MODULE1: Sex and Gender

LESSON1: Sex and Gender Concepts

OBJECTIVES

1. To understand sex, gender concepts and definitions.

TIME FRAME
1 week

OVERVIEW

Hi! To understand the problem of gender subordination, one must first understand two key concepts: sex
and gender. In common usage, the two terms are often interchanged. Properly, each has a meaning
distinct from that of the other. This distinction has important implications for the way we look at
existing inequality between women and men.

ACTIVITY

To start this lesson, I would like you to read and answer the following statements.

EXERCISE SEX vs. GENDER: Statements about men and women. Write S for Sex and G for Gender.
1. Women give birth to babies, men don’t.

2. Girls are gentle, boys are tough.

3. In one case, when a child brought up as a girl learned that he was actually a boy, his
school marks improved dramatically.

4. In Europe, most long-distance truck drivers are men.

ANALYSIS

Were you able to answer all correctly? If No, which statement/s you got wrong? Why do you think so?
Write you answer inside the box.

ABSTRACTION

SEX AND GENDER: WHAT THEY ARE, HOW THEY DIFFER

Sex: In the Realm of the Biological

1. What It is?

SEX is a biological term. We use it most often to refer to the act of mating between two organisms
– an act which is part of the process of biological reproduction. The “sex” may also be expanded to include
other behavior associated with the act of mating: animal courtship rituals, human “foreplay”.

While sex in this sense begins with biology, human sex differs from that of other animals in that
biological factors no longer play a primary role in it. The human desire and capacity for sex are not
determined, as these are in other animals, by the instinct, or the body’s readiness, for reproduction. For
example, a woman’s fertility cycle does not dictate when she will want sex; pre-pubescent children and
post-menopausal adults may have a sex life. Human sex does not simply respond to a physical urge. It is
often used to express human emotions and relationships: love, anger, domination, affirmation or the need
for affirmation. Thus, human sex has acquired cultural dimensions; human beings have sexuality that is
influenced, but not dictated by biological circumstances.

Sex also refers to the two categories of animals- male and female – needed for the act of mating
to result in biological reproduction. This categorization is made according to reproductive function: the
female produces the egg cell, or ovum; the male provides the sperm that fertilizes it. It is in this second
general sense of categorization that sex is often confused with gender.

2. Men and Women According to Biology

Males and Females differ from each other in several indisputable ways. They have different
chromosomal make up; different internal and external sex organs; and different quantities of various
hormones. Most male and female humans also have different secondary sex characteristics, such as
muscular development, voice pitch and patterns of body hair distribution.

Chromosomes are the first determinants of sex. These elongated bodies of a cell nucleus contain
the genes that parents pass on to their offspring. Each cell of a female ovary or male testis contains
twenty-three chromosomes; one of these is the sex chromosomes. There are two types of chromosomes:
X and Y. Female egg cells contain only the X chromosomes, while male sperm may have either. An XX
combination produces a female; an XY combination, a male. Sex chromosomes present in sperm
determine whether offspring are genetically male or female. Some of the “intersexed” are genetically
male or female – that is, their chromosomal make-up is either XX or XY and the confusion in their body
structure is due to faulty embryonic development. Others are truly “neuter” (neither male nor female),
having the chromosomal make –up XO.

Hormones are secretions of the endocrine glands, which include the pituitary, adrenal, thyroid
and primary sex glands and the pancreas. The main function of hormones is to stimulate the development
of primary sex characteristics, so that individuals become capable of reproduction. It is also responsible
for the development of secondary sex characteristics. All human beings produce both male and female
hormones. However, the actual quantity varies from one individual to another; some females may actually
produce more male hormones than some males, and vice-versa. Similarly, secondary sex characteristics
vary from person to person.

Moreover, racial differences in secondary sex characteristics are often more significant than
differences between men and women of the same race. In general women tend to have less body hair
than men, but many Caucasian women have more body hair than Filipino men. Men tend to be taller and
heavier-built than women, but the average Caucasian woman is probably taller than the average
Southeast Asian man.

Gender: In the Realm of the Social

1. What it is?

Gender refers to the differentiated social roles, behaviors, capacities, and intellectual, emotional
and social characteristics attributed by a given culture to women and men – in short, all difference besides
the strictly biological. There are two genders: masculine, ascribed to the male sex; and feminine, ascribed
to the female. The way the society is organized according to sex is referred to as the “sex-gender system”.
 Definitions of masculine and feminine often vary from one race and culture to another. For
example, in one Brazilian tribe, women are seen by most cultures as the sexually passive partners. The
sexually aggressive as the men; among the Zuni Indians, women not men are the sexual aggressors.
Similarly, Filipino’s view construction work as “heavy” labor fit only for men; in Thailand and India, it is
low-wage work viewed as suitable only for women.

Gender expectations also vary in degree among different social classes within the same ethnic
group. The religious teaching that woman’s place is in the home also finds more adherents among the
propertied classes than among the working classes who need both spouses’ income. In many societies,
physical strength is less essential to the definition of maleness among the propertied and professional
classes than among the classes which engage in manual labor.

Gender also changes through history. The women of many tribes in pre-Hispanic Philippines
enjoyed a good measure of property and political rights, social status and premarital sexual freedom. This
situation was changed when Christianity was introduced by the Spaniards, where they promote the ideal
of the chaste and docile woman subservient to the authority of father, husband and priest.

Such variations in gender definitions are due to specific economic, political and social conditions
of each class, culture or era.

2. Men and Women According to Society

The most basic and common element in contemporary gender systems is a difference in gender
roles: the assignment to women of the primary responsibility for caring for children and the home, and to
men of the task of providing the income on which their families live. In most contemporary societies, this
sexual division of labor exists in the form known technically as the production – reproduction distinction.

Production here refers to social production, or the production of commodities: that is, goods and
services for exchange rather than for immediate consumption. Participants in social production usually
get a wage or fee in return for their labor or the product they produce. Production is viewed as men’s
sphere.

Reproduction includes not just biological reproduction, but also the other tasks associated with it:
childbearing, the maintenance of other members of the family, and the maintenance of the dwelling –
activities indispensable to survival, but assigned no economic value. This is viewed as women’s sphere.

The production- reproduction distinction manifests itself not simply as a family- work distinction,
but also in the work men and women do outside the home. Those engaged in the production of capital
goods, or in the extraction and processing of mineral resources largely employ men. Meanwhile, female
labor is the rule for light industries such as garments, food processing, handicrafts and the assembly of
electronic components. The jobs women get in these industries though income- earning, are analogous
to the tasks they perform within the home such as preparing for food, sewing or making ornaments.

The production-reproduction distinction also has implications for gender roles in political life.
Women in the Philippines are said to rule the household, their husbands and through their husbands, the
rest of Philippine society. This is the myth of Filipino matriarchy. Because men are viewed as the main
providers of family income, women defer to them in the most important household and personal
decisions, particularly those that affect the family’s economic life: where to live, whether or not to make
improvements on the house, whether or not they themselves should have children, get a job or go into
business. Decision-making in the community and the larger society is also dominated by men, because it
is they who are involved in the economic activities that society values. Few women run for public office,
at whatever level; fewer still, the women who actually get elected into office.

Women who do win elections beyond the municipal level have very similar profiles. Most come from
traditional political families, having risen to power on the coattails of husbands, fathers or brothers who
were politicians before them; in effect they are extensions of male power.

Gender roles also interact with sexuality. Sexuality cannot be reduced to productive and
reproductive roles. The sexual servicing of men is an important task that women perform
within the reproductive sphere. This task is valued not simply, or even primarily, for its part in
biological reproduction, but for the pleasure it gives to men. The woman is expected to be
desirable to men; on the other, she must be sexually available to only one man, to whom she
is both sexual and reproductive property. If a woman has sexual relations with any other man, or if her
desirability invites sexual aggression from any other man, society condemns her as evil, the occasion for,
if not the agent of sin.

Sexual virility is a much a part of our culture’s definition of masculinity as sexual attractiveness is
of feminity. This, too has its links with reproduction in Asian tradition, for instance, the more offspring a
man has sired, and the more virile he is considered. Moreover, masculinity is also measured by one’s
ability to seduce many women. Thus, while society condemns promiscuity in women, it implicitly
encourages this in men.