Gender Issues

Gender and Research

One way of dealing with the gender issue is to treat women and men as separate and to measure the extent of any differences between them, for example, in health and illness or educational attainment. Such an approach, although useful, has been criticized as inadequate on its own because it fails to acknowledge differences in the quality and nature of experiences. Another approach, characteristic of the early stages of gender awareness, was to add studies of women onto those of men. However, although valuable work was produced in areas such as employment and the media, for instance, this was similarly criticized for insufficiently challenging the basic assumptions and concepts that informed such research. It was argued that these were still based on male perceptions and interests, with women being tagged on rather as an afterthought. This led to three developments. First, it was necessary to research additional issues that were particularly pertinent to women. New themes were introduced, ranging from housework, motherhood, and childbirth to sexuality, pornography, and male violence. Second, some of the perspectives and concepts at the very heart of the social science agenda had to be revised or modified. This gave rise to important debates, such as the relative meaning and significance of social class for women and men and whether the accepted distinction between work and leisure was based on gendered assumptions. The third development involved issues to do with the actual methods and procedures of social research. There was heated discussion among feminists, with some suggesting that qualitative, rather than quantitative, research styles were more attuned to rendering the previously hidden aspects of women's lives visible. There has also been much debate as to whether it is either desirable or possible to have a distinct feminist methodology (Ramazanoglu, 2002).

Defining and Operational Gender

The most usual definition of gender distinguishes it from biological sex. Whereas sex is taken to denote the anatomical and physiological differences that define biological femaleness and maleness, gender refers to the social construction of femininity and masculinity (Connell, 2002). It is not regarded as a direct product of biological sex but is seen as being differently created and interpreted by particular cultures and in particular periods of historical time. However, a number of issues arise from this usage. To begin with, initial studies of gender relations focused mainly on women and girls to compensate for their previous exclusion. It is only recently that the gendered nature of men, of masculinities, has become the focus of attention. Furthermore, the commonsense usage of the term gender has been contested. It has been suggested that there are not, in practice, two mutually exclusive gender categories, as attempts to classify international athletes have demonstrated (Ramazanoglu, 2002). Intersexuality and transexuality disrupt rigid gender boundaries, indicating that body differences may be important after all. Definitions based on dichotomy also overlook patterns of difference among both women and men—for instance, between violent and nonviolent masculinities. Another concern is with the need to relate gender [Page 417]to other forms of difference—for instance, those of ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, class, and age. Such categories and signifiers mean that gender is always mediated in terms of experience.

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