TO WHAT EXTENT IS GENDER A USEFUL ANALYTICAL CATEGORY?
To What Extent is Gender a Useful Analytical Category?
The term gender has been craft-fully used by feminists throughout history to express differences in biological terms that have been influenced by various factors throughout time. According to some linguistics, the terms sex and gender can be distinguished such that the former is referred to biology whereas the latter means a way of culture. However, other critics dispute these distinction terms because according to them, both sex and gender contribute to cultural construction hence, from gender yields biology (Scott 2007). Currently, the distinction line between gender and sex continues to fade as these terms are used interchangeably. However, numerous anthropologists use gender in cultural and social settings while sex to refer to biological conditions.
In lay man’s terms, gender is used to refer to the physical act of intimacy and sexual intercourse. For some groups of people, the use of gender to describe sex was considered inappropriate and offensive for example in the Beijing 4th Global Conference in 1995 held by the United Nations. Additionally, in 1996 the House of Representatives in the US conducted a hearing meeting whereby the congressmen from the Republican group ‘right-to-life’ argued that the subversive use of the term gender contributed to decay of family values and immorality in society (Hall and Bucholtz 2012). Gender has been vaguely used to describe women, men, bisexuals, transsexuals, and homosexuals. The Republican congressmen stated that the UN Beijing Conference had been overtaken by feminists who gravely believe that all aspects of gender including family and marriage, womanhood and manhood, heterosexuality, fatherhood and motherhood, and masculinity and feminity are mere cultural terms that were created by men to discriminate the opposite sex. According to feminists, gender roles are socially formulated and are thus subject to change (Wallach 2010). In the conference, many participants gave their interpretations of how they understood the term gender. In Guatemala for instance, gender is interpreted as male and female according to grading criteria such as culture, morals, law, and ethics. In Peru, the impacts of the word gender are seen whereby it is used to mean sexual rights offered to heterosexual individuals.
In the Christian community, gender mainly describes sexual identity whereby one can either be male or female without emphasizing on diversity in sex roles such as homosexuality or heterosexuality. Homosexuality was considered awkward and a representation of corrupt social order. In the 70s and 80s, people questioned how gender specifies the roles and functions of men and women and how the context of rights and power defines feminity and masculinity.
The need to further investigate ‘gender’ led to sexual differentiation in a society which stimulated careful investigation of the different meanings the word might have. Gender may refer to how men and women relate, but the relationship is not always the same in all cases. During the mid-90s in the USA, gender seemed to have lost its critical edge, and its meaning began to be taken for granted (Valochi 2005). In other non-English speaking countries, however, usage of the word was considered inappropriate because people thought it was unnatural particularly by the feminists.
Throughout history, women have been socially identified by various criteria such as employed, poor, African, African-American, Latin, Jewish, Muslim, Eastern European, medieval or lesbian (Dill and Zinn 2016). According to Boydston (2008, p. 560), both history and feminism complement each other and rely on the poststructuralist theory for the clear definition. ‘Women’ is used to describing the female sex, however; the term can have different meanings depending on the case. The categorization of women and men can be attributed to the physical as well as social factors. In modern Europe for example, during the early years, women were described regarding humanity, however, by the 18th century, the focus was shifted to the body and nature which led to the description regarding sex. Later on, in the 19th century, women were described in domestic as well as political terms which led to unfair political rights for women such as no right to claim citizenship (Scott 2007).
The psychoanalytic theory displays no difference between the intellectual understanding of feminity and masculinity and physical aspects but states that the body is defined by one’s realization of sexual identity and not sexual differentiation defining the body. Analysis of this theory is conducted to be able to clear the psychic issues that arise from sexual difference and to connect individual beliefs with social settings and cultural conceptions (Haraway 2001). Hence, it can be argued that gender is the study of the complex relationship that revolves around sexuality between that which is psychic and normal and the attempt to gather fantasies to be used for social and political evaluation in the case of a family structure or the entire nation (Wallach 2010). In this case, therefore, gender leads to the evolution of terms such as sex and sexual distinction and it is not sex that defines what gender involves.
The need to research the relationship between class, race, and gender arose in history due to numerous oppression stories and what was the nature and meaning of being oppressed. In addition to race, class, and gender, scholars considered it important to understand the nature of power inequalities in society. By Marx Theory, class relies on historical change and economic goals, however, race and gender have links to such criteria (Valochi 2005).
Historians used two popular criteria to classify gender. The first approach was descriptive that explained the existence of realities without explanations or interpretations. The 2nd approach was casual that seeks to theorize realities to obtain an understanding of why and how of their nature.
Recently, ‘gender’ has been used as another word for ‘women.’ Quite some historical articles and books that are edited today are observed to substitute ‘gender’ for ‘women’ or vice versa. ‘Gender’ is considered a more favorable term to use because it misaligns itself from feminist politics. In the term ‘women’s history,’ women are politically viewed as subjects however by replacing ‘women’ with ‘gender’ the latter does not seem to pose any critical misunderstanding (Haraway 2001). Substituting ‘women’ for ‘gender’ can also interpret that data concerning women regards men as well thus; the study of women can also imply the education of men.
The study of sexuality and sex has led to the emergence of gender to create a distinction between the act of sexual intercourse and different social responsibilities given to men and women. The word gender encompasses the whole organization system of relationships that may involve sex but not directly influenced by it or influences sexuality directly (Valochi 2005).
Historical feminists utilized three main theoretical approaches to evaluate gender namely the theory patriarchy, Marxian tradition and Anglo-American object-relations and French post-structuralism theories (Boydston 2008). According to the theorists of patriarchy, women are dominated by their counterparts because of the male ego to subdue women. Patriarchy displays that women are subjected to sexual objectification which therefore causes inequality between men and women (Dill and Zinn 2016). Marxist feminists argue that gender systems are changed by sexual differentiation of work that leads to sexuality family and households. The domination of women dates back to capitalism and is still rampant in socialism which led to the establishment of economic factors that play causal roles in the implementation of the gender network (Scott 2007).
When gender is used to make an open statement about how its meanings are derived, what they stand for and to what context they can be useful, then gender becomes a valuable tool of analysis.
References
Boydston, J., 2008. Gender as a question of historical analysis. Gender & History, 20(3), pp.558-
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Dill, B.T. and Zinn, M.B., 2016. Theorizing difference from multiracial feminism. In Race,
Gender and Class (pp. 76-82). Routledge.
Hall, K. and Bucholtz, M., 2012. Language, gender, and power: An anthropological review.
In Gender articulated (pp. 179-192). Routledge.
Haraway, D.J., 2001. “Gender” for a Marxist dictionary: the sexual politics of a word. In Women,
Gender, Religion: A Reader (pp. 49-75). Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
Scott, J.W., 2007. Gender as a useful category of historical analysis. In Culture, society and
sexuality (pp. 77-97). Routledge.
Valocchi, S., 2005. Not yet queer enough: The lessons of queer theory for the sociology of
gender and sexuality. Gender & Society, 19(6), pp.750-770.
Wallach Scott, J., 2010. Gender: Still a useful category of analysis?. Diogenes, 57(1), pp.7-14.