Gender roles - do they matter?

Question

This may well be too broad (spreading over into psychology too), I'll try to narrow it down as I outline my thinking but any advice is welcome.

I began by thinking about how its unfair if you identify as one gender and are treated as another. So then what would be the solution? Treat everyone exactly the same. Why do we need to start children off wearing pink or playing with dolls?

So we get a generation growing up without being pigeon holed into a gender and they can choose.

But what is a gender then?

If, as a culture, we stop saying "men do this" and "women do this" how would I define myself as a woman? Obviously biological sex is there but the prevailing argument is that biological sex doesn't dictate your gender.

But does it matter?

If you didn't have a gender would it matter? Would things not sink back into determining sterotypes by biological sex (which is, I suppose, gender again...)

Answer 1

Gender roles have a deep, long history that are in fact strongly tied into biology. In a nutshell, in primitive societies men were hunters, and women stayed home, talking with other women, and caring for children. Multiply this social reality over many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years, and you'll see fundamental biological differences between men and women, averaged out.

For most of history these gender roles have played a significant role in our species survival. Women are great at keeping children alive, men are great at keeping everyone fed.

All of that said, how we define what a successful gender is, is a moving target. What it meant to be a woman in the 13th century is not the same as what it means to be a woman in the 21st century. So what we'll see happen as time progresses are new traits becoming selective for each gender.

For instance, if suddenly it matters that women are capable of holding down a good job, then women who aren't financially successful start getting weaned out of the gene pool, and what it means to be a 'fecund' woman changes.

So to get back to your question, gender roles do matter in the sense that if you're good at filling the typical role you're more likely to pass on your genes. But the caveat is that gender roles, and eventually biology (over hundreds of thousands of years) aren't static. So society will, in time, be more open to a wider ranging definition of various genders, or at least a changing range.

Answer 2

It might be helpful to refer here to The Genderbread Person, a popular model for thinking about sex, gender and related concepts. (I've linked to the original, simple version but you can find several more complex iterations on the same website if you want.)

1. Gender identity: (what a person feels they are)
2. Gender expression (how a person is perceived)
3. Biological sex (morphology, genetics, hormone levels, etc.)
4. Sexual orientation (attraction, desire, etc.)

In every existing society that we know of, there are variations between individuals in relation to these four elements. On the one hand, this means sex and gender are fundamental elements of human experience. Outside a very strong tabula rasa interpretation of human nature, gender identity and gender expression are inevitable consequences of biological sex.

On the other hand, there are very wide variations in the specific content of peoples' gender identities and expressions according to historical and sociological contexts. Many societies recognize the existence of genders outside the male/female binary. While European cultures have tended to have a more rigid approach to gender roles and sexual identities, there have been strong trends towards flexibility and individual choice in recent decades. There is no reason to think such trends cannot continue.

Answer 3

Two broad reasons come to my mind.

A) Reality isn't just social construction. It has to be rooted in certain facts about individual biology and environmental demands. If biology was so insignificant that we could simply brush away existing bodily differences and they'd stop mattering, couldn't we then also simply convince people that they are of a certain sex or gender (for instance the one that popular belief assigns to them)? If one's perception of sexuality and identity were free floating entities "chosen" out of will and wish, then we could just coerce likewise people into believing they were of a certain gender (or by extension, persuade them that they aren't hungry and they'd just forgo starvation ).

That's the first reason. Environmental demands that the sexes were differently exposed to from an evolutionary perspective would have lead to systematic sex differences. How "relevant" they are is no doubt a matter of malleability (or plasticity) of nature, degree of systematicity in the different environments and other such complicated factors. (Not to mention that they'd be exceptions to this trend)

B) Secondly you need to understand thay social conventions are created to maximise happiness. Stereotypes, howevermuch of a bad word it may be today, are rom a completely neutral perspective only statistical predicitons or trends drawn from probabilistic data about social behaviour. And for all their fallouts, they do at the end of the day help increase efficiency and happiness.

Think of any group, say vegetarians. Now it might be good to offer them salad and government policies might be formulated to subsidize salads for them but it is also true that they'd be many exceptions who just despise all kind of salads. Is it unethical to stereotype them and aren't the policies unfair to those who are at odds with the majority group?

And that's it: a balance has to be maintained while targeting services or behaviour or products to groups based on the increase in happiness from this targeted/focused approach and the extent to which the members of that group actually share those characterisation (i.e. the reliability of that stereotype).

Now, giving scholarships to students' with high SAT scores seems justified (because the statistical trend of high scoring sat takers having proficient academic careers plays out in real life and the benefits of this "discrimination" outweigh any negative externalities).

But, disadvantaging people of a certain sex or race (women and blacks for example) depending on the differences in the average intelligence level might not seem such a good idea.

I'm not giving any conclusive comments on the justifiablity of these policies but the point I'm making is about the trade offs involved and how these are continuously contested themes.

So to summarize: gender matters, it cannot be changed completely out of willingness or political correctness, and it in many ways is a beneficial and productive social practice.