DS 2203 TOPIC 01

CONCEPTUALIZATION OF GENDER AND OTHER BASIC CONCEPTS

Given the complexity of gender, it is not surprising that an increasing number of terms and

phrases are developing to describe it. Below are some of the key terms you might encounter:

Sex is a system of classification that divides body types based on presumed reproductive capacity

as typically determined by visual examination of the external genitalia sex includes body type,

chromosomes, hormones, genitals, reproductive organs, or chemical essences/ pheromones.

Sex is the physical structure of one’s reproductive organs that is used to assign sex at birth.

Chromosomes XX determine sex for females and XY for males. Hormones called

estrogen/progesterone is found in females, and testosterone for male. There are also internal and

external genitalia for example vulva, clitoris, and vagina for assigned females, penis and testicles

for assigned males. Given the potential variation in all of these, biological sex must be seen as a

spectrum or range of possibilities rather than a binary set of two options.

Sex-disaggregated data is data that is cross-classified by sex, presenting information separately

for men and women, boys and girls. When data is not disaggregated by sex, it is more difficult to

identify real and potential inequalities. Sex-disaggregated data is necessary for effective gender

analysis.

Sextortion is used to describe a conduct which is not only sexually abusive, but also incorporates

the element of corruption. The sexual component need not be sexual intercourse or even physical

touching. It could be any form of unwanted sexual activity, such as exposing ones private body

parts, posing for sexually suggestive photos, participating in phone sex or submitting to

inappropriate touching.

As for the corruption element, the perpetrator must be a person in authority who abuses that

authority by indulging in the activity of demanding or accepting sexual favors in exchange for the

exercise of that authority.

In other words sextortion is a form of corruption in which sex and not money is the currency for

the bribe. Not all sexually abusive, exploitative, discriminatory or criminal conduct constitutes of

sextortion.

Sextortion requires that the abuser have some form of executive authority over the victim. Where

that authority is lacking, the sexual abuse is not sextortion. Sextortion also requires an exchange

or quid pro quo — a benefit in exchange for a sexual favor. Where that exchange is missing, the

sexually discriminatory conduct is not sextortion: A hostile work environment in which sexual

innuendo is used and pornography displayed may constitute sexual harassment but not sextortion.

Gender is the social attributes and opportunities associated with being male and female and the

relationships between women and men and girls and boys, as well as the relations between

women and those between men.

Gender, like all social identities, is socially constructed. Social constructionism is one of the key

theories sociologists use to put gender into historical and cultural focus. Social constructionism is

a social theory about how meaning is created through social interaction – through the things we

do and say with other people. This theory shows that gender it is not a fixed or innate fact, but

instead it varies across time and place.

Gender Awareness: Is an understanding that there are socially determined differences between

women & men based on learned behavior, which affect their ability to access and control

resources. This awareness needs to be applied through gender analysis into projects, programs

and policies.

The meaning of gender awareness

What Does Gender Awareness Mean in Development Projects?

• Women are treated as representatives of half of the population, not as a special interest group

• Development projects do not address only women, but involve men and women according to

their specific needs and strengths.

• Projects are not limited to women's traditional concerns such as health, nutrition and childcare,

but also to the productive sphere, education and social-cultural fields, where women are still

under-represented

• Projects are concerned not only with the protection of women as needy and vulnerable

individuals, but are aimed at the enhancement and expansion of women's and men's experiences,

their self-awareness, skills and creativity

• Projects do not regard women and men only as beneficiaries, but also involve them as

participants and decision-makers.

Gender Norms: Gender norms are the accepted attributes and characteristics of male and female

gendered identity at a particular point in time for a specific society or community. They are the

standards and expectations to which gender identity generally conforms, within a range that

defines a particular society, culture and community at that point in time. Gender norms are ideas

about how men and women should be and act. Internalized early in life, gender norms can

establish a life cycle of gender socialization and stereotyping.

Gender Identity: One’s innermost concept of self as male or female or both or neither—how

individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves. One’s gender identity can be the

same or different than the sex assigned at birth. Individuals are conscious of this be tween the ages

18 months and 3 years. Most people develop a gender identity that matches their biological sex.

For some, however, their gender identity is different from their biological or assigned sex. Some

of these individuals choose to socially, hormonally and/or surgically change their sex to more

fully match their gender identity.

Gender identity arises out of complex patterns of interaction between the self and others. Some

people can reject the gender specified by their biology by, for example, pass ing as members of

the other gender and even changing their sex by radical surgery. Some people are born with a

mixture of the typical biological traits from both sexes; in such cases medical professionals may

decide on the ‘proper’ sex and intervene accordingly. This suggests that biology does

Gender Expression: Refers to the ways in which people externally communicate their gender

identity to others through behavior, clothing, haircut, voice, and other forms of presentation.

Gender expression also works the other way as people assign gender to others based on their

appearance, mannerisms, and other gendered characteristics. Sometimes, transgender people seek

to match their physical expression with their gender identity, rather than their birth-assigned sex.

Gender expression should not be viewed as an indication of sexual orientation. What Is Sexual

Orientation?

Sexual orientation is a term used to refer to a person's emotional, romantic, and sexual attraction

to individuals of a particular gender (male or female). Sexual orientation is different from gender

and gender identity — how you feel about and express your gender. Sexual orientation is about

who you are attracted to and want to have intimate relationships with.

People who are attracted to members of the other gender often call themselves straight or

heterosexual. People who are attracted to people of the same gender often call themselves gay or

homosexual. Women who are gay may prefer the term lesbian. People who are attracted to both

men and women, or people of any sex or gender identity, may call themselves bisexual. People

whose attractions span across many different gender identities (male, female, transgender,

genderqueer, intersex, etc.) may call themselves pansexual or queer. People who are unsure

about their sexual orientation may call themselves questioning or curious. People who don't

experience any sexual attraction for anyone may call themselves asexual.

Transgender: Sometimes used as an umbrella to describe anyone whose identity or behavior

falls outside of stereotypical gender norms. More narrowly defined, it refers to an individual

whose gender identity does not match their assigned birth gender. Being transgender does not

imply any specific sexual orientation (attraction to people of a specific gender.) Therefore,

transgender people may additionally identify with a variety of other sexual identities as well.

Although a child may not yet be aware of their sexual orientation, they usually have a strong

sense of their gender identity.

Gender Parity: is a numerical concept. Gender parity concerns relative equality in terms of

numbers and proportions of men and women, girls and boys. Gender parity addresses the ratio of

female-to male values (or males-to-females, in certain cases) of a given indicator.

Cisgender (Gender Normative): Refers to people whose sex assignment at birth corresponds to

their gender identity and expression.

Gender typing is the process by which children acquire not only a gender identity but also the

motives, values, and behaviors considered appropriate in their culture for members of their

biological sex.

Gender Fluidity: Gender fluidity conveys a wider, more flexible range of gender expression,

with interests and behaviors that may even change from day to day. Gender fluid children do not

feel confined by restrictive boundaries of stereotypical expectations of girls or boys. In other

words, a child may feel they are a girl some days and a boy on others, or possibly feel that neither

term describes them accurately.

Gender Planning: Refers to the process of planning developmental programmes and projects

that are gender sensitive and which take into account the impact of differing gender roles and

gender needs of women and men in the target community or sector. It involves the selection of

appropriate approaches to address not only women and men’s practical needs, but which also

identifies entry points for challenging unequal relations (ie. strategic needs) and to enhance the

gender-responsiveness of policy dialogue.

Gender-responsive Budget (GRB): Gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) is government

planning, programming and budgeting that contributes to the advancement of gender equality

and the fulfillment of women's rights. It entails identifying and reflecting needed interventions to

address gender gaps in sector and local government policies, plans and budgets. GRB also aims

to analyze the gender-differentiated impact of revenue-raising policies and the allocation of

domestic resources and Official Development Assistance.

Gender Balance is a human resource issue. It is about the equal participation of women and men

in all areas of work (international and national staff at all levels, including at senior positions) and

in programmes that agencies initiate or support (e.g. food distribution programmes). Achieving a

balance in staffing patterns and creating a working environment that is conducive to a diverse

workforce improves the overall effectiveness of our policies and programmes, and will enhance

agencies’ capacity to better serve the entire population.

Gender-based Violence (GBV): GBV is an umbrella term for any harmful act that is perpetrated

against a person’s will and that is based on socially ascribed (gender) differences between

females and males. The nature and extent of specific types of GBV vary across cultures, countries

and regions. Examples include sexual violence, including sexual exploitation/abuse and forced

prostitution; domestic violence; trafficking; forced/early marriage; harmful traditional practices

such as female genital mutilation; honour killings; and widow inheritance.

Gender Needs: Leading on from the fact that women and men have differing roles based on their

gender, they will also have differing gender needs. These needs can be classified as either

strategic or practical needs.

Practical Gender Needs (PGN): These are gender needs that women and men can easily identify,

as they relate to living conditions. PGNs do not challenge, although they arise out of, gender

divisions of labor and women’s subordinate position in society. PGNs are a response to

immediate and perceived necessity, identified within a specific context. They are practical in

nature and often concern inadequacies in living conditions such as water provision, health care

and employment.

Strategic Gender Interests/Needs: Strategic gender needs are the needs women ident ify because

of their subordinate position in society. They vary according to particular contexts, related to

gender divisions of labour, power and control, and may include issues such as legal rights,

domestic violence, equal wages and women’s control over their bodies. Meeting SGNs assists

women to achieve greater equality and change existing roles, thereby challenging women’s

subordinate position. They are more long term and less visible than practical gender needs.

Gender Blindness: is the failure to recognize that the roles and responsibilities of men/boys and

women/ girls are given to them in specific social, cultural, economic and political contexts and

backgrounds. Projects, programmes, policies and attitudes which are gender blind do not take

into account these different roles and diverse needs, maintain status quo, and will not help

transform the unequal structure of gender relations.

Gender Role. This is the set of roles, activities, expectations and behaviors assigned to females

and males by society. Our culture recognizes two basic gender roles: Masculine (having the

qualities attributed to males) and feminine (having the qualities attributed to females). People

who step out of their socially assigned gender roles are sometimes referred to as transgender.

Other cultures have three or more gender roles.

Productive roles: Refer to the activities carried out be men and women in order to produce

goods and services either for sale, exchange, or to meet the subsistence needs of the family. For

example in agriculture, productive activities include plating, animal husbandry and gardening that

refers to farmers themselves, or for other people at employees.

Reproductive roles: Refer to the activities needed to ensure the reproduction of society's labour

force. This includes child bearing, rearing, and care for family members such as children, elderly

and workers. These tasks are done mostly by women.

Community managing role: Activities undertaken primarily by women at the community level,

as an extension of their reproductive role, to ensure the provision and maintenance of scarce

resources of collective consumption such as water, health care and education. This is voluntary

unpaid work undertaken in ‘free’ time.

Community politics role: Activities undertaken primarily by men at the community level,

organizing at the formal political level, often within the framework of national politics. This work

is usually undertaken by men and may be paid directly or result in increased power and status.

Triple role/ multiple burden: These terms refer to the fact that women tend to work longer and

more fragmented days than men as they are usually involved in three different gender roles

reproductive, productive and community work.

Gender polarization is a concept in sociology by American psychologist Sandra Bem which

states that societies tend to define femininity and masculinity as polar opposite genders, such that

male-acceptable behaviors and attitudes are not seen as appropriate for women, and vice versa.

Criticism of the concept of gender

There have been two major kinds of criticism of the concept of gender.

Firstly it is based upon a false dichotomy between the biological and the social. This relates to a

general criticism that sociology has tended to see the social as disembodied, with the infant as a

tabula rasa upon which socialization may write at will, to produce social consciousness and

action. The sex/gender distinction, it is said, is linked to a particular form of feminist politics that

seeks the eradication of gender and a move towards androgyny; It leaves little space, for instance,

for other feminist concerns with the biological politics of menstruation, contraception,

reproductive technology, abortion, or the management of childbirth.

The second kind of criticism relates to the way in which the concept of gender focuses on

differences between women and men at the expense of power and domination. Some writers

would prefer to use the term patriarchy as the main organizing concept, in order to keep the

question of power to the fore, both analytically and politically.

On a lighter note, ‘gender’ has been criticized as a prudish way of avoiding the word ‘sex’. It is

true that gender has entered everyday speech in this sense, when people talk (for example) about

‘the opposite gender’. Some sociologists, too, are guilty of this when they refer to ‘gender roles’

or ‘gender discrimination’.

Biological Factors in Gender Differences: Hormones And Social Behavior

Sex- usually thought of as a biological term referring to ascribed genetic, anatomical, and

hormonal differences between males and females, but it is actually determined by socially

accepted biological criteria, e.g.: Intersexed- persons with ambiguous genitalia (usually ascribed

one or another sex in different cultures)

About 1 babies in 1,000 are born intersexed, or hermaphroditic, which means having an abnormal

chromosomal makeup and mixed or indeterminate male and female sex characteristics.

This is a function of biological sex. Gender is different because it relates to the way that a person

behaves based on their biological sex. In other words, we learn how to act manly or womanly

based on the sex that we’re born into and society’s expectations of that sex.

Human Studies: Girls who have received testosterone or testosterone- like hormones prenatally

have masculinized behavior. These girls are genetic females but their genetalia are typically

masculinized at birth (enlarged clitoris, fused labia that resemble a scrotum). They often receive

an operation to make her appear more feminine. These girls have masculinized behavior:

Tomboyish, liked vigorous athletic activities, simply utilitarian clothing; little interest in dolls,

babysitting, or caring for younger children, jewelry, cosmetics, or hair styles. They also had a

more male-type achievement pattern and male-type attitudes toward sexuality. They preferred

boys as playmates and boys' toys.

Hormones and Cognitive Skills

There is evidence for a critical period for brain organization and hemisphere lateralization (males

more lateralized). Testosterone surge prenatally is responsible. This surge makes females process

verbal information better and males process spatial information better. Female fetuses exposed to

abnormally high levels of androgens are better at spatial abilities.