Anth 311

Men and Women are physically different in some ways but not many when compared to primates.

Humans are dimorphic which means there are two categories of bodies in which humans exist.

The Biological Asymmetry Argument states in all human populations there are consistent morphological and physiological differences between sexes and these differences impact what tasks/roles each gender does.

The Biological Asymmetry Argument leads to the Sexual Division of Labour an example of this is men working and women caregiving

Sexual Division of Labour is the assumption that tasks have been universally male and female… Men hunt and Women gather

Sex Roles fall under the Sexual Division of Labour as tasks are divided by sex

Gender Roles fall under the gender division of labor as these tasks are given through culture

When we think of tasks as sex roles it shapes our ideas of society and makes Gender roles when there could have potentially not been one

The theory that Men evolved to hunt, and women to gather is wrong.

There are three key points that outline why women are just as if not better suited than men when it comes to gathering; Exercise Science, Prehistory, Foraging Societies.

Exercise Science shows that women are capable of chasing game animals for long periods of time because of their higher body fat and slow twitch muscles.

Prehistory shows that in ancient civilizations both men and women had similar muscles and bone growth which points to the realization that they were doing similar tasks. As well when looking at skeletons men and women are not very different in height and mass ratio compared to other animals.

Foraging Society’s recent studies of ethnographic data spanning over 100 years found that women hunt animals in many societies.

Men and Women are not categorically different, there is much difference in the human species but this does not draw from sex and only from individuality.

Males are active caretakers in prehistory. Humans give birth to incredibly dependent infants, thus it is important to have more than one caregiver.

Gettler’s contribution is that having shortened interbirth intervals(length between 2 births) it would be beneficial to males to help with the caretaking process thus women would recover to a reproductive state faster

It is problematic to assume because of body dimorphism (Difference between male and female bodies) that there would be behavioral differences

The gender Difference Hypothesis is that men and women are so different that they might as well be from different planets

The Gender Similarities Hypothesis holds that men and women are similar on most subjects

Meta-meta analysis is a large number of separate meta-analyses on the same topic

The largest difference from Hyde’s paper find that men and women differ the most on motor performance. Much in the physical capability

In Hydes paper there were mainly three things in which men and women acted different on; Motor skills, Sex/Relationships, Physical aggression

Dimensional means that knowing if someone was a man would not tell you anything about how they acted in the categories

Categorical means that knowing the gender of someone would tell you how they would act in different categories

Dimensional - Sociosexual Orientation, Interpersonal Orientation, Gender-Related Dispositions, Intimacy

Categorical - Physical Characteristics

Sex Differences in the brain. ex Male and Female brains

Sex differences in brains do exist, just in the more physical ways

Gender Polarization is when cultures make a big difference between genders

Gender egalitarianism is when culture makes the difference between genders unimportant or small

It is important to note that the traits that are assigned to genders change and evolve over time as well as culture changes

Dominant Gender stereotypes - the stereotypes given most often by our society to describe the way gender is as it is not linear across people

Gender stereotypes are what society’s beliefs are about gender and what it is

Gender Identity is the own personal sense or belief of gender which often differs from Gender stereotypes

Prescriptions are widely shared beliefs about what men and women should do

Proscriptions are widely shared beliefs about what men and women shouldn’t do

The theory of hegemonic Masculinity is the idea that even though there are multiple ways to have masculinity there is one central agreed-upon version