POLS 4790 Lecture 1: Gender

• School: University of Georgia
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLS 4790
• Professor: Andrew Pierce

Document Summary

Big picture gender"s relation to any material body is socially constructed as much as our expectations of gender roles or characteristics. Since the 1960s, most scholars have distinguished between sex and gender. Useful for understanding the many different situations in which person"s gender does not match their sex assigned at birth. The way that we understand gender for the most part is still discussed in terms of biology. Coat rack metaphor: our biologies are true and fixed, and society imposes (hangs) roles on our biology. Biological fundamentalism socially constructed gender arises from innate biological difference. Assumes our social identity is a function of our biology. Implies that sexism and male-dominated social structures are natural developments from biology. Implies that sexism, in essence, is the same for all women in all cultures. Strictly defines who can identify themselves as a woman. Biological foundationalism limits the definition of woman and homogenizes what it means to be a woman.