the men were more sedentary and artistic and took more care of domestic life. The women assumed the dress appropriate for their activities—plain clothes and short hair—whereas the men dressed in bright colors. So even if we accept biological gender differences, societies like the Tchambuli show that human culture can transcend biology.
There are some gender differences that are considered purely biological. Physically, males tend to be larger and stronger, with more of their body weight in muscles and less in body fat than females (Angier, 1999). Females, however, are born more neurologically advanced than males, and they mature faster. Females are also biologically heartier than males; more male fetuses miscarry, more males are stillborn, the male infant mortality rate is higher, males acquire more hereditary diseases and remain more susceptible to disease throughout life, and men die at younger ages than women. Males are also more likely to have developmental problems such as learning disabilities. It has long been believed that males are better at mathematics and spatial problems, whereas females are better at verbal tasks; for example, female children learn language skills earlier than males. Yet many of these differences may be the result of socialization rather than biology.
Another aspect of gender that is said to be in some sense innate in females is “mothering” or the “maternal instinct.” Do women really have a maternal instinct that men lack? For example, is there a psychological or physical bonding mechanism that happens to women who carry babies in their wombs, one that fathers are unable to experience? Historians have pointed out examples (such as France and England in the 17th and 18th centuries) in which maternal feelings seemed almost nonexistent; children were considered a nuisance, and breast-feeding was seen as a waste of time. Poor children were often abandoned, and the children of the wealthy were sent to the countryside for care by a wet nurse.
Studies on surrogate mothering have challenged the notion of a maternal instinct, because surrogate mothers relinquish a baby for payment (Baslington, 2002). In animal species, lionesses are known for abandoning and even eating their first litter, and female bears that have lost one cub in a litter often leave the second to starve (Allport, 1997). So the question of an innate female desire for childrearing is far from settled.
Boys and girls do show some behavioral differences that appear to be universal. For example, in a study of six different cultures, Whiting and her colleagues (Whiting & Edwards, 1988; Whiting & Whiting, 1975) discovered that certain traits seemed to characterize masculine and feminine behavior in 3- to 6-year-olds. In almost all countries, boys engaged in more insulting behavior and rough-and-tumble play, and boys “dominated egoistically” (tried to control the situation through commands), whereas girls more often sought or offered physical contact, sought help, and “suggested responsibly” (dominated socially by invoking rules or appealing to greater good).
Interestingly, though their strategies were different, both boys and girls often pursued the same ends; for example, rough-and-tumble play among boys and initiation of physical contact among girls are both strategies for touching and being touched. However, Whiting suggests that even these behaviors might be the result of different kinds of pressures put on boys and girls; for example, in their sample, older girls were expected to take care of young children more often than boys, and younger girls were given more responsibility than younger boys. These different expectations from each gender may explain later differences in their behaviors. So even gender behaviors that are spread across cultures may not prove to be innate differences.
There has always been evidence that men’s and women’s brains were different; autopsies showed that men’s brains were more asymmetrical than women’s, and women seemed to recover better from damage to the left hemisphere of the brain (as in strokes), where language is situated. Yet it has always been unclear what facts such as these mean. Recently, newer techniques in brain imaging have provided evidence that women’s and men’s brains not only differ in size, but that women and men use their brains differently during certain activities (DeBellis et al., 2001; K. Hamberg, 2000; Schneider et al., 2000). Although it is too early to know what these differences mean, future studies may be able to provide clearer pictures of the different ways men and women think and shed some light on the biological and social influences of these differences.
Aside from the above behaviors and physical attributes, almost no differences between the sexes are universally accepted by researchers. This does not mean that there are not other biological gender differences; we simply do not know for sure. We must be careful not to move too far in the other direction and suggest that there are no innate differences between the sexes. Many of these differences remain controversial, such as relative levels of activity and curiosity and facial recognition skills. But these are relatively minor differences. Even if it turns out, for example, that female infants recognize faces earlier than males, as has been postulated, or that male children are more active than females, would that really account for the enormous gender role differences that have developed over time? Though biologists and other researchers still study innate differences between the sexes, today more attention is being paid to gender similarities.
This brings up another important concept to keep in mind. Articles on differences between the sexes tend to be easier to publish. For example, which article do you think most people would find more exciting: “Large Differences Found in Men’s and Women’s Math Skills” or “Insignificant Gender Differences Found in Math Skills”? Therefore, it may just be that the articles on male/female differences are more likely to be published than those that find no differences.
Studying Gender
During much of the 1970s and 1980s the focus of gender research was on girls (Warrington & Younger, 2000). Researchers looked at girls’ career expectations, how educational curricula reinforced male areas of interest and the effects on girls, and how educators responded less frequently to girls in the classroom. Even in the 1990s this research continued by examining how adolescent girls were losing their sense of self (Pipher, 1994) and how girls have trouble finding peace with their bodies (Brumberg, 1997). Over the past few years, research has expanded to focus on both boys and girls and has examined areas such as alcohol use (Green, 2004), body image (Phares et al., 2004; K. A. Phillips & Castle, 2002), eating disorders (Wiseman, 2004), mathematics (Mendick, 2005; J. S. Hyde & Kling, 2001), attitudes toward work (Tinklin et al., 2005), and athletics (Hammermeister & Burton, 2004).