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Gender

Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia - Cite This Source

gender [Lat. genus=kind], in grammar, subclassification of nouns or nounlike words in which the members of the subclass have characteristic features of agreement with other words. The term gender is not usually considered to include the classification of number. In French, for example, there are two genders, feminine and masculine, marked by the form of the articles la and le [both: the]. Most French nouns referring to males are masculine (le garcon [the boy]), and most referring to females are feminine (la fille [the girl]), thus conforming to natural gender. Other words are placed in either gender, e.g., le jardin [the garden] and la table [the table], being instances of grammatical gender. In German, Russian, and Latin there are three genders, called masculine, feminine, and neuter. Scandinavian and Dutch languages have in addition to these three a "common" gender, which combines, and often distinguishes between, masculine and feminine. A genderlike distinction between animate and inanimate is widespread, e.g., in Algonquian languages of North America and the Andamanese of the Bay of Bengal. Some Bantu languages have 20 genderlike noun classes. English nouns may be divided into gender classes according to the personal pronouns they take. Nouns referring to males take he and nouns referring to females take she. Most English nouns referring to objects that cannot be classified by sex take the pronoun it, although exceptions exist; ships, for example, are sometimes referred to as she. The grammatical device of concord, or agreement, is bound up with gender distinctions. By it one word bears a formal signal to show its relationship to the word it accompanies or modifies; thus, in la viande, the form of la shows that it is related to a word of the feminine gender class, and it may be said to agree with, or be in concord with, viande. While in most Indo-European languages gender involves nouns, adjectives, and pronouns, in Semitic langauges and some Slavic languages even verbal forms must agree with the gender of their subjects. Although gender is present in many languages, it is far from universal. In English a few words retain gender inflection (e.g., actress, executrix), but since the 12th to 15th cent. English has dropped most of the gender distinctions characteristic of its ancestor languages.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Copyright © 2004, Columbia University Press.
Licensed from Columbia University Press

Gender Discrimination

Encyclopedia of Small Business - Cite This Source

Gender discrimination, also known as sexual discrimination, is the practice of letting a person's sex unfairly become a factor when deciding who receives a job, promotion, or other employment benefit. It most often affects women who feel they have been unfairly discriminated against in favor of a man. But there have also been cases where males have claimed that reverse discrimination has occurred—that is, the woman received unfairly favorable treatment at the expense of the man.

Court rulings handed down through the years have determined that a company's responsibility not to discriminate based on sex begins even before an individual is hired. Companies can be held liable if pre-employment screening or testing is determined to be discriminatory, if applications ask unacceptable questions designed to screen for sex, or if the overall selection process is deemed to be unfair. One of the main indicators that gender discrimination has occurred in the hiring process involves the qualifications of the job applicants. While a slight difference in qualifications between a female and a male candidate does not automatically indicate gender bias (if a lesser qualified male candidate is hired instead of a female candidate, that is), a drastic difference in qualifications has almost always been upheld by the courts as a sure sign of gender discrimination. For example, if a male who dropped out of high school without receiving a diploma is hired in an administrative position over a female who had obtained her master's degree, then it is likely bias was a factor.

In addition to gender discrimination in hiring and other circumstances, there is a particular form of sexual discrimination called sexual harassment. This form of discrimination involves inappropriate words or actions of a sexual nature directed at an employee by employees of the opposite sex. To meet the criteria for harassment, the behavior in question must be both unwanted and sexual in nature. The U.S. legal system has determined that there are two main types of sexual harassment. "Quid pro quo," or "this for that," occurs when one employee offers another employee a job or benefit, or threatens to deny that job or benefit, unless sexual favors are granted. A "hostile work environment" occurs when an employee, or a group of employees, repeatedly make lewd comments or suggestive noises, make unwanted sexual advances, or otherwise use sex to such a degree that the behavior interferes with another employee's ability to perform her job, or she feels intimidated or threatened on the job.

FEDERAL LAWS STRONGLY PROHIBIT GENDER DISCRIMINATION

Since the social unrest of the 1960s, the federal government has been actively involved in preventing gender discrimination in the workplace. The most important law covering gender discrimination on the job is the Civil Rights Act of 1964—specifically, Title VII of that act, which strictly prohibits all forms of discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in all aspects of employment. Written during a tumultuous period in American history when many people expected the federal government to right social wrongs, the law was a monumental piece of legislation that changed the American employment landscape.

The law was passed after heated debate in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. It stated that it was unlawful for an employer to "fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges or employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." The law covers hiring, dismissals, compensation, and all other aspects of employment, while also covering actual employment opportunities that are available. Examples of gender discrimination or sexual harassment that would fall under the scope of the act include:

  1. An employee who alleges that his or her manager only promotes male employees and keeps females in entry-level positions.
  2. An employee who alleges that a manager or other person in power tells jokes or makes statements that are demeaning, insulting, or offensive to women.
  3. A manager who makes it clear, either through his actions or words, that he wants to have sexual relations with a female employee.
  4. A manager who asks inappropriate and unnecessary questions about a female employee's sex life.
  5. A manager who touches his female employees in inappropriate ways without consent.

The law covers businesses with 15 or more employees, and applies to all private, federal, state, and local employers. In many states, businesses with fewer than 15 employees face the same rules thanks to local or state statutes. In addition to the hiring provisions, the law dictates that employers cannot limit or segregate employees based on sex in any way that would adversely affect their chances at promotions. It does allow for two narrow exceptions to the law—businesses may use a "bona fide" seniority or merit system and measure performance and earnings based on a quantity or quality measuring system, and employers may use ability tests to determine the most qualified candidates for a job as long as the test does not discriminate by gender in any way.

The Civil Rights Act was originally intended to address only racial discrimination. Just as the law was about to be passed, however, Representative Howard Smith of Virginia added the word "sex" to one of the opening sentences, meaning the law would also prevent sexual discrimination. This was a controversial action, as many people actually saw it as an attempt to kill the bill. The argument made by critics was that Smith added sex to the law knowing that many people would oppose the addition and the bill would be defeated, thus preventing racial protection from occurring as well. Smith denied this accusation and swore he had added the provision after working with the National Women's Party. Whatever his motivation, thanks to the efforts of Representative Martha Griffiths and others, the revised bill was passed into law.

One year before the landmark civil rights legislation act was passed, one specific problem regarding gender discrimination had also been addressed by the U.S. Congress. Until 1963, it was legal for employers to pay women lower wages for the same job performed by men. During World War II, when many women worked at jobs traditionally held by men while the men fought in the war, there had been an attempt by the National War Labor Board to get companies to pay women the same rate as men, but that attempt failed miserably. In fact, most of the women lost their jobs when the men came home from the war.

Before 1963, newspapers routinely ran separate Help Wanted sections in the classifieds—one for men, and one for women. It was not uncommon for the same job to be posted in both sections, but with different—and much lower—pay scales for women. In 1963, women earned 59 percent of what men earned for the same job. In other words, for every dollar a man earned, a woman earned 59 cents.

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 was intended to end that discrepancy. The law stated that "no employer… shall discriminate, within any establishment in which such employees are employed, between employees on the basis of sex by paying wages to employees in such establishment at a rate less than the rate at which he pays wages to employees of the opposite sex in such establishment for equal work on jobs the performance of which requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions." The only exemptions to the law were for seniority, established merit systems that paid all employees based on job performance, systems that paid wages based on the quantity or quality of the work produced, and wage differences that were based on some factor other than sex.

While the law did not put an end to unequal pay, it did improve things in many cases. Between 1964, when the law went into effect, and 1971, more than $26 million in back pay was issued to women as a result of court cases filed after the law was passed. Two cases that made their way through the U.S. court system—Schultz v. Wheaton Glass Co. (1970) and Corning Glass Works v. Brennan (1974)—put added teeth into the 1963 law by eliminating common loopholes. The ruling in the Schultz case said that jobs only had to be "substantially equal" rather than identical to earn protection under the law. In the Corning Glass case, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that companies could not pay women a lower wage than men simply because there was a "lower going rate" for female employees in the local marketplace. The court ruled that the only reason such a lower rate existed was because male employees would refuse to work for the lower rate that was offered to women.

The Equal Pay Act officially gives women protection under the law in regards to equal pay for equal work, but inequities still exist in almost every employment sector. A 1999 study showed that, despite the equal pay law, women still earn only 72 cents for every dollar that male workers earn for similar work. Employers even go so far as to change job titles or employment requirements just to find a way to make jobs seem different enough to justify paying women less than men. Courts are starting to use a "comparable worth" test to determine if two jobs merit the same amount of pay instead of relying on the description of the exact tasks performed on a job. There is hope that the situation will continue to improve, as it appears that young women just entering the job force are finally truly narrowing the wage gap. A 1997 study of women under age 25 showed that they earned slightly more than 92 percent of what men earned for the same work, a substantial increase over past estimates that factored in older women.

Above and beyond standard sexual discrimination, sexual harassment has been the centerpiece of numerous court cases and legal decisions that have established government standards regarding harassment. In 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court made two important rulings that have had a significant effect on harassment claims. In Burlington Industries, Inc. v. Ellerth, the court ruled that, even if an employee did not report incidents of alleged harassment right when they occurred, the company was still liable for the behavior of the employee who committed the sexual acts. In Faragher v. City of Boca Raton, the court held that an employer could be held liable for harassment if a supervisor made threats regarding punishment if an employee did not have sex with him, even if those threats were never carried out. Together, the two decisions made it clear that the court holds companies strictly liable for actions carried out by supervisors who have direct authority over the person they are harassing, if the supervisor can alter the victim's employment status through hiring, firing, refusal to promote, etc.

THE EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION

To oversee the federal civil rights legislation, including the Equal Pay Act, a separate administrative body was created as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, was created to enforce laws that prevent discrimination based on race, sex, color, religion, national origin, disability, or age when hiring, firing, or promoting employees. Four groups—race, color, sex, and creed—were given "protected status" under the law, which was to be upheld by the EEOC. The commission is an independent regulatory body that has the power to launch investigations, file lawsuits, and create programs to eliminate discrimination.

The EEOC has been a controversial organization throughout its nearly 40-year history. Liberal politicians believe that the agency was long overdue and that it is absolutely imperative that the agency be proactive in identifying and fighting discrimination in the courts, while conservatives believe that the organization is a perfect example of "big government" that intrudes far too deeply into citizens' lives. The agency's strong enforcement of affirmative action policies (which actively seek to promote minorities over equally qualified nonminorities in order to address past discrimination) has been its most controversial action, as many Americans oppose affirmative action.

STEPS TAKEN BY EMPLOYERS TO END GENDER DISCRIMINATION

To prevent gender discrimination or sexual harassment from occurring in the workplace, more and more employers are adopting a zero tolerance policy towards all acts of discrimination. This usually includes the creation of an official written policy against discrimination that is circulated to all employees, as well as education and training courses for all managers (and often for all employees). In addition, the companies have to show that they are serious about implementing and enforcing the new policy by creating disciplinary standards for violations of the policy.

Another step employers can take is to conduct a thorough investigation every time a claim of discrimination or harassment is lodged. If a company identifies a situation where it believes discrimination has occurred and the company is going to be held liable, it can ease the amount of punishment handed down if it conducts a thorough in-house investigation that culminates in appropriate action taken against the person who committed the discrimination, up to and including dismissal of that employee.

When managers are trained to recognize instances of sexual discrimination or harassment, they should be told one thing above all others—not to try to handle the complaint by themselves. Instead, they should always immediately notify the human resources department that an incidence of discrimination or harassment has been reported and needs to be investigated. If the training is also provided to all employees, primary efforts should be spent on teaching employees what is and is not considered to be appropriate behavior and on helping employees understand each other better so that they can work together more effectively.

THE CURRENT STATE OF GENDER DISCRIMINATION

While almost all cases of sexual discrimination or harassment involve men victimizing women, there is a new backlash that has seen allegations of reverse sexual discrimination. A male cosmetics counter employee at a Dillard's department store in Florida became angry when his suit was stained by the make-up he was selling. When he asked the store for a uniform of some sort, which the female employees who worked at the make-up counter at another store in the same mall wore, he was ignored by store management. The man also alleged that he was passed over for promotions and was ineligible to win store sales contests because all of the prizes were for women. The employee filed a sexual discrimination claim with the EEOC and later filed a lawsuit against the store.

In another case, a male employee of Vision Quest National in Philadelphia filed a lawsuit alleging sexual discrimination when he was fired after complaining that he had to work nights for the company while women did not. The company had instituted a policy saying women did not have to work the night shift because the company was in a high-crime area; several female employees had threatened to quit if forced to work nights. The company claimed the policy was a bona fide occupational qualification (which is one of the EEOC's exemptions in discrimination cases), but the courts ruled that this was not the case and sided with the male employee.

In addition to reverse discrimination cases, there have also been recent instances of same-sex discrimination cases. While the EEOC holds that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act does protect against same-sex discrimination, the courts have been reluctant to rule on the matter. An example of same-sex harassment occurred in the case of Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services. In that case, Joseph Oncale worked on an offshore oil rig owned by Sundowner. Over a period of months after he started working on the rig, Oncale alleged that he was a victim of harassment when two male supervisors and a coworker repeatedly subjected him to sexual assaults and threats of homosexual rape. Oncale reported the incidents to company officials, but no action was taken, which led him to quit the company and file his lawsuit. In the suit, he alleged discrimination under Title VII. The district court that heard his case ruled that Title VII did not cover same-sex situations. In 1998, however, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the ruling against Oncale. It held that same-sex discrimination was in fact covered by Title VII because the law referred to sex in every context.

FURTHER READING:

"The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission." National Archives and Records Administration website. http://www.nara.gov/education/cc/eeoc.html.

"Cosmetic Worker Says His Career Sank Because of Store's Sex Bias." Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service. November 1994.

"Discriminatory Protective Rules Illegal." Workforce. December 2000.

"Harassment: It's Not Just Based on Sex Anymore." Bobbin. August 1996.

"Same-Sex Harassment on Trial." Business Insurance. December 8, 1997.

"Sexual Harassment Interpretations Give Cause for New Concerns." Workforce. May 1999.

"Title VII Sex Discrimination in the Public Sector in the 1990s: The Courts' View." Public Personnel Management. Summer 1998.

SEE ALSO: Sexual Harassment

Encyclopedia of Small Business
Copyright © 1999 by The Gale Group.
Published by The Gale Group. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Gender

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Cite This Source

Gender, in common usage, refers to the differences between men and women. Encyclopædia Britannica notes that gender identity is "an individual's self-conception as being male or female, as distinguished from actual biological sex. Although gender is commonly used interchangeably with sex, within the social sciences it often refers to specifically social differences, known as gender roles in the biological sciences. Historically, feminism has posited that many gender roles are socially constructed, and lack any clear biological basis. People whose gender identity feels incongruent with their physical bodies may call themselves transgender or genderqueer.

Many languages have a system of grammatical gender, a type of noun class system — nouns may be classified as masculine or feminine (for example Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic and French) and may also have a neuter grammatical gender (for example Sanskrit, German, Polish, and the Scandinavian languages). In such languages, this is essentially a convention, which may have little or no connection to the meaning of the words. Likewise, a wide variety of phenomena have characteristics termed gender, by analogy with male and female bodies (such as the gender of connectors and fasteners) or due to societal norms.

Etymology and usage

The word gender in English

As kind
The word gender comes from the Middle English gendre, a loanword from Norman-conquest-era Old French. This, in turn, came from Latin genus. Both words mean 'kind', 'type', or 'sort'. They derive ultimately from a widely attested Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root gen-, which is also the source of kin, kind, king and many other English words. It appears in Modern French in the word genre (type, kind, also genre sexuel) and is related to the Greek root gen- (to produce), appearing in gene, genesis and oxygen. As a verb, it means breed in the King James Bible:

  • 1616: Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind — .

Most uses of the root gen in Indo-European languages refer either directly to what pertains to birth or, by extension, to natural, innate qualities and their consequent social distinctions (for example gentry, generation, gentile, genocide and eugenics). The first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED1, Volume 4, 1900) notes the original meaning of gender as 'kind' had already become obsolete.

Gender (dʒe'ndəɹ), sb. Also 4 gendre. [a. OF. gen(d)re (F. genre) = Sp. and Pg. genero, It. genere, ad. L. gener- stem form of genus race, kind = Gr. γένος, Skr. jánas:— OAryan *genes-, f. root γεν- to produce; cf. KIN.]
†1. Kind, sort, class; also, genus as opposed to species. The general gender: the common sort (of people). Obs.
13.. E.E.Allit. P. P. 434 Alle gendrez so ioyst wern ioyned wyth-inne. c 1384 CHAUSER H. Fame* 1. 18 To knowe of hir signifiaunce The gendres. 1398 TREVISA Barth. De P. K. VIII. xxix. (1495) 34I Byshynynge and lyghte ben dyuers as species and gendre, for suery shinyng is lyght, but not ayenwarde. 1602 SHAKES. Ham. IV. vii. 18 The great loue the generall gender beare him. 1604 — Oth. I. iii. 326 Supplie it with one gender of Hearbes, or distract it with many. 1643 and so on.
As a grammatical term

According to Aristotle, the Greek philosopher Protagoras used the terms "masculine", "feminine", and "neuter" to classify nouns, introducing the concept of grammatical gender.

τὰ γένη τῶν ὀνομάτων ἄρρενα καὶ θήλεα καὶ σκεύη
The classes (genē) of the nouns are males, females and things.
— Aristotle, The Technique of Rhetoric III v
The words for this concept are not related to gen- in all Indo-European languages (for example, rod in Slavic languages).

The usage of gender in the context of grammatical distinctions is a specific and technical usage. However, in English, the word became attested more widely in the context of grammar, than in making sexual distinctions.

This was noted in OED1, prompting Henry Watson Fowler to recommend this usage as the primary and preferable meaning of gender in English. "Gender ... is a grammatical term only. To talk of persons ... of the masculine or feminine g[ender], meaning of the male or female sex, is either a jocularity (permissible or not according to context) or a blunder.

The sense of this can be felt by analogy with a modern expression like "persons of the female persuasion." It should be noted, however, that this was a recommendation, neither the Daily News nor Henry James citations (below) are "jocular" nor "blunders." Additionally, patterns of usage of gender have substantially changed since Fowler's day (noun class above, and sexual stereotype below).

As masculinity or femininity
The use of gender to refer to masculinity and femininity as types is attested throughout the history of Modern English (from about the 14th century).

As a sexual stereotype
The word sex is sometimes used in the context of social roles of men and women — for example, the British Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 that ended exclusion of women from various official positions. Such usage was more common before the 1970s, over the course of which the feminist movement took the word gender into their own usage to describe their theory of human nature. Early in that decade, gender was used in ways consistent with both the history of English and the history of attestation of the root. However, by the end of the decade consensus was achieved in both theory and terminology. The theory was that human nature is essentially epicene and social distinctions based on sex are arbitrarily constructed. Matters pertaining to this theoretical process of social construction were labelled matters of gender.

The American Heritage Dictionary uses the following two sentences to illustrate the difference.

  • 2000: The effectiveness of the medication appears to depend on the sex (not gender) of the patient.
  • 2000: In peasant societies, gender (not sex) roles are likely to be more clearly defined.

In the last two decades of the 20th century, the use of gender in academia increased greatly, outnumbering uses of sex in the social sciences. Frequently, but not exclusively, this indicates acceptance of the feminist theory of human nature. However, in many instances, the term gender still refers to sexual distinction generally without such an assumption.

  • 2004: Among the reasons that working scientists have given me for choosing gender rather than sex in biological contexts are desires to signal sympathy with feminist goals, to use a more academic term, or to avoid the connotation of copulation — David Haig, The Inexorable Rise of Gender and the Decline of Sex.

In fact, the ideological distinction between sex and gender is only fitfully observed.

The concept of gender in other languages

Greek (distinguishes biological from sociological in adjectives)

In Greek, male biology and masculine grammatical inflection are denoted by arsenikos (αρσενικός), in distinction to sociological masculinity, which is denoted by andrikos (ανδρικός). Likewise, female biology and feminine grammatical inflection are denoted by thēlukos (Θηλυκό); and sociological femininity is denoted by gunaikeios (Γυναίκα, compare English gynaecology). This distinction is at least as old as Aristotle (see above). It is a different distinction to English, where 'male' and 'female' refer to animals as well as humans, but not to grammatical categories; however, 'masculine' and 'feminine' refer to grammatical categories as well as humans, but not properly to animals, except as anthropomorphism.

German and Dutch (no distinction in nouns — Geschlecht and geslacht)

In English, both 'sex' and 'gender' can be used in contexts where they could not be substituted — 'sexual intercourse', 'safe sex', 'sex worker', or on the other hand, 'grammatical gender'. Other languages, like German or Dutch, use the same word, Geschlecht or geslacht, to refer not only to biological sex, but social differences as well, making a distinction between biological 'sex' and 'gender' identity difficult. In some contexts, German has adopted the English loanword Gender to achieve this distinction. Sometimes Geschlechtsidentität is used for 'gender' (although it literally means 'gender identity') and Geschlecht for 'sex'. More common is the use of modifiers: biologisches Geschlecht for 'biological sex', Geschlechtsidentität for 'gender identity' and Geschlechtsrolle for 'gender role', and so on. Both German and Dutch use a separate word, Genus, for grammatical gender.

Swedish (clear distinction in nouns — genus and kön)

In Swedish, 'gender' is translated with the linguistically cognate genus, including sociological contexts, thus: Genusstudier (gender studies) and Genusvetenskap (gender science). 'Sex' in Swedish, however, only signifies sexual relations, and not the proposed English dichotomy, a concept for which kön (also from PIE gen-) is used. A common distinction is then made between kön (sex) and genus (gender), where the former refers only to biological sex. However, Swedish uses the words könsroller and könsidentitet, for the English terms 'gender role' and 'gender identity'.

Summary

The historical meaning of gender is something like "things we treat differently because of their inherent differences". It has three common applications in contemporary English. Most commonly it is applied to the general differences between men and women, without any assumptions regarding biology or sociology. Sometimes however, the usage is technical or assumes a particular theory of human nature, this is always clear from the context. Finally the same word, gender, is also commonly applied to the independent concept of distinctive word categories in certain languages. Grammatical gender has little or nothing to do with differences between men and women.

Likewise, the word sex has two distinct meanings in English. It can be used to describe whether an individual of a sexually reproducing species is physically male or female. Sex, male and female in this sense view humans as Homo sapiens and are impersonal, or dehumanizing, in many contexts.

  • Person A: We just had our first baby!
  • Reply 1: Boy or girl? (personal, suited to a friend)
  • Reply 2: Male or female? (impersonal, suited to a doctor — or vet — unsuited to a friend)

The word sex is also used to refer to erotic behaviour between humans, rather more broadly than mating is used of animals. Reproduction is not assumed in reference to human sexual behaviour. Both uses of sex are clearly relevant to the study of differences between men and women.

Biology of gender

The biology of gender became the subject of an expanding number of studies over the course of the late 20th century. One of the earliest areas of interest was what is now called gender identity disorder (GID). Studies in this, and related areas, inform the following summary of the subject by John Money, a pioneer and controversial sex and gender researcher.

The term "gender role" appeared in print first in 1955. The term "gender identity" was used in a press release, November 21, 1966, to announce the new clinic for transsexuals at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. It was disseminated in the media worldwide, and soon entered the vernacular. The definitions of gender and gender identity vary on a doctrinal basis. In popularized and scientifically debased usage, sex is what you are biologically; gender is what you become socially; gender identity is your own sense or conviction of maleness or femaleness; and gender role is the cultural stereotype of what is masculine and feminine. Causality with respect to gender identity disorder is subdivisible into genetic, prenatal hormonal, postnatal social, and postpubertal hormonal determinants, but there is, as yet, no comprehensive and detailed theory of causality. Gender coding in the brain is bipolar. In gender identity disorder, there is discordancy between the natal sex of one's external genitalia and the brain coding of one's gender as masculine or feminine.

Money refers to attempts to distinguish a difference between biological sex and social gender as "scientifically debased", because of our increased knowledge of a continuum of dimorphic features (Money's word is "dipolar"), that link biological and behavioural differences. These extend from the exclusively biological "genetic" and "prenatal hormonal" differences between men and women, to postnatal features, some of which are social, but others have been shown to result from "postpubertal hormonal" effects.

Prior to recent technology that made study of brain differences possible, observable differences in behaviour between men and women could not be adequately explained solely on the basis of the limited observable physical differences between them. Hence the, then plausible, theory that these differences might be explained by arbitrary cultural assignments of roles. However, Money notes concisely that masculine or feminine self-identity is now seen as essentially an expression of dimorphic brain structure (Money's word is "coding"). The new discoveries have an additional advantage over the theory of cultural arbitrariness of gender roles, as they help explain the similarities between these roles in widely divergent cultures (see Steven Pinker on Donald Brown's Human Universals, including romantic love, sexual jealousy, and patriarchy).

Although causation from the biological — genetic and hormonal — to the behavioural has been broadly demonstrated and accepted, Money is careful to also note that understanding of the causal chains from biology to behaviour in sex and gender issues is very far from complete. For example, we have not conclusively identified a "gay gene", but nor have we excluded such a possibility.

The following systematic list (gender taxonomy) illustrates the kinds of diversity that have been studied and reported in medical literature. It is placed in roughly chronological order of biological and social development in the human life cycle. The earlier stages are more purely biological and the latter are more dominantly social. Causation is known to operate from chromosome to gonads, and from gonads to hormones. It is also significant from brain structure to gender identity (see Money quote above). Brain structure and processing (biological) that may explain erotic preference (social), however, is an area of ongoing research. Terminology in some areas changes quite rapidly to accommodate the constantly growing knowledge base. One journal, published since 2002, is specifically devoted to Genes, Brains and Behavior An interactive, animated display of early development is available online

Gender taxonomy

Sex

Sexual reproduction

Sexual reproduction is a popular system of producing new individuals within various species. Individuals of sexually reproducing species produce special kinds of cells called gametes, whose function is specifically to fuse with one unlike gamete and hence form a new individual. This fusion of two unlike gametes is called fertilization. By convention, where one type of gamete cell is physically larger than the other, it is associated with female sex. Thus an individual that produces exclusively large gametes (ova in humans) is said to be female, and one that produces exclusively small gametes (spermatozoa in humans) is said to be male. An individual that produces both types of gametes is called hermaphrodite (a name applicable also to people with one testis and one ovary). In some species hermaphrodites can self-fertilize, in others they can achieve fertilization with females, males or both. Some species, like the Japanese Ash, Fraxinus lanuginosa, only have males and hermaphrodites, a rare reproductive system called androdioecy‎.

What is considered defining of sexual reproduction is the difference between the gametes and the binary nature of fertilization. Multiplicity of gamete types within a species would still be considered a form of sexual reproduction. However, of more than 1.5 million living species, recorded up to about the year 2000, "no third sex cell — and so no third sex — has appeared in multicellular animals. Why sexual reproduction has an exclusively binary gamete system is not yet known. A few rare species that push the boundaries of the definitions are the subject of active research for light they may shed on the mechanisms of the evolution of sex. For example, the most toxic insect, the harvester ant Pogonomyrmex, has two kinds of female and two kinds of male. One hypothesis is that the species is a hybrid, evolved from two closely related preceding species.

Fossil records indicate that sexual reproduction has been occurring for at least one billion years. However, the reason for the initial evolution of sex, and the reason it has survived to the present are still matters of debate, there are many plausible theories. It appears that the ability to reproduce sexually has evolved independently in various species on many occasions. There are cases where it has also been lost. The flatworm, Dugesia tigrina, and a few other species can reproduce either sexually or asexually depending on various conditions.

Sexual differentiation

Although sexual reproduction is defined at the cellular level, key features of sexual reproduction operate within the structures of the gamete cells themselves. Notably, gametes carry very long molecules called DNA that the biological processes of reproduction can "read" like a book of instructions. In fact, there are typically many of these "books", called chromosomes. Human gametes usually have 23 chromosomes, 22 of which are common to both sexes. The final chromosomes in the two human gametes are called sex chromosomes because of their role in sex determination. Ova always have the same sex chromosome, labelled X. About half of spermatozoa also have this same X chromosome, the rest have a Y chromosome. At fertilization the gametes fuse to form a cell, usually with 46 chromosomes, and either XX female or XY male, depending on whether the sperm carried an X or a Y chromosome. Some of the other possibilities are listed above.

In humans, the "default" processes of reproduction result in an individual with female characteristics. An intact Y chromosome contains what is needed to "reprogram" the processes sufficiently to produce male characteristics, leading to sexual differentiation (see also Sexual dimorphism). Part of the Y chromosome, the Sex-determining Region Y (SRY), causes what would normally become ovaries to become testes. These, in turn, produce male hormones called androgens. However, several points in the processes have been identified where variations can result in people with atypical characteristics, including atypical sexual characteristics. Terminology for atypical sexual characteristics has not stabilized. Disorder of sexual development (DSD) is used by some in preference to intersex, which is used by others in preference to pseudohermaphroditism.

Androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) is an example of a DSD that also illustrates that female development is the default for humans. Although having one X and one Y chromosome, some people are biologically insensitive to the androgens produced by their testes. As a result they follow the normal human processes which result in a person of female sex. Women who are XY report identifying as a woman — feeling and thinking like a woman — and, where their biology is completely insensitive to masculinizing factors, externally they look identical to other women. Unlike other women, however, they cannot produce ova, because they do not have ovaries.

The human XY system is not the only sex determination system. Birds typically have a reverse, ZW system — males are ZZ and females ZW. Whether male or female birds influence the sex of offspring is not known for all species. Several species of butterfly are known to have female parent sex determination. The platypus has a complex hybrid system, the male has ten sex chromosomes, half X and half Y.

Genes, Brains and Behaviour

Genes

Chromosomes were likened to books (above), also like books they have been studied at more detailed levels. They contain "sentences" called genes. In fact, many of these sentences are common to multiple species. Sometimes they are organized in the same order, other times they have been "edited" — deleted, copied, changed, moved, even relocated to another "book", as species evolve. Genes are a particularly important part of understanding biological processes because they are directly associated with observable objects, outside chromosomes, called proteins, whose influence on cell chemistry can be measured. In some cases genes can also be directly associated with differences clear to the naked eye, like eye-colour itself. Some of these differences are sex specific, like hairy ears. The "hairy ear" gene is on the Y chromosome which is why only men have it. However, genes on any chromosome can "say", "if you are in a male body do X, otherwise don't." The same principle explains why chimpanzees and humans are distinct, despite sharing nearly all their genes.

The study of genetics is particularly inter-disciplinary. It is relevant to almost every biological science. It is investigated in detail by molecular level sciences, and itself contributes details to high level abstractions like evolutionary theory.

Brain

There are small statistical differences in size between brains of men and women. However, what is functionally relevant are differences in composition and "wiring", some of these differences are very pronounced. Richard J. Haier and colleagues at the universities of New Mexico and California (Irvine) found, using brain mapping, that men have more than six times the amount of grey matter related to general intelligence than women, and women have nearly ten times the amount of white matter related to intelligence than men. Gray matter is used for information processing, while white matter consists of the connections between processing centers. Other differences are measurable but less pronounced. Most of these differences are known to be produced by the activity of hormones, hence ultimately derived from the Y chromosome and sexual differentiation. However, differences arising from the activity of genes directly have also been observed.

A sexual dimorphism in levels of expression in brain tissue was observed by quantitative real-time PCR, with females presenting an up to 2-fold excess in the abundance of PCDH11X transcripts. We relate these findings to sexually dimorphic traits in the human brain. Interestingly, PCDH11X/Y gene pair is unique to Homo sapiens, since the X-linked gene was transposed to the Y chromosome after the human–chimpanzee lineages split.

It has also been demonstrated that brain processing responds to the external environment. Learning, both of ideas and behaviours, appears to be coded in brain processes. It also appears that in several simplified cases this coding operates differently, but in some ways equivalently, in the brains of men and women. For example, both men and women learn and use language; however, bio-chemically, they appear to process it differently. Differences in male and female use of language are likely reflections both of biological preferences and aptitudes, and of learned patterns.

Two of the main fields that study brain structure, biological (and other causes) and behavioural (and other results) are brain neurology and biological psychology. Cognitive science is another important discipline in the field of brain research.

Behaviour

Some behaviours are so simple that biological explanation may be sufficient. Blinking, yawning and stretching are more reflexes than behaviours. However, etiquette and protocol are complicated behaviours, presumably influenced by many environmental factors, including social (man-made) ones. A large area of research in behavioural psychology collates evidence in an effort to discover correlations between behaviour and various possible antecedents such as genetics, culture, gender, physical or social development, or physical or social environments.

A core research area within sociology is the way human behaviour operates on itself, in other words, how the behaviour of one group or individual influences the behaviour of other groups or individuals. Starting in the late 20th century, the feminist movement has contributed extensive study of gender and theories about it, notably within sociology but not restricted to it.

Social categories

Sociology

Sexologist John Money coined the term gender role in 1955. "The term gender role is used to signify all those things that a person says or does to disclose himself or herself as having the status of boy or man, girl or woman, respectively. It includes, but is not restricted to, sexuality in the sense of eroticism. Elements of such a role include clothing, speech patterns, movement, occupations and other factors not limited to biological sex. Because social aspects of gender can normally be presumed to be the ones of interest in sociology and closely related disciplines, gender role is often abbreviated to gender in their literature, without leading to ambiguity in that context.

Most societies have only two distinct gender roles — male and female — and these correspond with biological sex. However, some societies explicitly incorporate people who adopt the gender role opposite to their biological sex, for example the Two-Spirit people of some indigenous American peoples. Other societies include well-developed roles that are explicitly considered more or less distinct from archetypal male and female roles in those societies. In the language of the sociology of gender they comprise a third gender, more or less distinct from biological sex (sometimes the basis for the role does include intersexuality or incorporates eunuchs). One such gender role is that adopted by the hijras of India and Pakistan.

The Bugis people of Sulawesi, Indonesia have a tradition incorporating all of the features above. Joan Roughgarden argues that in some non-human animal species, there can also be said to be more than two genders, in that there might be multiple templates for behavior available to individual organisms with a given biological sex.

Consideration of the dynamics of societies like those above prompted debate over the extent to which differences in male and female gender roles are learned socially, or reflect biology. Social constructionists argued that gender roles are entirely arbitrary, and biological preferences and aptitudes are irrelevant. Contrary to social constructionism essentialists argued that gender roles are entirely determined by biology, unmodified by social adaptations. Although these extreme views are common enough in the history of literature on the subject, both are now rare in the peer reviewed literature (see contents of Journal of Sex Research issues, published by SSSS — Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality).

Contemporary sociological reference to male and female gender roles typically uses masculinities and femininities in the plural rather than singular, suggesting diversity both within cultures as well as across them.

Feminism and Gender studies

The philosopher and feminist Simone de Beauvoir applied existentialism to women's experience of life: "One is not born a woman, one becomes one. In context, this is a philosophical statement, however, it is true biologically — a girl must pass puberty to become a woman — and true sociologically — mature relating in social contexts is learned, not instinctive.

Within feminist theory, terminology for gender issues developed over the 1970s. In the 1974 edition of Masculine/Feminine or Human, the author uses "innate gender" and "learned sex roles", but in the 1978 edition, the use of sex and gender is reversed. By 1980, most feminist writings had agreed on using gender only for socioculturally adapted traits.

In gender studies the term gender is used to refer to proposed social and cultural constructions of masculinities and femininities. In this context, gender explicitly excludes reference to biological differences, to focus on cultural differences. This emerged from a number of different areas: in sociology during the 1950s; from the theories of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan; and in the work of French psychoanalysts like Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray and Bracha L. Ettinger and American feminists such as Judith Butler. Those who followed Butler came to regard gender roles as a practice, sometimes referred to as "performative.

Sociologists consider society to be constructed, and it follows that gender in our society is also constructed. We tend to easily equate sex and gender, and assume that knowing someone’s biological sex implies her or his gender. Hurst states that some people think sex will “automatically determine one’s gender demeanor and role (social) as well as one’s sexual orientation (sexual attractions and behavior). (Hurst, p. 141)” However, gender is not produced at birth, as sexual organs are, and we have cultural origins and habits for dealing with gender. Michael Schwalbe believes that humans must be taught how to act appropriately in their designated gender in order to properly fill the role. The way we behave as masculine, feminine, or any combination reflects the highly detailed gender maps that we have laid out in our society. Given how ingrained and detailed these gender schemas are, it is hard to imagine that we create and reinforce them ourselves. However, Schwalbe comments that we “are the results of many people embracing and acting on similar ideas.(Schwalbe, p.23)”

To maintain these detailed gender schemas, humans present and typically display their gender as either masculine or feminine. We do this through everything from clothing and hairstyle to relationship and employment choices. Schwalbe believes that these distinctions are important, because we want to identify and categorize people as soon as we see them. We need to place people into distinct categories in order to know how we should feel about them.

Hurst comments that in a society where we present our genders so distinctly, there can often be severe consequences for breaking these cultural norms. Many of these consequences are rooted in discrimination based on sexual orientation. Gays and lesbians are often discriminated against in our legal system due to societal prejudices. Hurst describes how this discrimination works against people for breaking gender norms, no matter what their sexual orientation is. He says that “courts often confuse sex, gender, and sexual orientation, and confuse them in a way that results in denying the rights not only of gays and lesbians, but also of those who do not present themselves or act in a manner traditionally expected of their sex. (Hurst, p.141)” This prejudice plays out in our legal system when a man or woman is judged differently because he or she does not present the “correct” gender. How we present and display our gender has consequences in everyday life, but also in institutionalized aspects of our society.

Legal status

A person's sex as male or female has legal significance — sex is indicated on government documents, and laws provide differently for men and women. Many pension systems have different retirement ages for men or women. Marriage is usually only available to opposite-sex couples.

The question then arises as to what legally determines whether someone is male or female. In most cases this can appear obvious, but the matter is complicated for intersexual or transgender people. Different jurisdictions have adopted different answers to this question. Almost all countries permit changes of legal gender status in cases of intersexualism, when the gender assignment made at birth is determined upon further investigation to be biologically inaccurate — technically, however, this is not a change of status per se. Rather, it is recognition of a status which was deemed to exist, but unknown, from birth. Increasingly, jurisdictions also provide a procedure for changes of legal gender for transgender people.

Gender assignment, when there are indications that genital sex might not be decisive in a particular case, is normally not defined by a single definition, but by a combination of conditions, including chromosomes and gonads. Thus, for example, in many jurisdictions a person with XY chromosomes but female gonads could be recognised as female at birth.

The ability to change legal gender for transgender people in particular has given rise to the phenomena in some jurisdictions of the same person having different genders for the purposes of different areas of the law. For example, in Australia prior to the Re Kevin decisions, transsexual people could be recognised as having the genders they identified with under many areas of the law, including social security law, but not for the law of marriage. Thus, for a period, it was possible for the same person to have two different genders under Australian law.

It is also possible in federal systems for the same person to have one gender under state law and a different gender under federal law (a state recognises gender transitions, but the federal government does not).

Gender and development

Gender, and particularly the role of women is widely recognized as vitally important to international development issues. This often means a focus on gender-equality, ensuring participation, but includes an understanding of the different roles and expectation of the genders within the community.

As well as directly addressing inequality, attention to gender issues is regarded as important to the success of development programs, for all participants. For example, in microfinance it is common to target women, as besides the fact that women tend to be over-represented in the poorest segments of the population, they are also regarded as more reliable at repaying the loans. Also, it is claimed that women are more likely to use the money for the benefit of their families.

Some organizations working in developing countries and in the development field have incorporated advocacy and empowerment for women into their work. A notable example is Wangari Maathai's environmental organization, the Green Belt Movement.

Spirituality

In Taoism, yin and yang are considered feminine and masculine, respectively.

In Judaism, God is described with mainly masculine language. God is strongly identified with the sky - God lives in Heaven and sends rain - which was understood as masculine compared to the earth understood as feminine. God is often compared to a warrior, defender, judge, and king. Once God is compared to a person sewing and once to a person knitting. In the Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) the Shekhinah represents the feminine aspect of God's essence.

In Christianity, God is described in masculine terms and the Church has historically been described in feminine terms. On the other hand, Christian theology in many churches distinguishes between the masculine images used of God (Father, King, God the Son) and the reality they signify, which transcends gender, embodies all the virtues of both genders perfectly, and is the creator of both human sexes. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is treated with the neuter pronoun. Hebrew speaking Christians like the Ebionites used the female gender for the Holy Spirit.

In Hinduism,

"One of the several forms of the Hindu God Shiva, is Ardhanarishwar (literally half-female God). Here Shiva manifests himself so that the left half is Female and the right half is Male. The left represents Shakti (energy, power) in the form of Goddess Parvati (otherwise his consort) and the right half Shiva. Whereas Parvati is the cause of arousal of Kama (desires), Shiva is the killer. Shiva is pervaded by the power of Parvati and Parvati is pervaded by the power of Shiva. While the stone images may seem to represent a half-male and half-female God, the true symbolic representation is of a being the whole of which is Shiva and the whole of which is Shakti at the same time. It is a 3-D representation of only shakti from one angle and only Shiva from the other. Shiva and Shakti are hence the same being representing a collective of Jnana (knowledge) and Kriya (activity). Adi Shankaracharya, the founder of non-dualistic philosophy (Advaita–"not two") in Hindu thought says in his "Saundaryalahari"—Shivah Shaktayaa yukto yadi bhavati shaktah prabhavitum na che devum devona khalu kushalah spanditam api " i.e., It is only when Shiva is united with Shakti that He acquires the capability of becoming the Lord of the Universe. In the absence of Shakti, He is not even able to stir. In fact, the term "Shiva" originated from "Shva," which implies a dead body. It is only through his inherent shakti that Shiva realizes his true nature.

This mythology projects the inherent view in ancient Hinduism, that each human carries within himself both male and female components, which are forces rather than sexes, and it is the harmony between the creative and the annihilative, the strong and the soft, the proactive and the passive, that makes a true person. Such thought, leave alone entail gender equality, in fact obliterates any material distinction between the male and female altogether. This may explain why in ancient India we find evidence of homosexuality, bisexuality, androgyny, multiple sex partners and open representation of sexual pleasures in artworks like the Khajuraho temples, being accepted within prevalent social frameworks."

Other uses

The word gender is used in several contexts to describe binary differences, more or less loosely associated by analogy with various actual or perceived differences between men and women.

Linguistics

Natural languages often make gender distinctions. These may be of various kinds.

  • Grammatical gender is a property of some languages in which every noun is assigned a gender, often with no direct relation to its meaning. For example, the word for "girl" is muchacha (grammatically feminine) in Spanish, Mädchen (grammatically neuter) in German, and cailín (grammatically masculine) in Irish.
  • Several languages attest the use of different vocabulary by men and women, to differing degrees. See, for instance, Gender differences in spoken Japanese. The oldest documented language, Sumerian, records a distinctive sub-language only used by female speakers.
  • Most languages include terms that are used asymmetrically in reference to men and women. Concern that current language may be biased in favor of men has led some authors in recent times to argue for the use of a more Gender-neutral vocabulary in English and other languages.

Connectors, pipe fittings, and fasteners

In electrical and mechanical trades and manufacturing, and in electronics, each of a pair of mating connectors or fasteners (such as nuts and bolts) is conventionally assigned the designation male or female. The assignment is by direct analogy with animal genitalia; the part bearing one or more protrusions, or which fits inside the other, being designated male and the part containing the corresponding indentations or fitting outside the other being female.

This kind of male-female distinction is known as gender (not sex) of connectors and fastners. It provides an example of a technical use of the term gender that evokes association with the physiology, rather than sociology, of male-female differences.

The standard letters "M" and "F" are commonly used in part numbers. For example, in Switchcraft XLR microphone or hydrophone connectors, the part numbers are denoted as follows:

  • A3F = Audio 3-pin Female connector;
  • A3M = Audio 3-pin Male connector.

A cable that has A3F on both ends or A3M on both ends is sometimes referred to as a "gay cable" or "gay cord".

In plumbing fittings, the "M" or "F" usually comes at the beginning rather than the end. For example:

  • MIP denotes Male International Pipe thread;
  • FIP denotes Female International Pipe thread.

A "gay" male pipe (i.e. a short length of pipe having an MIP at both ends) is sometimes called a "nipple".

Music

In western music theory, keys, chords and scales are often described as having major or minor tonality, sometimes related to masculine and feminine. By analogy, the major scales are masculine (clear, open, extroverted), while the minor scales are given feminine qualities (dark, soft, introverted). German uses the word Tongeschlecht ("Tone gender") for tonality, and the words Dur (from Latin durus, hard) for major and moll (from Latin mollis, soft) for minor. See Major and minor.

See also

General

References

Further reading

External links

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Last updated on Tuesday March 11, 2008 at 12:24:10 PDT (GMT -0700)
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