The Anthropology Of Gender And Its Correlation Between Anatomy And Social Identity

In the article, “Becoming Members of Society: Learning the Social Meaning of Gender,” the author, Aaron Devor, is trying to convince his audience that gender shapes how we behave and relate to one another. He does this by using an educational approach, describing gender stereotypes, and making cultural references. These rhetorical devices serve his larger goal of getting readers to reflect on how their childhoods formed their genders. “Maleness and femaleness seem “natural,” not the product of socialization.” (Devor 527) Throughout his article, he makes us wonder whether or not gender is recognized through socializing.

Drawing on Joan Scott's "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis" and on Alice Kessler-Harris's "Just price, Free Market and the Value of Women", the following questions will be answered, How has the 'equality' of women and men been expressed according to both Scott and Kessler-Harris? Why 'gender' has become a "useful category of historical analysis" for historians? How different (other) historians view 'gender'? What are Kessler-Harris's views on the "equality," "comparable worth" and "equal pay?" Lastly, the importance of the two articles will be highlighted as it relates to the contribution to gender studies.

First of all I am going to begin with defining sex and gender. Sex in a sociological perspective is defined as the biological and physiological differences between men and women which are contrasted in terms of reproductive function(Abercrombie et al 2000 :313). On the other hand gender is sociologically conceived as the social roles allocated to men and women in society that is to say gender is learned not innate. However previously it was believed that sex determined gender thus the differences between men and

Gender defines people in society. People may utilize their gender as an advantage or disadvantage, depending upon the situation. Whether it be a female or male, people can and will exploit themselves in order to achieve ‘happiness’ and goals. There is also many societal gender based stereotypes, for example if you are a man you behave a certain way and if you are a woman you behave a certain way although, there will always be stragglers who deviate the norm. Nevertheless they are judged for it.

Archaeology is the study of material culture for anthropological purposes. Sometimes, that purpose is specifically for analyzing gender activities and roles within a specific culture. Even though people are born with a biological sex, there is nothing natural about gender, because gender is a social construct which varies with culture and time periods. Anthropologists and archaeologists value gender analysis because it not only shows relationships between genders, but also

“The social construction of gender comes out of the general school of thought entitled social constructionism. Social constructionism proposes that everything people "know" or see as "reality" is partially, if not entirely, socially situated. To say that something is socially constructed does not mitigate the power of the concept. These basic theories of social constructionism can be applied to any issue of study pertaining to human life, including gender. This is

The issue of gender and sex in past cemetery evidence is a very complex one since it involves the rambling ideas analysed above (human identity, social status, cultural influences, biological polymorphism), as well as death and mortuary practices. Many archaeologists assume in a simplified manner that burials can provide the most reliable source of data they need to address the question of gender and sex, since the biological sex can be traced on bones. However, this idea proved highly problematic since it is based on the false assumptions that firstly, sex and gender always overlap, secondly, the methods of sex identification on human bones are infallible, and thirdly, that gender identification is, similarly to sex identification, binary.

The concept of gender has a strong social impact on me. When I was born, I was immediately assigned to a biological sex as a female with two X chromosomes. I was then socially classified as a girl in the society with feminine gender roles. Gender is defined as a social principle which attribute to the roles and expectations of males and females through the years of different societies (Phillips, 2005). Gender can be considered as behavioural, cultural and psychological traits

Gender, as a social construct has constantly intrigued me, particularly since our culture, society and who we are is formed by it. The thought that we can make something that runs our lives so tremendously is fascinating. Gender is imbued within each one of us from the beginning of our lives and is enforced in all most everything, from toys to clothes. The process of learning the social desires and expectations as well as attitudes associated with one's sex is called as Gender Socialization.

He offers a simplified, genealogical explanation of the process by which discourses inscribe meaning on the physical body; the way we interpret gender and the body at any given time are a result of the dominant power structures of our society. When the one-sex model was the order of the day, people looked at the female body and found it to be an inversion of the male body. They saw and reproduced what made sense; the body proving that the female is simply a deformed male. One’s sex had to do with one’s actions (or lack thereof) rather than one’s genitalia. As time progressed, philosophical rejection of the hierarchal model of gender inequality made it necessary to defend male-female essentialism in a new way. The same facts, the same body parts, that previously confirmed the one sex model became the primary evidence that men and women were fundamentally, biologically, categorically different. Genitalia became paramount to knowing gender. The power of essentialism and the discourses created to sustain it, first in the framework of the one sex model, then of the two sex model, impressed themselves on the body to create and explain gender and how we define

Last comes to the current archaeology. Today archaeologists are trying to understand the past history through a wide range of approaches and a wide variety of schools of thoughts on the study of the material remains. In this period, many female archaeologists are devoting themselves into archaeological study. For instance, “Mary Leakey worked for almost half a century at various early hominin sites in East Africa, transforming our knowledge of human development” (Renfrew & Bahn

“Gender” is a social construct that is developed solely by our society and the early developmental stages of an adolescent’s life. By introducing youths to the roles, behaviors, expectations and activities that correspond with males or females we give a clear guideline of what is accepted from a young male or female. An individual however can identify his or her gender based on their own system of beliefs without corresponding to their natural biological sex. Our lives are shaped by our true biological identities but the influence of the world and society is enough to define what a male and what a female truly is to an individual.

Gender is a learned social construction on what you do. It is a cultural system based on the binary opposition of men and women but there are also variations

While explaining “Gender”, Kimmel argues some of the opinions and viewpoints regarding gender that have come out from the restraints of biology, psychology, anthropology and sociology. Kimmel discards the designs that gender distinctions are footed exclusively on biological legacy, utilizing cross cultural researches to expose the variety in societal values concerning the suitable parts and responsibilities of men and women and in their respective attitude across civilizations.

The study of anthropology traverse across four subfields that focus in archaeology, linguistics, cultural studies, and physical anthropology. Each field can specialize in an area of expertise. For physical anthropology, the sub-discipline bioarchaeology, incorporates both physical studies of human remains while contextualizing the data found from archaeological evidence and other sciences. One researcher explains that, “information from the human skeleton can be combined with historical documents and material culture to understand social processes on multiple scales,” (Hollimon 2011, 163). Bioarchaeology is unique in that it bridges biology and social science to create new theories and ask more meaningful questions. The virtuosity of bioarchaeology and why it is important is that it is a heavy question based field. It contextualizes all fields of anthropology that can span into answering specific questions asked by researchers in archaeology, culture studies, and physical anthropology.  The questions that bioarchaeologists seek to answer can range from demography, diet, identity, food-ways, and mortuary analysis.  In general, the study of gender in anthropology is a relatively recent phenomenon that covers all subfields. Since anthropology is the study of all things human, it is interesting that study of identity and gender are only recently in the field. McGee and Warms (2012), claim the trend in studying gender lies within identities that do not fit traditional western