Biology Is Destiny In The Context Of Gender Development

Terri Melvin
What do you understand by the term ‘Biology is Destiny’ in the context of
Gender Development? Discuss theories for and against.
How do women become women? How do men become men? Are we assigned our gender roles at birth, or do we become male or female over time? Simone de
Beauvoir (1965) said “One is not born, but rather becomes a woman”. This means that women learn over time to be female and men learn to be male. Is this assumption correct? Or are we given a gender role based on our anatomy, genetic and hormonal make up? Biological determinists claim that human behaviour and social organisation are biologically (genetically) determined. Cultural determinists on the other hand, assume that human behaviour and our evolutionary success
I will compare examples of ’masculine’ and ‘feminine‘ cross-culturally and briefly talk about inequality within gender and how this has emerged and changed through time.
The distinction between sex and gender is a fairly recent distinction in itself. The
American psychoanalyst Robert Stoller (1968) was the first to make the distinction between sex and gender. He made the rather obvious observation that the vast majority of people can be placed into either sex according to their genitalia and other secondary sex characteristics. It is due to these differences that women are capable of bearing and suckling children while men are generally stronger and more muscular.
Stoller said:
“Gender is a term that has psychological and cultural connotations, if the proper terms for sex are ‘male’ and ‘female’, the corresponding terms for gender are ,’masculine’ and ‘feminine’; these latter might be quite independent of (biological) sex (Stoller,
1968, p.9) .
It would therefore be wrong to assume that being a woman guarantees that she is
‘feminine’ as it would be wrong to assume a man to display ‘masculine’ traits. It
Many Agta women of the Philippines are proficient hunters (Estioko-Griffin1985,
1986 & Griffin 1981, Goodman 1985). They hunt with bows and arrows, machetes, knives, traps and dogs. They regularly hunt wild pig and deer; women alone or in groups kill almost 30 percent of the large game. What is interesting about this study is that it disproves the ‘expendability’ theory which supports the idea of a universal general division of labour whereby men tend to do the dangerous work in society because they are more expendable; reproduction need not suffer as long as fertile women have sexual access to men. This study was also important as it demonstrated that women, child care and hunting were not incompatible with each other. Hunting women would be accompanied by nursing babies. Agta women did not suffer lower reproductive rates and neither was there any evidence of a higher infant mortality rate when compared with non hunting women. It is true to say that they always hunted in large groups, were never very far from home and were accompanied by dogs that would assist in the hunting and protection of the women and babies. Estioko-Griffin

describes the hunting escapades of one of the women: “I recall the time she ran a