Richardson, D.

(2015)
Conceptualising Gender.
In: Robinson, V. and Richardson, D. (eds.)
Introducing Gender and Women's Studies.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.3-22

Copyright:

Reproduced with the permission of Palgrave Macmillan.

This extract is taken from the author's original manuscript and has not been edited. The definitive,
published, version of record is available here:

http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/introducing-gender-and-women's-studies-victoria-
robinson/?sf1=barcode&st1=9781137527493

Date deposited:

26/06/2015

Embargo release date:

01 June 2018

Newcastle University ePrints - eprint.ncl.ac.uk

Chapter One

Conceptualising Gender

Diane Richardson

Introduction

What do we mean by gender? The meaning of the terms sex and gender, and the

ways that writers have theorized the relationship between the two, have changed

considerably over the years. Prior to the 1960s, gender referred primarily to what is

coded in language as masculine or feminine. Gender has subsequently been variously

theorized as personality traits and behaviours that are specifically associated either

with women or men (for example women are caring ; men are aggressive), to any

social construction having to do with the male-female distinction, including those

which distinguish female bodies from male bodies; to being thought of as the

existence of two different social groups `men' and `women' that are the product of

unequal relationships (Alsop et al., 2002; Connell and Pearse, 2014). In this latter

sense, gender is understood as a hierarchy that exists in society, where one group of

people (men) have power and privilege over another group of people (women)

(Delphy, 1993). More recent postmodern approaches, associated with the work of

Judith Butler (2006, 2011) in particular, conceptualize gender as performance; where

gender is understood as continuously produced through everyday practices and social

interactions.
 We need to understand these theoretical changes around the concept of gender not

only in a historical sense, but also in terms of cultural context. In other words, it is

important that we ask whether gender as a concept translates in different countries and

cultures in a manner that is analytically useful. For instance, ‘in Scandanavia there are

no separate words that cohere with the Anglo/American sex/gender distinction

(Lempiainen, 2000). In Slavic languages, the same word is used for both terms

(Bahovic, 2000). In Germany, the term gender has several meanings including

grammatical and as a biological/social category (Wischermann, 2000)’ (Robinson,

2006: 224). So we must not assume that gender as a concept is universal. Rather, as

Walby (2004) argues, we need to develop understandings of gender that allow us to

theorize both cultural variation and historical changes in understanding gender and

gender relations. Historically it has been theories from the global North, in particular

North America and Europe, which have dominated approaches to understanding

gender. This has led to criticisms that theories largely based on western

understandings have colonised ideas about gender in so far as they are extended to

non-western contexts in ways that erase local understandings and cultural meanings.

Connell (2007) makes this point in arguing for the need to recognize social theory

from societies in the ‘global South’, which are often ignored or marginalized. The

‘global South’ is a relational concept that emphasises unequal forms of power

relations, both historically (colonial regimes for example) and contemporariously,

between the North (the West) and South (the ‘rest’). In this binary way of thinking the

‘global South’ can be understood as a umbrella term comprising a given set of

countries or continents, typically many countries in Africa, Central and Latin

America, and parts of Asia. However, as Connell (2007) suggests, such a binary view
is overly simplistic and therefore we need to think critically about the use of the term

‘global South’ if we are to avoid the dangers of over generalisation and reproducing

Western-centredness in analyses of genders and sexualities (see also Brown et al.,

2010).

This chapter outlines the major changes that have taken place since the second part

of the twentieth century in how we define gender. It begins with an examination of the

use of the terms gender and sex and the distinction made between them, what is

commonly called the sex/gender binary. In this discussion, I will illustrate how

feminist gender theory has played an important role in developing our understandings

of sex and gender. The chapter then goes on to discuss the development of theories of

gender within feminism, as well as the contribution to understandings of gender made

by queer theory. In this section, I will look at how different theoretical approaches

have led to different understandings of gender. The final section of the chapter

examines the relationship between gender and sexuality. This is important because,

as I shall demonstrate, our understandings of gender are closely connected with the

concept of sexuality as well as sex.

The sex/gender binary

During the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, it was the

theories put forward by biologists, medical researchers and psychologists that

dominated understandings of gender. These early accounts were mainly concerned

with establishing ‘natural’ or ‘biological’ explanations for human behaviour.

Researchers sought to discover underlying ‘sex differences’ which they believed

produced different psychological and behavioural dispositions in males and females.

They spoke of sex not gender and did not distinguish between the two as we often do

today. Within these naturalistic approaches sex is conceptualised in terms of binaries:

male/female; man/woman; masculine/feminine. In this binary thinking male and

female are understood as ‘opposites’ who, despite their differences, compliment one

another. This pairing of ‘opposite sexes’ is seen as natural. Gender here is understood

to be a biological ‘fact’, a persons ‘sex’, which is pre-given and located in the body.

This is an essentialist approach: a way of understanding the human self as having a

timeless, universal biological ‘essence’ that exists beyond the bounds of social life.

Although, as I shall go on to discuss, the precise location of ‘sex’ in the body (for

example ovaries/testes, chromosomes, or nerve centres in the brain) has been the

subject of considerable debate.

At the time, few within the social sciences questioned these ‘scientific’ theories

about sexual difference. For example, as Seidman (1997) argued, classical sociology

both drew on and contributed to understandings of sex, gender and sexuality as binary

categories ordained by nature. However, this was to change dramatically in the second

part of the twentieth century as debates about how we conceptualise gender steadily

grew. In the 1960s and 1970s a new way of thinking about gender began to emerge

that critiqued earlier ‘essentialist’ frameworks, signalling a shift away from

biologically based accounts of gender to social analysis. This shift from naturalizing

to social constructionist accounts, although not necessarily denying the role of

biology, emphasised the importance of social and cultural factors in defining gender.

At the same time as social scientists and historians were beginning to challenge the

assumption that gender was rooted in ‘nature’, more and more people were beginning
to question dominant ideas about gender roles. The late 1960s, early 1970s saw the

emergence of both women’s and gay and lesbian liberation movements in the US and

Europe (D’Emilio, 1998; Stein, 2012, see also Charles in this volume). An important

contribution to the study of gender at that time was the distinction that many of those

involved in sexual politics - along with some sociologists, psychiatrists and

psychologists - sought to make between the terms sex and gender. Sex referred to the

biological differences between females and males defined in terms of the anatomy and

physiology of the body; gender to the social meanings and value attached to being

female or male in any given society, expressed in terms of the concepts femininity

and masculinity. This distinction between sex (biological) and gender (cultural) is

what is termed the sex/gender binary. A number of key assumptions associated with

the sex/gender binary are summarised below.

The Sex/Gender Binary

 A distinction can be made between sex (biology) and

gender (culture)

 Sex is biologically given and universal

 Gender is historically and culturally variable

 Sex consists of two - and only two- types of human being

 This two-sex model of sexual difference (the distinction

between females and males) is a natural ‘fact of life’

 One sex in every body

 Identities develop as either one or other of these two

sexes/genders
 Studies of transsexuality were also very important to the differentiation between sex

and gender. The sex/gender binary made it possible to imagine that a person could

feel themselves to be a particular gender trapped in the ‘wrong’ sex, for instance a

person who felt themselves to be a woman and feminine (their gender identity) but

who had a male body (their sex). This was difficult to account for without allowing

for a separation of body (sex) and gender (identity). (See also Hines in this volume.)

The sex/gender binary was also an important aspect of early feminist work and has

since provided an important foundation for much feminist theory and politics.

Feminists have used the sex/gender binary to argue for social change on the grounds

that although there may exist certain biological differences between females and

males, societies superimpose different norms of personality and behaviour that

produce ‘women’ and ‘men’ as social categories. It is this reasoning that led Simone

de Beauvoir (1953) in the feminist classic The Second Sex to famously remark ‘One is

not born, but rather becomes a woman’. We cannot, de Beauvoir argues, understand

womanhood or manhood as fixed by nature, rather this is something that is acquired

through the social process of becoming gendered.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s feminist writers expressed similar views in

developing the idea of the sex/gender binary. Ann Oakley, for instance, argued that it

was important to distinguish between two separate processes that, at that time, she

claimed were often confused. That is:

…the tendency to differentiate by sex, and the tendency to differentiate in a particular

way by sex. The first is genuinely a constant feature of human society but the second

is not, and its inconstancy marks the division between ‘sex’ and ‘gender’: sex

differences may be ‘natural’, but gender differences have their source in culture, not

nature (Oakley, 1972: 189, emphasis added).

Oakley takes sex for granted in assuming that we all ‘have a sex’, sex is not

something we acquire it is a constant, part of being human. Gender, by contrast, she

understands to be the cultural interpretation of our biologically given sex. It is

important to acknowledge that, at the time, this distinction between sex and gender

was hailed as a conceptual breakthrough and ‘became one of the most fundamental

assumptions in feminist gender theory from the 1970s on’ (Alsop et al., 2002: 26). It

was also very important to feminist politics as it supported the argument that the

social roles men and women occupy are not fixed by nature and are open to change.

Anthropological work has also contributed significantly to these debates,

highlighting the cultural variability of gender roles in different societies in different

parts of the world. Of particular importance was Margaret Mead’s work on gender

which, although it was first published in the 1930s, was reprinted and gained

considerable attention in the 1960s (Mead, 1935/1963). In her book Sex and

Temperament in Three Primitive Societies Mead described contrasting gender roles in

three different societies in Papua, New Guinea among the Arapesh, the Mundugumor

and the Tchambuli. What was seen as particularly significant was that Mead claimed

that among the Tchambuli gender roles were in stark contrast to those in the US at

that time, with women occupying dominant positions. Although her work has since
been subject to critique, it was a major source for the emerging women’s movement

and the development of theories of gender that emphasised the social construction of

gender roles.

Sex as a social construction?

More recently, a new understanding of sex and its relationship to gender has emerged.

The distinction between sex and gender has been challenged by arguments that sex is

just as much a social construction as gender. Rather than thinking about sex and

gender as separate from one another, sex being the foundation upon which gender is

superimposed, gender has increasingly been used to refer to any social construction to

do with the female/male binary, including male and female bodies. This has led to

debates about whether it is useful any more to differentiate between sex and gender.

On this basis, many feminist writers have questioned the usefulness of the sex/gender

binary that years earlier had seemed a conceptual breakthrough.

For example, both Christine Delphy (1984) and Judith Butler (2006) have argued

that the body is not free from social interpretation, but is itself a socially constructed

phenomenon. It is through understandings of gender that we interpret and establish

meanings for bodily differences that are termed sexual difference (see also Butler,

2011). In this model, sex is not something that one ‘has’ or a description of what

someone is. Without the concept of gender we could not make sense of bodies as

differently sexed. It is gender that provides the categories of meaning for us to

interpret how a body appears to us as ‘sexed’. In other words, gender creates sex

rather than the other way around.

The variability of sex

Historical research supports the argument that understandings of the body are socially

constructed. In Making Sex, for example, Laqueur (1992) argues that the idea that

human bodies divide into two different sexes - male and female - only became

commonplace during the nineteenth century. Prior to then, it was thought that male

and female bodies developed out of one type of body. The idea of two distinct

biological sexes is associated with the development of science and medicine

(Colebrook, 2004). Historical studies also show that what biological ‘facts’ determine

sex has been the subject of much debate. Chromosomes, hormones, gonads

(ovaries/testes), internal reproductive structures and genitalia have variously been

seen as the basis for defining a person’s sex. For instance, studies of medical

responses to cases of ‘doubtful sex’, - people who in the past were often referred to as

third sex or hermaphrodites or more commonly nowadays intersex - suggest that

definitions of what constitutes a male and a female body have changed. People born

with a mixture of sexual markers, for example with both an ovary and a testis present

in their body, challenged the idea that there is one ‘true sex’ in every human body and

often resulted in disagreements between doctors over whether someone was ‘truly’ a

male or a female (Dreger, 2000; Reis, 2012).

Studies of the medical management of intersex demonstrate how definitions of ‘sex’

have changed over time. What they also highlight is that the meanings of bodies and

the assumptions made about the relationship between gender, identity and the body

have varied from one historical period to the next (Fausto-Sterling, 2000; Karkazis,

2008). During the nineteenth century, for instance, doctors believed reproductive
capacity - the presence in the body of ovaries or testes- characterized the sex of a

person. This led in some cases to individuals being diagnosed a different sex to the

one they themselves felt themselves to be. For example, in one case a woman who

had lived all her life as female was ‘diagnosed’ as male because of the discovery of

testes in the abdomen (Dreger, 2000). Here the truth of a person’s character is sought

in the body, not in terms of how the person identifies. This is in stark contrast with

medical opinion from the mid twentieth century, as illustrated by studies of children

diagnosed as intersex such as those carried out by John Money and Anke Erhardt

(1972/1996) who put forward a theory of ‘psychosexual neutrality’ which emphasised

the role of gender assignment and gender of rearing rather than biological ‘sex’ in

determining gender development. Studies of transsexuality by Stoller (1968) and

others at that time also demonstrated how biological ‘sex’ and gender were not always

one and the same. Such studies were not only supportive of the development of the

sex/gender (body/identity) binary, as I suggested earlier, they also led to a privileging

of identity over body in defining gender (see also Woodward in this volume).

The continuing concern to resolve bodily ambiguity in cases of ‘doubtful sex’,

despite the fact that medical knowledge has demonstrated that there are many

variations of sex and human bodies are not fully dimorphic (always one thing or the

other), demonstrates the social importance of sex and gender. It suggests that there

are strong reasons for wanting to sort people into two different groups and to maintain

the idea of two separate sexes. In the nineteenth century, according to Dreger (2000),

the main concern was the fear of social disorder that doctors believed could result

from ‘misdiagnosed sex’. They thought that this would encourage both divorce and

homosexuality. It is important to ask, then, why have doctors been so concerned to

‘resolve’ cases of ‘doubtful sex’? If intersex people lived in a world where sex/gender

was not socially important then arguably being of ‘doubtful sex’ would not matter in

the way it does. In recent years an intersex political movement has emerged and

various intersex organisations have been established such as, for example, the Intersex

Society of North America (Preves, 2005). Intersex activism includes those who

object to the idea that human bodies should have to be defined as male or female, as

well as campaigns to end unwanted genital surgeries for those considered to be

intersex.

Recent studies of trans and intersex, as well as cross cultural work, have been

important in continuing to problematize the gender binary system which divides

people into the categories ‘male’ and ‘female’ (see Monro, 2010; Hines in this

volume). This includes approaches to theorising gender diversity as an expansion of

gender categories beyond a simple binary of ‘male’/’female’ to include, for example

people who identify as ‘third gender’.

There may then be two sexes but what I am suggesting here is that this is not a

naturally occurring ‘fact of life’, rather it is a socially produced binary that exists

because of the significance placed on defining bodies as gendered as either male or

female. This is what has been termed the ‘medical invention of sex’, where bodies

are literally shaped (operated upon) to fit the categories of sex and gender (Dreger,

2000; Karkazis, 2008). By doing this, medicine constructs a single believable sex for

each ambiguous body removing any challenge to prevailing ideas about what

constitutes an ‘appropriate’ male of female body/sex.

 Expanding Sex/Gender Binaries: ‘Third Gender’

Anthropological studies of gender in non-Western contexts have also

questioned sexual dimorphism in culture and history, based on western

male/female gender binaries, through examination of gender diversity in

different cultures that open up possibilities for new understandings of gender

and sexuality. This includes Serena Nanda’s (1990/1999) ‘classic’ Neither Man,

Nor Woman, an account of the hijras of India who are typically born with male

physiology, although some later undergo removal of the penis, scrotum and

testicles, and who may identify with various gender categories including as

‘third gender.’ The hijra communities have a long history in India going back

more that four thousand years, although there position was undermined under

British colonialism (Monro 2010). In 2014 the Supreme Court in India

recognised hijras, as well as transgender people, as a ‘third gender’ in law. Other

studies of ‘third gender’ categories that have contributed to challenging Western

conceptualisations of gender and sexuality include, for example, those

documented in the edited collections by Gilbert Herdt (1996/2003) and Peggy

Reeves Sanday and Ruth Gallagher Goodenough (1990/1996).

In this section I have described how understandings of the relationship between sex

and gender have gone through a number of important phases over the last fifty or so

years.
  First, sex (male/female) defines gender (masculine/feminine).

 Second, a distinction is made between sex and gender (the sex/gender binary),

where gender is understood as a social construct and sex is assumed to be a

biological given.

 Third, like gender, sex is also viewed as a social construction (gender creates

sex).

 Fourth, (as I shall go onto discuss) sex and gender have been combined. The

term gender or ‘sex gender’ (Woodward in this volume) is thought to be more

useful than distinguishing between the two.

I will now go on to consider theories of gender and the specific contribution made

by feminist writers. In so doing, I will illustrate how the idea of gender has also

undergone significant change.

Feminist gender theory

Feminists have critiqued essentialist understandings of gender and sex, and have

played an important role in establishing a body of research and theory that supports

social constructionist approaches. However, the main concern in feminist theories of

gender is not simply to describe the ways in which gender is socially and culturally

defined in any given society. For instance, whether ‘being a woman’ is associated

with having the responsibility of childcare or whether ‘being a man’ is associated with

being the principle breadwinner in a family structure. It is to develop understandings

of how gender is connected to social, economic and cultural status and power in

society. In this sense, gender is theorised not as difference but as a social division.
Traditionally the term social division was used in relation to class hierarchies in

society, most commonly inequalities between upper, middle and lower class. The

term social divisions is now used more broadly to refer to social, economic and

cultural differentiation of groups in society on the basis of other criteria besides class,

including gender, race, ethnicity. To theorise gender as social division, therefore, is to

examine how the social reproduction of gender difference in society is connected with

the production of gender inequalities between men and women (Abbott, 2013)

Gender role

The main focus of work on gender carried out during the 1970s and 80s was on

exploring the production of masculinity and femininity. Many feminist writers, as I

stated in the previous section, argued that gender is culturally determined and that we

become differently gendered through socialization into gender roles, or as it was often

termed then ‘sex roles’. Sex role theory, drawing on the principles of social leaning

theory, claimed that through various learning processes (for example observation,

imitation, modelling, differential reinforcement) and agencies of socialization (for

example parents, teachers, peers, the media) children learn the social meanings,

values, norms and expectations associated with ‘being a girl’ or ‘being a boy’ and

thereby learn to develop ways of behaving and personality characteristics considered

appropriate (or not) for being a woman or man (Alsop et al., 2002; Rahman and

Jackson, 2010). Gender is here defined as the learning of culturally and historically

specific social roles associated with women or men, and used to describe someone as

masculine or feminine. This is what we might refer to nowadays as the process of

becoming gendered, involving learning specific ideas, practices and values associated

with gender.
 Becoming Gendered

 Gender Labelling

Attribute terms boy, girl, woman, man to self and others

 Gender Knowledge

Culturally specific knowledge about gender

 Universality of Gender

The idea that all human beings ‘have’ a gender

 Gender Constancy

The idea that gender is unchanging

As Connell (2009/2014) points out, a great deal of research by social psychologists

and anthropologists in particular has sought to explore the development of gender

roles. That is, to explain the mechanisms of acquisition and the key sites of learning

gender roles, as well as documenting variation in gender roles in different cultures

(see discussion of Mead’s work earlier). The socialization of a child into a specific

gender role has also been a controversial issue more recently over the rights of parents

to raise a child as ‘gender neutral’ with, in some cases, parents keeping the gender of

their child a secret from all but their closest friends and family to reveal to avoid

gender stereotyping.

However, feminist theories of gender, as I indicated above, are not interested in

simply describing how girls and boys grow up differently and become gendered, and

how that may or may not be resisted through education and parenting, but how a key
aspect of that difference is understanding that girls and boys, women and men, have

different social status and value. This focus on gender inequality is on how gender

role expectations, in particular the expectation that a woman’s primary role is to be a

good wife and mother, limits girls in a myriad of ways as they grow up, especially in

terms of educational aspirations and the type of jobs they might end up doing.

Moving Beyond Gender?

Sweden’s capital Stockholm is home to a ‘gender neutral’ preschool

Egalia, which is the Swedish word for equality. The aim is to not

limit children to social expectations based on their ascribed gender.

Teachers avoid using gendered terms like him and her, and refer to

children by their first names or as ‘hen’, a genderless pronoun taken

from the Finnish language. Books are selected to avoid traditional

presentations of gender and parenting roles. This reflects wider

policy towards gender equality in Sweden. Breaking down gender

roles is a core aspect of the national curriculum for preschools and

many schools have gender advisors to identify language and practices

that may reinforce gender stereotypes.

Gender as hierarchy

These early socialization theories of gender appear to us now as rather naïve and far

too simplistic. From thinking about gender roles in terms of either masculinity or

femininity, we now recognize that there are multiple genders and many patterns of

masculinities and femininities what some refer to as gender pluralism or gender

diversity identity (Monro, 2005). At the time, feminists were among those who
critiqued sex role theory, in particular pointing out that it was a highly mechanistic

and static account of gender that attributed little agency to subjects who were

assumed to acquire a certain gender role by simply internalizing what they had been

taught. Feminists argued that such theories of gender were oversimplified as many

young people reject what they are taught and resist social norms and cultural

assumptions about gendered roles (Rahman and Jackson, 2010). This was clearly in

keeping with the feminist political goal of challenging gender role expectations and

norms which were seen as restricting women’s lives.

By the end of 1970s feminist theories of gender were becoming increasingly more

sophisticated. Some writers took Oakley’s and other feminist critiques of essentialist

understandings of gender a step further by questioning the existence of the category of

gender itself. The development of such an analysis of gender is particularly associated

with the work of materialist feminists such as Christine Delphy (1984) and Monique

Wittig (1981/1992). Although Delphy and Wittig recognized the importance of

demonstrating that the meaning of ‘gender’ is historically and culturally specific, they

argued that the concept of gender should not be taken for granted. In other words,

they questioned the idea that gender is a universal category, which it can be assumed

will always exist in some form or other in all times and places. Instead, they defined

gender as a socially constructed product of patriarchal hierarchies (Jackson, 1999).

Gender here is understood to be the result of gendered power differences. For

example, in her paper One is Not Born a Woman, echoing Simone de Beauvoir whose

work I mentioned earlier, Wittig (1981/1992) argues that gender is an imaginary

foundation, the outcome of a social hierarchy where one class of people (men) have

power and privilege over another class of people (women). The categories ‘woman’
and ‘man’ are relative, defined by a specific social and economic position in society.

Gender is commonly thought to be the cause of one’s social and economic position

(a). Here gender derives from one’s place in the social hierarchies that exist in society

(b). In other words, gender is the mark of one’s subordination as a woman rather than

its basis.

(a) One’s gender as ‘Woman’ leads to social subordination

(b) Patriarchal hierarchies define one as a ‘Woman’

For those feminists who agree with such analyses of gender relations, the political

goal of challenging gendered power differences will, as a consequence, lead to the

elimination of the idea of gender. Gender categories would not exist if social divisions

did not exist. This idea of a world without gender can be found in more recent

feminist work that is not only concerned with social transformations towards ending

gender inequality, but seeks a de-gendering of society that some writers refer to as

‘undoing gender’ (see Lorber, 2005; Deutsch, 2007). This approach argues for

moving towards a non-gendered social order, based on equality without gender

categorisation.

New conceptualizations of gender associated with postmodernism and the rise of

queer theory emerged in the 1990s, which shifted the emphasis away from definitions

of gender as fixed, coherent and stable, towards seeing gender categories as plural,

provisional and situated. At the time, poststructural models of power, influenced by

Foucault’s work (Foucault, 1979), demanded a more complex account of gender as

hierarchy. Foucault’s account of power moved away from the idea of power as

something possessed and wielded by social institutions and particular groups in

society, towards the idea that ‘power is everywhere’; diffuse rather than concentrated

and enacted through discourses rather than possessed. These new conceptualizations

of gendered power relations were also connected with the partial shift in feminist

thinking during the 1980s away from a primary focus on divisions between women

and men, to theorizing difference between women, in particular of class, race,

ethnicity, and sexuality and, associated with this, the problematisation of the category

‘woman’ (Mohanty, 1988; Bhavnani, 1997; see also Hines in this volume). What

these developments highlighted was the need for theoretical approaches that

recognized the complexity of social hierarchies and attempted to theorize the

intersections of gender with other social inequalities through an intersectionality

framework.

Intersectionality

Intersectionality has its roots in anti-racist feminism in the US. The term has been

attributed to Kimberle Crenshaw, but work of other black feminists such as, for

example, Patricia Hill Collins (1990/ 2000) in Black Feminist Thought and bell hooks

(1981) in her book Ain’t I a Woman, raised similar issues about the need to

understand how gender intersects with race even before the term intersectionality was

coined. Indeed, the fact that hooks named her book after the African-American

abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojouner Truth’s speech given at a women'

rights convention in Ohio in 1851 demonstrates the even greater historical legacy of

these concerns.
For Crenshaw:

…the concept of intersectionality [is used] to denote the various ways in which race

and gender interact to shape the multiple dimensions of Black

women’s…experiences. …my focus on the intersections of race and gender only

highlights the need to account for multiple grounds of identity when considering how

the social world is constructed. (Crenshaw, 1991:1244, 1245)

Since the 1980s and 1990s studies of intersectionality have proliferated across a

wide range of contexts. There is no singular definition of intersectionality, rather there

is a great deal of variation in the way it is now theorized and applied. Broadly

speaking, intersectionality provides a way of understanding the interaction of different

forms of disadvantage and inequality as a means of analyzing multiple identities and

experiences of inequality, focusing on the linkages between categories such as race

and gender. It means more than the sum of the parts such as, for example, the notion

that black women are ‘doubly disadvantaged’ as a consequence of racism and sexism;

and represents a move towards more complex models of understanding of how

different forms of inequality are ‘routed through one other’ (Grabham et al., 2009:1).

For instance, this might involve an exploration of how categories such as race,

sexuality and gender are co-constituted; that is: the social processes through which

these categories inform and shape each other. One of the criticisms that has been

made of intersectionality theory is that there was a tendency to focus on race and

gender to the exclusion of other social categories. More recent work has addressed

this for example looking at the intersections between gender and other categories

including class, age, disability and sexuality (Richardson 2007; Grabham et al., 2009;

Taylor et al., 2011; Richardson and Monro, 2012). For a broader discussion of some
of the other ways in which the concept of intersectionality has been problematized

within feminist theory see, for example, Yuval-Davis (2006) and Anthias (2012).

‘Doing gender’: gender as performativity

It is the work of Judith Butler (2006, 2011) in particular that is associated with this

theoretical shift and which has had a profound influence on theorising gender. (See

also Hines and Woodward in this volume.) Butler’s work, especially her book Gender

Trouble first published in 1990, has been highly influential in the development of

queer theory (see p. 00 and Hines in this volume). In Gender Trouble Butler:

 proposes a new understanding of gender as performance;

 questions the usefulness of the sex/gender binary;

 suggests heterosexuality is an effect of gender.

Butler argues that gender is performatively enacted. In her early work she used drag

to convey what she means. Typically drag is understood as impersonation: a drag

queen is a ‘real’ man giving a performance as a woman. Butler argues that there are

parallels between drag and the performance of gender in everyday life: gender is a

kind of impersonation that passes for real. Gender is constituted out of attempts to

compel belief in others that we are ‘really’ a woman or a man. For Butler, there is no

‘real’ gender of which drag is an impersonation. She claims ‘there is no gender

identity behind the expressions of gender’, arguing instead that identity is constituted

by ‘the very “expressions” that are said to be its results’ (Butler,1990: 25). What she

means by this is that we assume that a person performed in a certain way because that

person is a man or a woman. In this sense Butler’s notion of gender performance is

different from how the term performance is usually used; that is, to refer to a subject

(the doer) who is formed prior to the acts s/he chooses to perform (do). For Butler,

performances are performative in that they bring into being gendered subjects. The

act of performance is productive rather than expressive of gender. It is through ‘doing

gender’ that we produce the effect that there was some gendered person who preceded

the performance: ‘the doer’. This, for Butler, is a continual process. So while it might

seem to us certain that a person is a woman, Butler is suggesting that this is not fixed

or stable. Gender, it is argued, is a process of continuous construction that produces

the effect (an illusion) of being natural and stable through gender performances that

make us ‘women’ and ‘men’. A person might seem to have a particular identity, but

this is only because we keep doing things that maintain the appearance of us ‘being

the same’. Theories of performativity, then, challenge the idea that gender identities

are simply ‘always there’, claiming instead we are constantly becoming gendered

through performances that constitute us as ‘women’ or ‘men’ in a variety of ways.

One of the criticisms made of poststructuralist/postmodern accounts of gender is

that they appear to have little interest in discussing material inequalities between

women and men (Hennessey, 2012). This is seen as having serious consequences for

feminist politics. For example, Martha Nussbaum has been highly critical of Butler’s

approach because she claims it is an individualized approach that is not concerned

with social change that challenges the social injustices experienced by women

(Nussbaum, 1999).

Butler also questions the idea that heterosexuality is natural. She argues that

heterosexuality is ‘unstable’, dependent on ongoing, continuous and repeated

performances of normative gender identities, which produce the illusion of stability.

There is no ‘real’ or ‘natural’ sexuality to be copied or imitated: heterosexuality is

itself continually in the process of being re-produced. As well as denaturalising

gender and heterosexuality, Butler also questions biological understandings of ‘sex’ in

arguing that sex is as culturally constructed as gender. As a consequence, as I pointed

out earlier in the chapter, she questions the usefulness of making a distinction between

sex and gender. This disruption of the sex/gender binary has been identified by some

feminist writers as being one of the most important contributions of queer theorists to

feminist theory (Martin, 1998).

However, it is important to acknowledge similar arguments in the literature that

precede postmodern/queer accounts of ‘doing gender’. Ideas of about the making of

identities through performance and performativity predate Butler and have their

antecedents in work by people like Erving Goffman (1969) and Harold Garfinkel

(1967), as well as earlier theories of gender. In their landmark article ‘Doing

Gender’, for example, Candance West and Don Zimmerman (1987) highlight the

importance of everyday social interaction in the social (re)production of gender, and

exposed the weaknesses of earlier socialization theories as well as structural

approaches to gender. Similarly in relation to challenging understandings of the

sex/gender binary, as early as 1978 Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna analysed

transsexuality (rather than drag) as illustrative of the everyday ‘doing of gender’ in

order to show how people are rendered intelligible to us as either ‘male’ or ‘female’

through the successful (or not) performance of bodily appearance and characteristics,

behaviours, and language that we expect from men and women, and that we then

interpret as a valid expression (or not) of their ‘real’ sex. Sex, in this sense, is
constructed through everyday social interactions that are reliant upon gender norms,

which enable us to make sense of a person as ‘male’ or ‘female’ (Kessler and

McKenna, 1978; 2000).

In this section I have described how the concept of gender has developed in a

number of important ways. Theories of gender have problematized the gender binary

system which divides people into the categories ‘male’ and ‘female’ in ways that

allow for more complex understandings of gender. Within this literature a number of

approaches have been identified: expanding gender categories by adding more

genders (e.g. ‘third gender’); moving beyond gender towards a society without gender

categories (e.g. people who identify as ‘non-gendered’) and, arising out of

poststructural theories that understand gender as fluid and plural, gender pluralism

where gender is conceptualised as an intersecting range along a continuum that

includes, for example, people who feel multiply gendered (see Monro, 2010 for

further discussion of these different approaches). To summarize:

 Rather than a binary we now understand gender to be multiple and context

specific;

 There is a shift towards more materialist and embodied accounts of gender;

 Greater attention is given to develop understandings of gender as a site of

agency as well as inequality;

 Intersectionality provides a framework for understanding gender and its co-

construction with other social categories/locations.

 The first part of this chapter looked at how understandings of gender rely on

particular understandings of the relationship sex has to gender. In the final section I

will go on to examine the question of how the relationship between gender and

sexuality has been theorized. This is necessary because our ideas about gender are

also connected to ideas about sexuality. Indeed, in the majority of feminist theories of

gender it has been assumed that ‘gender and sexuality have to be examined together’

(McLaughlin et al., 2012:1).

Gender and sexuality

Four broad approaches can be identified that have structured the study of gender and

sexuality and ways of understanding their relationship.

Naturalist approaches

As I stated in the first part of this chapter, from the middle of the nineteenth century to

the second half of the twentieth century naturalist approaches dominated

understandings gender (sex) and sexuality. The relationship between the two was

understood as an expression of something natural, a universal order that was

heterosexual and where ‘it is assumed that sex-gender-sexuality relate in a

hierarchical, congruent and coherent manner’ (Richardson, 2007: 460). For instance,

using this principle it was expected that a biological female should naturally grow up

to experience herself as a female and have a feminine gender identity, and that her

sexual practices and sexual identity should be heterosexual. This is what is meant by

the principle of sexual and gender coherence. This helps us to understand why ‘cross

gender identity’ (e.g. feminine men or masculine women) has historically been central
to theories of homosexuality. Within this approach sexuality is understood to be a

property of gender, a gender that is pre-given and located in the gendered/sexed body.

Thus, the masculinization of lesbians and the feminization of male homosexuals is

also associated with understanding the lesbian and male homosexual body as ‘cross

gendered’ (Richardson, 2007; Butler, 2011). This is evident, for example, in historical

studies of medical accounts of ‘homosexuality’ that describe lesbians as boyish, with

narrow hips, flat chests and ‘spectacular clitorises’ capable of vaginal penetration and

male homosexuals having ‘feminized’ bodies (Terry, 1999), as well as more recent

claims that gay men have ‘feminized brains’ (Le Vay, 2012).

Feminist approaches

Feminist writers, as I discussed earlier in the chapter, were among the first to

challenge essentialist frameworks for understanding gender and sexuality. However

what they did not do, in the main, was suggest that these two concepts should be de-

coupled from one another.

Feminist theories of gender offer two broad approaches to understanding the

relationship between gender and sexuality. In the first of these:

 Gender is prioritized over sexuality

In most feminist accounts it is assumed that gender and sexuality need to be examined

together and, also, that gender takes precedence over sexuality. That is, concepts of

sexuality are understood to be largely founded upon notions of gender. This tradition

is associated with earlier feminist writers such as Wittig (1981/1992) and Delphy
(1984), as well as more contemporary feminist work. For example, Stevi Jackson

argues for the logical priority of gender over sexuality. She claims that ‘…without

gender categories we could not categorize sexual desires and identities along the axis

of same-gender or other-gender relationships, as heterosexual, bisexual or

homosexual/lesbian’ (Jackson, 2012: 40). In other words, our understanding of sexual

categories like ‘gay’ or ‘straight’ depend on knowing the gender of a person.

In the second main approach that I have identified in feminist work on gender:

 Sexuality is prioritised over gender

Here, sexuality is understood to be constitutive of gender. Traditionally this is an

underlying assumption in psychoanalytic accounts, as well as informing the work of

some feminists. For example, Catherine MacKinnon (1982) suggested that it is

through the experience of sexuality, as it is currently constructed, that women learn

about gender; learn what ‘being a woman’ means. As well as constituting our

gendered subjectivities, MacKinnon argued that sexuality (heterosexuality in

particular) is the cause of gender inequality: ‘Women and men are divided by gender,

made into the sexes as we know them, by the social requirements of heterosexuality,

which institutionalizes male sexual dominance and female sexual submission’

(MacKinnon,1982: 516). From this perspective, understandings of gender are located

in terms of an analysis of how sexuality both reflects and constitutes patriarchal

values and practices (Walby, 1990). More recent feminist work has developed the

argument that gender is an effect of sexuality. For example, Chrys Ingraham (1996,
2005) raises the question of whether without institutionalized heterosexuality gender

would even exist.

In these debates, feminist theories have extended definitions of gender and sexuality

in going beyond considerations of how the link between them is socially constructed,

to viewing their relationship as one of the key mechanisms by which gender

inequalities are (re)produced (Jackson and Scott, 2010)

Queer distinctions

The assumption that gender and sexuality need to be examined together remained

relatively unchallenged until the emergence of queer theory in the 1990s. The

distinction between sexuality and gender has been at the heart of debates about queer

theory and its relationship to feminist thought. According to Merck et al. (1998:1) the Comment [n1]: No longer a box

emergence of queer theory meant that it and feminism were now ‘widely understood

to be two fields of study’ with the investigation of sexuality seen as the ‘proper

subject’ of queer theory and the analysis of gender that of feminism. While some

agree with this position, many writers prefer instead to think about how feminist and

queer theories are interconnected and can enrich each other (Richardson et al., 2012)

and some write as queer/feminists.

Queer theory is associated with postructuralist/postmodern approaches to sexuality

and gender, and a critique of feminist theories of sexuality that are seen as limited by

an emphasis on gender (Warner, 1993; Seidman, 1996; Jagose, 1997; Sullivan, 2004).

(Equally, some feminists argue that queer theory risks paying insufficient attention to

gender in its analyses of sexuality see, for example, Walters (2005) and Richardson
(2012).) It rejects the idea of stable and unified gender and sexual categories and

emphasizes the fluidity, instability and fragmentation of identities and a multiplicity

of sexuality and gender categories. Associated with this is a shift in ‘definitions of

gender away from social division towards an understanding of gender as cultural

distinction.’ (McLaughlin et al., 2012: 18). Queer theory also questions the

assumption that there are specific connections between sex, gender and sexuality,

what I referred to above as the principle of sexual and gender ‘coherence’. In queer

accounts the relationship between sexuality and gender is not seen as fixed and static,

but as highly complex and unstable.

Various writers associated with queer theory have put forward arguments for

theorizing sexuality independently from gender. Gayle Rubin’s work has been

influential in the development of such arguments. In the early 1980s Rubin argued

that although connected gender and sexuality ‘are not the same thing’ (Rubin, 1984:

308). Opposed to the view that sexuality can be adequately understood as causing

gender, Rubin instead offered an account of what she termed a ‘sex/gender system’ in

which she separates out sexuality and gender. Queer writers have subsequently drawn

on these ideas in developing their theories of gender. For example in what has become

a queer ‘classic’, Eve Sedgwick in the Epistemology of the Closet (1990/ 2008).

makes the case for a radical separation of gender and sexuality. Doing this, Sedgwick

argues, opens up our understandings of gender and sexuality, as well the links

between them, allowing more complex and diverse understandings. This means that

new sexual and gender stories may begin to be told, heard and experienced. For

instance, it allows the possibility to think about ‘sexualities without genders’ (Martin,

1998), where sexual desires, practices and identities do not depend on a person’s
gender for their meaning. Similarly it enables recognition of the existence of multiple

genders as illustrated, for example, by studies of female masculinities (Halberstam,

1998) and transgender (Monro, 2005; Hines, 2007; Stryker, 2008).

New imaginings: ‘patterned fluidities’

As I have indicated above, modernist understandings of gender and sexuality as fixed,

coherent and stable have been challenged by queer/feminist, postmodern and

poststructualist accounts that conceptualise these categories as plural, provisional and

situated. And if there are multiple genders and multiple sexualities then it is also

likely that there will be multiple relationships between these categories. This means

we need to consider how different sexual categories relate to different genders. A

challenge for future theories of gender and sexuality, therefore, is to develop

frameworks that allow more complex accounts of how gender and sexuality are

related to each other.

To achieve this we need to consider the question of the relationship of gender and

sexuality at a number of levels. This opens up the possibility that rather than thinking

of gender and sexuality as separate areas of analysis, as do many queer theorists, or as

interrelated, as do many feminist writers, they can be conceptualised as both

depending on the level of analysis and the social context. Jackson (2012) identifies

four levels of social construction of the relations between gender and sexuality.

 the structural;

 the level of social and cultural meaning;

 the level of everyday interactions and routine practices;

  the level of subjectivity.

At any one of these intersecting levels Jackson suggests that the relationship

between gender and sexuality may be different. Like Jackson, I agree that we need to

conceptualize gender at different levels to enable ‘new ways of articulating and

understanding the diversity of contemporary gender and sexual categories and the

complexities of their relationship with one another’ (Richardson, 2007: 458). In

attempting to represent the connections between gender and sexuality a number of

writers have used the metaphor of a theoretical ‘knot’ (Alsop et al., 2002) or a

‘complex web’ (Jackson, 2012). However, I would argue that these metaphors are too

static to aid understandings of the relationship between gender and sexuality as a

dynamic, historically and socially specific multilayered process. For this we need a

different metaphor. Elsewhere I have outlined what might help us in this re-imagining

(Richardson, 2007). This is the metaphor of the shoreline: a boundary in motion

between land (configured as gender) and sea (configured as sexuality) and where, like

the connections between genders and sexualities, there are ‘patterned fluidities’.

Conclusion

This chapter has provided a brief overview of some of the different ways in which we

can theorize gender and the contribution that feminist work in particular has made.

The references it contains and the suggestions for further reading given below will

help you to develop your understanding and recognize the complexities of many of

the ideas I have touched on. Examining theories of gender is important not only in an

academic sense, but also because it is through analysing different ways of theorizing

that we are able ‘to interrogate the processes whereby people generally become
divided into the two categories male and female’ (Alsop et al., 2002:2). This is a

process of categorisation that, as the remainder of this book will demonstrate, has

important social, economic and personal implications. Moreover, it is important to

acknowledge that the theories that we use to make sense of gender are part of this

process and the meanings that derive from gender categorization. Theories of gender

are not simply descriptions of ‘what is’, they actively structure the social worlds we

inhabit. In the past, theories that assumed biology had a determining role in how we

develop as women and men were used not merely to explain ‘sex differences’, but

also to justify certain social arrangements as natural (Alsop et al., 2002). For instance,

the idea that it was natural for women to want to have children and to care for them,

and unnatural for men to feel the same, has often been used to both explain and justify

why women have primary responsibility for childcare. In theorizing gender we are,

then, actively engaged in a political process, an assumption that is central to the

project of feminist gender theory. As McLaughin et al. (2012: 18) state: ‘If feminism

has one legacy to take forward...it is the legitimacy of using political criteria as the

marker for the validity of social theorising.’ That is: the pursuit of knowledge not just

for its own sake, but for social change. It is this that has inspired much of the research

you will read about in this book and which continues to motivate teachers and

students of gender and women’s students.

Further Reading

R. Alsop, A. Fitzsimons and K. Lennon (2002) theorizing gender, Oxford, Polity.

This is a good overview of the important debates in theories of gender. The book

discusses the major theories concerned with the way we ‘become gendered’. There
are chapters on the body, men and masculinities, gender politics, and the relation

between gender and sexuality, as well as discussion of transgender and queer

approaches to understanding gender.

H. Bradley (2012) Gender, 2nd edn., Oxford, Polity. This is an accessible introduction

to the concept of gender and the different theoretical approaches that have developed

within women’s and gender studies. It explores contemporary relations of masculinity

and femininity and highlights how our thinking about gender is influenced by

changing political contexts. It uses life narratives to help contextualize the theory.

R. W. Connell and R. Pearse (2014) Gender, 3rd edn., Oxford, Polity. This is a good

introduction to the sociological study of gender. Written in a highly readable and

accessible style, The authors trace the history of western ideas about gender, discusses

the processes by which individuals become gendered as well as reviewing studies on

gender differences. The book examines gender inequalities and patterns in modern

society, and offers a contemporary framework for understanding gender in a global

context drawing on empirical research from all over the world. The updated third

edition also has a new chapter on ecofeminism, environmental justice and

sustainability.

J. Marchbank and G. Letherby (2014) Introduction to Gender: Social Science

Perspectives, 2nd edn., Harlow, Pearson Longman. An interdisciplinary introduction

to the key themes and debates within gender studies, it explores how gender is

analysed in different disciplines including history, sociology, social policy,

anthropology, psychology, political science, pedagogy and geography. It then goes

on to look thematically at a number of key areas of debate in gender studies including

family, health and illness, education, work and leisure, sex and sexuality, violence and

resistance, crime and deviance, and culture and mass media.

A.S. Wharton (2011) The Sociology of Gender. An Introduction to Theory and

Research, 2nd edn., London, Wiley-Blackwell. This book presents an introductory

overview of gender theory and research, including cross-national studies. It examines

gender through three different frameworks: individualistic (the ways in which gender

shapes individuals), interactional (gender in social interactions) and institutional (how

gender is built into organizations, social structures and institutional arrangements).

Also addressed is the importance of analysing how gender intersects with other kinds

of distinctions such as those based on race, ethnicity, sexuality etc.

Questions

1. How can it be argued that gender is a ‘social construct’?

2. What does it mean to refer to gender as social division?

3. How has the sex/gender binary been important in understanding gender?

4. What is the relationship between gender and sexuality?

? What difficulties might be associated with a ‘de-gendering’ of society? What

advantages might there be?

New References
Brown, G., Browne, K., Elmhirst, R., and Hutta, S. (2010) Sexualities in/of the Global

South’, Geography Compass, 4/10: 1567-1579.

Connell, R.W. and Pearse, R. (2014) Gender: In World Perspective, 3rd edn., Oxford,

Polity.

Deutsch, F.M. (2007) ‘Undoing Gender’, Gender and Society, 21(1): 106-127.

Garfinkel, (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology, Englewwod Cliffs, NJ:

Prentice Hall.

Goffman, E. (1969) The Presentation of Self, London: Allen Lane.

Herdt, G. (ed.) (1996/2003) Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in

Culture and History, New York, NY: Zone Books.

hooks, b. (1981) Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, Boston, MA: South

End Press.

Jackson, S. and Scott, S. (2010) Theorizing Sexuality, Buckingham: Open University

Press.

Lorber, J. (2005) Breaking the Bowls: Degendering and Feminist Change, New York,

NY: Norton.
Nanda, S. (1990/1999) Neither Man, Nor Woman: The Hijras of India, Wadsworth

Publishing Co Inc.

Mohanty, C. T. (1988) ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial

Discourses’, Feminist Review, 30: 61-88.

Monro, S. (2005) Gender Politics: Citizenship, Activism and Sexual Diversity,

London: Pluto Press.

Monro, S. (2010) ‘Gender Diversity: The Indian and UK Cases’, in S. Hines and T.

Sanger (eds) Transforming Sociology: Towards a Social Analysis of Gender

Diversity. London: Routledge.

Sanday, P.R. and Goodenough, R.G. (1990/1996) Beyond the Second Sex: New

Directions in the Anthropology of Gender, University of Pennsylvania Press.

West, C. and Zimmerman, D. (1987) ‘Doing Gender’, Gender and Society, 1 (2):125-

51.

Yuval-Davis, N. (2006) ‘Intersectionality and Feminist Politics’, European Journal

of Women’s Studies, 13(3): 193-209.