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Sex, gender and society
analysis of sex, gender, and society.
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First published January 1, 1973
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October 12, 2020
...some of what made obvious sense when Sex, Gender and Society was written ... has a slightly anachronistic and / or politically incorrect air. However, the book still apparently serves its purpose... [p1]
The terminology of Sex, Gender and Society was in the 1970s the main alternative to essentialist views of men’s and women’s social positions being over-determined by biology. [p3]
My modest little book is credited with being the first publication to offer a clear definition of sex as biological and gender as cultural...Social scientists especially saw the book as crucial for instating ‘the sex / gender binary’ as ‘standard for most of sociology’ and a conceptual framework promoting a materialist analysis of women’s oppression. [p4]
Sex, Gender and Society provided a conceptual tool – the separation of sex and gender – which was a considerable help to those engaged in documenting women’s oppression. [p10]
Today’s [women’s] liberationists point out that both men and women are caught in a web of conventional sex role definitions, and that both sexes – not just women – may suffer from a restriction of personal freedom as a result. [p21]
..a crucial distinction it is necessary to make in our thinking about male and female roles – the distinction between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’. ‘Sex’ is a word that refers to the biological differences between male and female: the visible differences in genitalia, the related differences in procreative function. ‘Gender’, however, is a matter of culture: it refers to the social classification into ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’. [p22]
As a leading anthropologist once observed, ‘sex’ is not a particularly useful word in the analysis of culture To survive a culture must reproduce, and copulation is the only way. But what is defined as ‘sexual’ in content or implication varies infinitely from one culture to another or within the same culture in different historical periods. [p77]
To sum up, then, we can say that the chief importance of biological sex in determining social roles is in providing a universal and obvious division around which other distinctions can be organised. In deciding which activities are to fall on each side of the boundary, the important factor is culture. In early upbringing, in education and in their adult occupations, males and females are presed by our society into different moulds. At the end of this process it is not surprising that they come to regard their distinctive occupations as predetermined by some general law, despite the fact that in reality the biological differences between the sexes are neither so large nor so invariable as most of us suppose, and despite the way in which other cultures have developed sex roles quite different from our own, which seem just as natural and just as inevitable to them as ours do to us. [p113]
Sex is a biological term: ‘gender’ a psychological and cultural one... To be man or a woman, a boy or a girl, is as much a function of dress, gesture, occupation, social network and personality, as it is of possessing a particular set of genitals. [p115]
Gender is the amount of masculinity or femininity found in a person, and obviously, while there are mixtures of both in many humans, the normal male has a preponderance of masculinity and the normal female has a preponderance of femininity. [p116]
The child senses that gender is not necessarily defined by sex, and indeed studies of children in general have shown that they do not use anatomy as a criterion of sex, at least at first. Unti about six or seven, children will declare that girls can become boys or vie versa provided they adopt the right games, clothes, haircuts and so on. This has usually been taken to show a lack of biological knowledge in the child but in fact it is probably a realistic assessment of the situation, incorporating the perception that gender is socially and not biologically defined. When we react to someone as male of female we do not need to see if he or she has a penis or vagina, breasts or a hairy chest. Mostly, the social situation defines gender (wife = woman, dentist = man, and so on) or gender is visible as a sum of qualities, including mannerisms, way of speaking, dress, choice of topics in conversation and so on. Gender is a visible fact most of the time, sex is not. [p117]
A newborn baby is not only classified immediately by sex: it is also assigned a gender. In most maternity hospitals sex-typed comments on the behaviour and appearance of newborns are aired within a few moments of birth... All these responses mark the beginning of a gender-learning process which is critically important for the child...Even with newborn babies, mothers differentiate between boys and girls in their behaviour towards them. [p125]
The social-learning view is that for the child the chain of reasoning is: ‘I want rewards, I am rewarded for doing boy (girl) things, therefore I want to be a boy (girl).’ The cognitive view is the other way around: ‘I am a boy (girl), therefore I want to do boy (girl) things, therefore the opportunity to do boy (girl) things, and be approved of, is rewarding.’ [p129]
A study of a group of juveniles delinquents by Andry (1960) has highlighted the fact that delinquent boys’ fathers may deprive them of love – that ‘paternal deprivation’ of love, and hence of the relationship in which the boy can successfully learn his gender role, may be more important as a cause of male delinquency than maternal inadequacy (the factor usually blamed). [p132]
Infants do need not only good physical care but warm and intimate relationships with others; they need a certain minimum of continuity in the people caring for them, and they need both verbal and nonverbal stimulation. But no researcher has ever found that they must have those needs satisfied by mothers rather than fathers, by females rather than males, or indeed by adults rather than older siblings. [p140]
[The] organisation of gender roles around the division between ‘work’ and home does have a certain function. As feminists have not been slow to point out, it guarantees the servicing of the (predominantly male) industrial workforce by the [predominantly female] domestic workforce. Further, it provides society with an army of consumers – housewives – whose economically unproductive role has been essential to the success of Western capitalism. (This does not mean that society could not be equally well organized in another way ...). [p145]
Some things seem to be highly unresponsive to political action, and employers’ attitudes to female labour are a case in point. [p146]
They then have to work out for themselves, as their mothers did, all the problems of guilt and anxiety which research shows to be the only difference between employed and non-employed mothers on all indices of maternal adequacy and personal adjustment. [p148]
While our society is organised around the differences rather than the similarities between the sexes, these two extreme of masculinity and femininity will recur, thus apparently confirming the belief that they come from a biological source. [p149]
The terminology of Sex, Gender and Society was in the 1970s the main alternative to essentialist views of men’s and women’s social positions being over-determined by biology. [p3]
My modest little book is credited with being the first publication to offer a clear definition of sex as biological and gender as cultural...Social scientists especially saw the book as crucial for instating ‘the sex / gender binary’ as ‘standard for most of sociology’ and a conceptual framework promoting a materialist analysis of women’s oppression. [p4]
Sex, Gender and Society provided a conceptual tool – the separation of sex and gender – which was a considerable help to those engaged in documenting women’s oppression. [p10]
Today’s [women’s] liberationists point out that both men and women are caught in a web of conventional sex role definitions, and that both sexes – not just women – may suffer from a restriction of personal freedom as a result. [p21]
..a crucial distinction it is necessary to make in our thinking about male and female roles – the distinction between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’. ‘Sex’ is a word that refers to the biological differences between male and female: the visible differences in genitalia, the related differences in procreative function. ‘Gender’, however, is a matter of culture: it refers to the social classification into ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’. [p22]
As a leading anthropologist once observed, ‘sex’ is not a particularly useful word in the analysis of culture To survive a culture must reproduce, and copulation is the only way. But what is defined as ‘sexual’ in content or implication varies infinitely from one culture to another or within the same culture in different historical periods. [p77]
To sum up, then, we can say that the chief importance of biological sex in determining social roles is in providing a universal and obvious division around which other distinctions can be organised. In deciding which activities are to fall on each side of the boundary, the important factor is culture. In early upbringing, in education and in their adult occupations, males and females are presed by our society into different moulds. At the end of this process it is not surprising that they come to regard their distinctive occupations as predetermined by some general law, despite the fact that in reality the biological differences between the sexes are neither so large nor so invariable as most of us suppose, and despite the way in which other cultures have developed sex roles quite different from our own, which seem just as natural and just as inevitable to them as ours do to us. [p113]
Sex is a biological term: ‘gender’ a psychological and cultural one... To be man or a woman, a boy or a girl, is as much a function of dress, gesture, occupation, social network and personality, as it is of possessing a particular set of genitals. [p115]
Gender is the amount of masculinity or femininity found in a person, and obviously, while there are mixtures of both in many humans, the normal male has a preponderance of masculinity and the normal female has a preponderance of femininity. [p116]
The child senses that gender is not necessarily defined by sex, and indeed studies of children in general have shown that they do not use anatomy as a criterion of sex, at least at first. Unti about six or seven, children will declare that girls can become boys or vie versa provided they adopt the right games, clothes, haircuts and so on. This has usually been taken to show a lack of biological knowledge in the child but in fact it is probably a realistic assessment of the situation, incorporating the perception that gender is socially and not biologically defined. When we react to someone as male of female we do not need to see if he or she has a penis or vagina, breasts or a hairy chest. Mostly, the social situation defines gender (wife = woman, dentist = man, and so on) or gender is visible as a sum of qualities, including mannerisms, way of speaking, dress, choice of topics in conversation and so on. Gender is a visible fact most of the time, sex is not. [p117]
A newborn baby is not only classified immediately by sex: it is also assigned a gender. In most maternity hospitals sex-typed comments on the behaviour and appearance of newborns are aired within a few moments of birth... All these responses mark the beginning of a gender-learning process which is critically important for the child...Even with newborn babies, mothers differentiate between boys and girls in their behaviour towards them. [p125]
The social-learning view is that for the child the chain of reasoning is: ‘I want rewards, I am rewarded for doing boy (girl) things, therefore I want to be a boy (girl).’ The cognitive view is the other way around: ‘I am a boy (girl), therefore I want to do boy (girl) things, therefore the opportunity to do boy (girl) things, and be approved of, is rewarding.’ [p129]
A study of a group of juveniles delinquents by Andry (1960) has highlighted the fact that delinquent boys’ fathers may deprive them of love – that ‘paternal deprivation’ of love, and hence of the relationship in which the boy can successfully learn his gender role, may be more important as a cause of male delinquency than maternal inadequacy (the factor usually blamed). [p132]
Infants do need not only good physical care but warm and intimate relationships with others; they need a certain minimum of continuity in the people caring for them, and they need both verbal and nonverbal stimulation. But no researcher has ever found that they must have those needs satisfied by mothers rather than fathers, by females rather than males, or indeed by adults rather than older siblings. [p140]
[The] organisation of gender roles around the division between ‘work’ and home does have a certain function. As feminists have not been slow to point out, it guarantees the servicing of the (predominantly male) industrial workforce by the [predominantly female] domestic workforce. Further, it provides society with an army of consumers – housewives – whose economically unproductive role has been essential to the success of Western capitalism. (This does not mean that society could not be equally well organized in another way ...). [p145]
Some things seem to be highly unresponsive to political action, and employers’ attitudes to female labour are a case in point. [p146]
They then have to work out for themselves, as their mothers did, all the problems of guilt and anxiety which research shows to be the only difference between employed and non-employed mothers on all indices of maternal adequacy and personal adjustment. [p148]
While our society is organised around the differences rather than the similarities between the sexes, these two extreme of masculinity and femininity will recur, thus apparently confirming the belief that they come from a biological source. [p149]
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April 1, 2018Ann Oakley was one of the first sociologists to extend ideas about socialization to try to understand how gender is learned and how femininity and masculinity are socially constructed. She and other sociologists were suggesting that perhaps women and men were only as different as a society made them. Oakley started using the term gender in the early 1970s to distinguish biological sex from gender. Gender is a Latin word, meaning sex in terms of masculinity and femininity, and is used in sociology to differentiate gender on the basis of gender and not on the basis of internal and external biological organs that distinguish the sexes from each other. Hence, the distinction between sexes is based on gender, because it illustrates the differences between men and women in terms of social role, cultural perspective and function. These differences are due to factors Religious and cultural, political and social, that is, differences made by humans through their long history.
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