Analysing the social construction of gender

 

Professional working in the field of gender often face difficulty in sharing and comparing information, including data generated from research and the provision of services related to gender, because ideas about how gender is defined are inconsistent both within and across different cultures.

 

Gender as traditionally defined by different scholars appears to limit definition and perception to the very biological differences between men and women leaving out other gender and sexual minorities who does not fit neatly in the male or female boxes, which are widely accepted and recognized by the society, for example the biological female who behave, dress, and feel trapped in the body of a man is neither considered to be male nor female; they are, in our language, termed as mukazi musajja which is means male female.  

 

One good reason for taking indebt analysis of this concept especially in the current context is that, gender is in the centre of human way of life and experience and it affects all that we do in life. Understanding the concept makes us understand the world around us. The oxford university dictionary sees gender as state of being male or female which is typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones.

 

On the other hand, World Health Organization 2013 report explains gender as socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women. Gender norms around the world inform the different roles, status and power assigned to women and men in society that are learned, and though deeply rooted in every culture; they’re changeable over time and have myriad variations both within and between cultures. 

 

Gender is so persistent that in our society we suppose it is bred into the batter. Most people find it hard to believe that gender is constantly created and re-created out of human interaction, out of social life, and is the texture and order of that social life. So the  conception that gender identities are fixed which is not true at all because gender defines only roles, behaviors and identity apart from physical sex characteristic. 

 

There is need to rethink and come up with the wider and suitable explanations of gender which matches the current development and is inclusive of all gender categories, those who poses more than one set of characteristic should also have a breathing space within the broader explanations of gender in the society.

 

There is also need to consider the different factors akin to biology and psychology along side culture because it is mostly hormones and genetics that contributes to the way we discover our selves. Reflecting on the finding of John money and colleagues of John Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, tried to piece together a map of how human beings become female or male or some combination of the two.

 

He was one of the first to assert that the path to a particular gender is not always a straight and narrow one. Instead, he argued, there are many variations along the way that can contribute to the gray areas of gender.

 

The idea that there might be more than two human sexes was once nearly inconceivable, but to tody there is much greater acceptance of the fact that not all human beings line up nearly in male or female categories. Anatomical and psychological ambiguities demand new categories of gender that cross domestic gender lines. 

 

The easy assumption has been that there are two quite separate roads, one leading XY chromosomes at conception of manhood the other from XX chrosomes at conception of womanhood. But there have always been puzzling exceptions to raise double some questions and helping those people fit comfortably into one sex or the other, scientists are covering a different picture.

 

The fact is that there are no two roads, but one road with a number of forks where each of us turns in either a male or female direction. People became male or female by stages. Most of them turn smoothly in the same direction at each fork. If it weren’t for those who have taken an incompatible turn somewhere along the line, the fork might never be mapped. Such a map is needed now as it was never need before because radical changes in the cultural definitions of what it means to be a man or woman are disrupting our lives.

 

It’s true that different societies have had different definitions and that even in the same societies the definitions has been different in different areas but today the rate of changes has accelerated making it had for men and women, the gender and sexual minorities to find common grounds to freely express them selves according to the gender that fits them neatly.

 

In early 80s the concept that one’s gender identity could be influenced by biological factors was unpopular. Some even considered the nature side of the nature nurture equation to be politically hostile however there continued to emerge compelling subjective evidence that genetic and normal influence might well play some role on shaping gender and out ward expressions.

 

Hence the explanations of gender should therefore includes both the social construct,   biology ,social influences so that we come up with  a more comprehensive and gender sensitive definition that includes all the genders.

 

This is because none of the sexual character is inborn or biologically given. We construct it out of our diverse life situations, limited by what we are taught or what we can imagine to be permissible and correct. There is no unique female sexual experience, no male sexual experience, and no unique heterosexual experience. We should take the experiences of different people and sort and lump them according to socially significant categories. 

 

The writer is a student of communication skills at Makerere University Kampala