V. Biological Determinism: Persisting Problems for the Psychology of Women

Abstract

Janet Sayers states that Biological Politics ‘is about the place of biology in explanations of sexual equality’ (1982: 1). Her book discusses the assumptions about women and their biology that natural and social scientists in the West have held over the last two centuries. Most of these assumptions have positioned women as constrained by biological imperatives to think and behave in ways that subordinate them to men and that dictate the limits of how they can express their humanity. More than 20 years later, new versions of biological determinism have surfaced that perpetuate the view that gender-linked dispositions and capacities are embedded in the structures and fabric of human genes and brains. Re-reading Sayers’ book prompts many lines of thought, but I will concentrate on the evidence of the persistence of ‘biological thinking’ – the necessary underpinning to biological politics. Since 1982, biological theorizing in psychology has changed its colors if not its essence. The main contemporary theory that Sayers challenged was sociobiology, which itself had its origins in the 19th century. The work of Trivers on parental investment theory (1972) and Dawkins on the selfish gene (1976) were particularly influential at that time, not only amongst biological scientists and psychologists, but also with a popular audience. Sayers also touched on assertions made by writers such as Levy on sex differences in brain structure and function (Levy, 1969). In 2003, evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience represent the continuation of these strands of thought and both are currently rampant success stories within mainstream psychology. The two areas are of course linked: the structures of ‘mind’ are assumed to have been shaped by evolution and to be encoded in the genes (Barkow et al., 1992). However, even those psychologists whose interests lie in evolution or in the architecture of the brain