SEX AND GENDER

Darwinian Insights into Sex and Gender


By Helena Cronin

“If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s a social construct of a duck.” To a Darwinian, fashionable claims about “the social construction of gender” are no less bizarre. Men and women look unalike, walk unalike, talk unalike. They differ in who is more competitive, single-minded and risk-taking; who is more likely to climb Everest, drive too fast, become President of the United States, commit a murder, or win a Nobel prize; in what triggers their sexual jealousy, erotic fantasies, status envy. Differences such as these are universal, transcending culture, class, ethnicity, religion, education, and politics. They manifest themselves in all societies, across the modern world, and in every known record back through time. Above all, they are differences that any student of evolutionary theory could predict and explain. And yet, it has been said that so-called “gender” differences are just a social construct, a mere cultural artifact, as arbitrary, unwarranted and pointless as pink for girls and blue for boys (and, of course, vastly more invidious)—and therefore, when it comes to explaining male-female differences, an evolutionary understanding is irrelevant or marginal. Consider attitudes to virginity. Darwinians expect a sex difference, Universally, men valued women’s virginity more than women valued men’s. Cultural differences make an impact. But they merely shift the extent to which people value virginity at all—a lot, for example, in Indonesia and Iran, but very little in Finland and Sweden.Universally, too, women preferred husbands older than themselves; but there was not a single society in which men wanted older wives. This difference reflects women’s evolved preference for men with status (because status could deliver resources for dependent offspring) and men’s preference for women with high reproductive potential. For the same reason, women universally tended to value men’s financial prospects (resources in modern guise) more than men valued women’s; and men universally cared more about women’s physical attractiveness than vice versa. Now turn to the Guinness Book of Records and see how even the most recondite aspects of life reflect that same competitiveness—and single-mindedness, perseverance, and risk-taking, all evidence of the lengths that males will go to in order to win. Overwhelmingly, it is men that hold the records for “The Most” or “The First” or “The Greatest...,” however apparently pointless the pursuit. Men are more obsessive collectors—most notoriously of trains spotted but also of... well, almost everything; they constitute the majority of serious collectors even of such traditionally “women’s things” as kitchen implements. And whereas women tend to own objects for sentimental reasons, men tend to collect them for their status or utility. It’s no surprise to discover that women are more likely to buy classical recordings to enjoy the music, men to complete the set. And, from gambling to ballooning to motor-racing to Russian roulette to failing to apply sunblock lotion, men are more ready to take risks.Tellingly, psychological sex differences emerge as early as children’s play. Boys opt for formal games, with a definite outcome that allows them to be declared the winner; they quarrel repeatedly over the rules, with apparent enjoyment, and are better than girls at competing with friends. Girls prefer unstructured play, without rules and goals or winners and losers; and they waive formalities in favor of consensus. Even among one-year olds, girls are less willing to leave their mothers; boys are more independent, exploratory, and active. And at just 20 months, girls choose dolls and kitchen toys whereas boys choose construction and transport toys—not, of course, through innate preference for specific toys, but because of what the toys offer.

“So what’s new?” I have heard critics cry. “Men preferring younger women? Darwinians have merely ‘discovered’ what we all knew already.” But we don’t all know this already. Results such as these fly in the face of “the social construction of gender.” Why such universality, such robustness? Why divergence at such an early age? Why do male-female differences show up even across huge cultural, economic, social, political, religious, and historical divides? By contrast, evolutionary scientists have not only found these results. They have also explained them. The theory of natural selection both predicts that such differences will exist and provides a scientific understanding of why they do.

The fashion for denying biological sex differences stems, I believe, from good intentions. There is a fear that if sex differences are “in the genes,” then a just and fair society, women and men having equal status, is unattainable; instead, both sexes will be inexorably condemned to what is “natural”—women minding babies and kitchen sinks, men striding forth into the world to run it; and thus “socially constructed gender” is the only safe sex. Well, the intentions are good; but the science is bad.

In response to evidence of universality of sex differences, it is commonly urged that the differences within the sexes are greater than the differences between them. The implicit conclusion, I assume, is that many women are likely to be at the male end of the axis and vice versa. But, even if this is true, it is seriously misleading if equity of outcome is at stake. For it would still be the case that the outliers would be almost exclusively of one sex. Thus any positions that are necessarily rationed to one or a few—from presidents to prize-winners—would be vanishingly unlikely to be shared equally between the sexes. Rather than helping to tackle this problem, anodyne assertions about “differences within and differences between” serve to obscure it.

It is sexist discrimination that is iniquitous, not sex differences. If the aim is to combat inequity, then it is inequity, not science, that should be opposed. Indeed, a scientific understanding should be welcomed. Science cannot dictate values; it cannot tell us what our goals should be. But it can help us to achieve those goals. Scientific understanding of how the sexes differ can help us to devise policies that are fair to both sexes.

Gender, the sex role identity used by humans to emphasize the distinction between males and females. The words gender and sex are often used interchangeably, but sex relates specifically to the biological physical characteristics which make a person male or female at birth, whereas gender refers to the behaviours associated with members of sex.

By the age of three, children tend to be aware of their gender, they are encouraged to prefer the games, clothing, modes of speech, and other aspects of culture usually assigned to their sex. Even as babies, boys and girls are treated differently from one another: boys are seldom dressed in pink as it is considered to be “feminine” colour. So even at an age at which male and female behaviour is indistinguishable it is seen as important that the child’s sex is not mistaken.

Because gender roles vary from culture, it appears that many of the behavioural differences between males and females are caused by socialization as well as male and female hormones, and other innate causes. As increasing numbers of Western women are employed in wage labour, divisions between the gender roles are shifting, but very much still exist.

Stereotypical sex associated behaviour such as male aggression and female passivity is derives at least partly from roles which are taught during childhood; ales are told “boy’s don’t cry” and are given guns and cars as toys; girls are given dolls and playhouses so they can mimic the traditional female home-making role. Increasingly, girls take on games previously associated with boys-but the reverse is still less in evidence. Similarly, many boys and girls tend to excel only in the areas of study traditionally attributed to their sex, and this may partly explain male dominance in many fields

Cases where a person’s gender identity differs from his or her biological sex often result in transsexualism and subsequent sex-change.