What is gender?

What is gender?

“Members of a society construct their bodies in ways that comply with accepted views of gender --- that is, norms of masculinity and femininity. They try to shape and use their bodies to conform to their culture’s or racial ethnic group’s expectations of how a woman’s body, a man’s body, a girl’s body, or a boy’s body should look. This point does not deny the distinctiveness of material bodies, with varying physical shapes, sizes, strengths, and weaknesses. It does emphasize, however, that members of a society, not genes or biology, determine the ‘proper’ shape and usage of women’s, men’s, boys’, and girls’ bodies.

Genes only partially determine physiological development, while environmental factors such as nutrition, health regimens, prevention and treatment of illnesses, exercise, air, water, and general living conditions are the other part. Beyond physiology are cultural and social factors.. the attitudes and values attached to gendered boy practices. Such practices produce bodies that one’s social group considers properly ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ and for which one is regularly rewarded or criticized” (Lorber & Martin, 2011, p. 281).

Judith Lorber and Patricia Yancey Martin. (2011) The socially constructed body: Insights from feminist theory. In Peter Kvisto (ed.), Illuminating Social Life: Classical and Contemporary Theory Revisited. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press. 5th ed.