Gender Issues

Societal concerns regarding equality and discrimination based on sex. Feminism and the women's movement were a response to the recognition that gender discrimination exists even in societies that are supposed to be democratic. The focus on gender issues reflects the realization that notions of social justice must be expanded beyond economic or racial differences to account for a prejudice that has been documented across social groups, gender bias.

Sex versus Gender

The term sex, which typically refers to whether one is male or female, is distinguished from the term gender, which generally refers to the behavioral traits associated with one sex in a given culture. Therefore, unlike sex, which is a biological category, gender is often arbitrary.

Although gender roles are sometimes transformed under different cultural pressures, they often reflect stereotypes, such as the idea that women are more emotional than men or that men are more apt to think logically than women. Referring to gender issues means citing the impact of these preconceived notions on opportunities for women to succeed or instances in which men may be prejudged to their disadvantage. However, gender roles in most societies traditionally have been structured to prevent women from attaining the same level of economic success and professional status as men. For this reason, gender bias is, in most cases, a reference to discrimination against women.

Nature versus Nurture

Gender issues are often debates over whether a given attribute is associated essentially with a given sex, as opposed to the possibility that the attribute is simply a reflection of culture. As a result, debates over gender issues are typically structured in terms of nature versus nurture.

One example is the question of whether men are naturally more talented than women at math or science. Numerous standardized tests have indicated that men are generally more mathematically inclined; the debate is over what accounts for this obvious discrepancy. Analyses range from test bias to education bias to biological arguments that seek to correlate weakness in mathematical reasoning with attributes that are supposedly essential to the perpetuation of the human race. The actual reasons for the ability gap, however, remain uncertain.

Bias in education is another example of a gender issue, one that is related to the impediments to women's achievement that are said to be embedded in the structure of schooling and the practice of teaching. Studies have indicated that boys are called on more frequently than girls in the classroom. This is said to be the result of subconscious biases possessed by the teacher, compounded by the possibility that male students may be more aggressive in seeking the teacher's attention (which is itself a gender bias). Stereotypes concerning professional goals may also persist, wherein young women are encouraged to understand that a man's career is always more important than a woman's. This may be implied according to the self-perpetuating rationalization that men earn more or because of the frequent possibility that women must take time away from the workplace to give birth. The fact that the teaching profession is itself relatively low paying and generally regarded as having a relatively lower social status than other professions is often attributed to the fact that it is regarded as a women's profession.

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