IV. Adding Gender to the Mix: A Commentary on `Toward a Redefinition of Sex and Gender'

Abstract

Twenty-eight years ago, Rhoda Unger argued that the ‘too inclusive use of the term sex’ (1979: 1085) led to the over-use of biological explanations for sex differences, the lack of interest in the examination of sex similarities, and the confusion between sex as a characteristic of individuals and sex as a stimulus variable. She saw three advantages of adding gender to the psychological lexicon. First, the use of gender would encourage researchers to seek environmental or cultural explanations of sex differences and rely less on simple biological explanations. Second, the use of gender would encourage researchers to focus on sex similarities instead of, or in addition to, sex differences. Third, the introduction of gender would encourage the study of sex as a stimulus variable, either through labeling others in attribution studies or oneself in studies of gender identity. In focusing on the importance of gender in her paper, Rhoda was prescient in her emphasis on the importance of gender as a concept. It is difficult to overemphasize the extent to which gender has become the guiding concept in the study of women and men. Without it, feminist psychology would have been impossible. It has become the focus of a major research area within psychology and through interactions with other areas has created numerous transformations. In 2001, Rhoda Unger edited the first psychological handbook in this area, The Psychology of Women and Gender, with a bibliography of approximately 3000 empirical and theoretical studies pertaining to gender. Clearly it would be impossible to review the work on gender that has taken place since 1979. Thus, in this article, I will return to the three specific predictions Rhoda made in her original article (1979) and examine how each has played out over the intervening years. First, has the use of gender reduced biological explanations of sex differences and encouraged environmental explanations? My answer is both ‘no’ and ‘yes’.