Park Magazine Blog Article

Sex vs. Gender

What is the distinction between sex and gender? When faced with this question, many would assume that one is a synonym for the other. I beg to differ.

Sex is the biological differences, referring to chromosomes and sex cells, whereas gender describes the characteristics that a society or culture delineates as masculine or feminine. We learn our gender from the word go; right from birth we are socially 'gendered' by putting a baby boy in Blue, and a baby girl in Pink. Why is this? To highlight the difference between male and female, or does it go deeper in to gender roles within society?

Monash University have carried out numerous studies on gender roles and the role of language within. They came up with the theory that while your sex as male or female is a biological fact that is the same in any culture, what that sex means in terms of your gender role as a 'man' or a 'woman' in society can be quite different cross culturally. In sociological terms 'gender role' refers to the characteristics and behaviours that different cultures attribute to the sexes. What it means to be a 'real man' in any culture requires male sex plus what our various cultures define as masculine characteristics and behaviours, likewise a 'real woman' needs female sex and feminine characteristics.

For example, masculinity in England would stereotypically involve language that is generally taboo, in short term taking to symbolise power and superiority, and the fact that males are the dominant sex.

On the other hand, females are expected to use language in a very different way. Theorists such as Robin Lakoff have pointed out that women are seen to use linguistic features such as tag questions, supposedly for confirmation, connoting uncertainty and the inferior sex.

Dominance theory

This is the theory that in mixed-sex conversations men are more likely to interrupt than women. It uses a fairly old study of a small sample of conversations, recorded by Don Zimmerman and Candace West at the Santa Barbara campus of the University of California in 1975. The subjects of the recording were white, middle class and under 35. Zimmerman and West produce in evidence 31 segments of conversation. They report that in 11 conversations between men and women, men used 46 interruptions, but women only two.

This theory is in accordance with the 'gender roles' specific to England certainly in the 70s when the second wave Feminist movement was taking place, but is it still relevant today? Surely times have moved on since the days of the women being the submissive housewives and men being the dominant breadwinners?

In conclusion, the distinction between male and female roles in society, and subsequently their language choices interest me greatly, and it is something I would like to research further.

Leah Johnston