Questioning Gender: Gender Analysis

Chapter 3 of Robyn Ryle’s Questioning Gender discusses the multidisciplinary approaches to the study of gender; the many lenses through which one can examine gender shows just how complex of a concept it really is, despite how much we take it for granted or fail to notice it every day. There are different beliefs about whether there are major mental differences between men and women, such as those that frame men as better at math and spatial reasoning. Some of these might seem plausible, yet they could be due to self-fulfilling prophecies and stereotype threat rather than true, inborn cognitive differences. These are concepts that psychologists study with respect to gender. Macoby and Jacklin’s meta-analyses show that there is little variation between men’s and women’s cognitive abilities and spatial performance. Other studies have shown that women perform less well on math tests when they’re made aware of their genders by being asked to write “male” or “female” at the top of the page. Sex does exist within the mind and not just as a part of the body, yet ability, or what people are able to do beyond the way they see themselves, would probably be independent of gender identity were it not for the subtle yet strong psychological and social forces that gender stereotypes impose. Because sex research is mostly descriptive and provides little to no explanation for a discrepancy, social and psychological explanations remain plausible explanations.

Cross-cultural analyses that anthropologists use can also provide evidence in favor of social differences should differences in gender ability be different in other parts of the world. If women were naturally less adept at mathematical reasoning than men, studies comparing the two genders’ ...

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...ield different treatment. When it comes to appearance, the ones we collectively deem important affect how people are treated. In everyday society, we do not judge people based on eye color, yet Jan Elliott created an environment in her third grade classroom where eye color mattered, and real consequences came about as a result. Students began to ostracize and ridicule each other based on eye color, simply because the teacher persuaded them that it was important and indicative of other qualities such as personality, moral character, and intelligence. The Thomas Principle was in full effect; situations defined as real become real in their consequences. The existence of categories often pressures people to categorize themselves, yet at the end of the day, it is always a little nicer to live by one of Britney Spears’s quotes; “I don’t like to define myself. I just am.”