The Political Socialization of Gender: What Contribution Biology?

Abstract

That men and women differ in their degree of access to and control of political power has long been a significant aspect of political life. Political socialization research has tended to locate the origin of these differences exclusively in the learning process—whereby boys and girls are differentially equipped with the skills and interests necessary for participation as adults (Weissberg, 1974; Dawson, Prewitt, and Dawson, 1977) or children internalize norms of appropriate gender role behavior that are then activated during thE! adult years (Sapiro, 1977; Jennings and Niemi, 1981). Gender is undoubtedly a social and personal construct, but it is also based in biological sex differences—genetic, morphological, and physiological. Biological factors are a potential area of investigation that has remained relatively unexplored, in part because many political scientists have been reluctant to borrow as liberally trorn tne life sciences as they have from their sister social sciences (Schubert, 1976). The emerging field of biopolitics might have provided a corrective to what has been called elsewhere the “oversocialized concept of man” (Wrong, 1961). However, the concern of many politically conscious individuals with the issue of sexist scholarship has rendered biological sex differences a suspect category. Arguing that scientific discourse does not take place in a political vacuum, many feminists have concluded that the introduction of biological variables can only be detrimental to women because scientific practice reflects popular prejudices.