Gender Essentialism Research Articles

Unpacking the logics of gendered educational choices: 10th graders’ evaluation of appropriate educational tracks

ABSTRACT This study aims to unpack one element of the logics of gendered educational choices, namely how cultural beliefs about gender can shape young people’s judgements about gendered educational tracks. Through a survey experiment conducted among secondary school students in Oslo, Norway, we assess respondents’ judgements about fictitious students’ “appropriate” educational choices presented through short vignettes. The study investigates how judgements vary according to the gender of the fictitious students, as well as respondents’ gender and their gender essentialist beliefs. The results indicate that devaluation of female-typed work play a role in young people’s judgements about educational tracks. Boys and girls alike seem to award male-typed vocational education and general college preparatory education higher status than female-typed vocational education. Nonetheless, vignette boys are more strongly advised against choosing female-typed vocational programmes than vignette girls with the same characteristics. This pattern is evident regardless of respondents’ essentialist beliefs. Thus, both devaluation and gender stereotypical expectations pull in the same direction for boys, against entering female-typed education in upper secondary school. Furthermore, the findings indicate that gender essentialism works asymmetrically. Respondents with gender essentialist beliefs are more likely to advise girls not to choose male-typed vocational programmes. However, we did not find evidence that respondents, including those who otherwise express gender essentialist beliefs, believe that female-typed vocational educational choices are appropriate for women simply because they are women.

June Lake George Reflection*

June Lake George Reflection* Se Jong Cho (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Acrylic on canvas 30 x 20 inches Courtesy of the artist 2022 The paintings in the Blood Clock 2020 series are my response to Pipilotti Rist's Blutdip (1993) and its display of—in the words of Calvin Tomkins "copious flows of menstrual blood," for which she was seen by some to have "[taken] feminism too far." What does it mean to take feminism too far? This criticism of Rist's work presented an interesting challenge to me. My response was to—in Rist's own words—"get the blood out into the open" with this body of work—the cover shows the days of my menstruation in June 2020—and my intentions are to challenge the culturally mandated boundaries, such as menstrual taboo and gender essentialism, that constrain our imaginations as well as our livelihoods. —Se Jong Cho Read Se Jong Cho's full artist's statement, "Blood Clock 2020; Challenging Culturally Mandated Acts of Feminine Discretion," on p. 107, followed by a folio of paintings from the series. [End Page 2] Se Jong Cho Born in Seoul, se jong cho makes art to explore the extents of her imagination and broaden the creative domain. She began painting while pursuing her PhD in environmental engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Her training as a scientist taught her to become observant and think critically, and she cultivated her brand of creative expression that combines multidisciplinary perspectives. Copyright © 2023 Se Jong Cho

Changing beliefs about gender: the relation between contact with gender nonconforming individuals and gender essentialism

ABSTRACT Increasing numbers of individuals are openly identifying outside of the gender binary, which may have broader effects on how people view gender. Little research has examined how contact with gender nonconforming (GNC) individuals may influence others’ conceptualisations of gender. Through seven studies with 2,547 participants, we found that contact with GNC individuals corresponded to reduced gender essentialism. In two correlational studies, we found that contact with GNC people predicted reduced gender essentialism even when controlling for sexism and contact with women. In a series of four experimental studies, we found some evidence that imagining contact with a GNC person resulted in significantly less gender essentialism than imagining contact with a woman, though this was not consistent across studies using other types of control conditions. In a final study, we found that media contact with either a trans man or a genderfluid person reduced gender essentialism compared to contact with a cisgender man, demonstrating that contact effects generalised across exposure to different types of gender identities. This work suggests that a person’s conceptualisation of gender may be changed through contact with GNC people.

Rebuttal to Christopher J. Ferguson's critique of the American Psychological Association's practice guidelines for boys and men

We played significant roles in the development of the APA Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men (American Psychological Association, 2018). We address Christopher J. Ferguson's critique of the Guidelines, making six points: Criticisms of the Guidelines Tend to Reflect Anti-Feminist and Gender Essentialist Perspectives; The Guidelines Followed All Rules and Regulations Set Forth by the APA; The Guidelines Are Routinely Mischaracterized and Distorted By People Who Disagree with Them; APA Guidelines Are not Research Reports, Systematic Reviews, or Meta-Analyses; Ferguson Conflates Men With Masculinity; and Ferguson Makes Bold Claims Without Justification or a Familiarity with the Field.

Same-Sex Parenting Competence Evaluation: The Role of Gender Essentialism, Political Orientation, and Attribution of Conflict

Many countries are discussing LGBT rights, such as the right to wed and create a family. Despite research indicating that there is no reason to deny same-sex couples the right to be parents, negative attitudes persist concerning the quality of parenting by gay and lesbian individuals. The purpose of this study (N = 436) was to explore the relationship between the attribution of conflict in same-sex couples and the attribution of lower parenting competencies. We examined the attribution of conflict within heterosexual vs. same-sex couples in order to determine if the alleged conflict attributed to the latter can be used in a strategic manner to justify reduced same-sex parenting competence. Results showed a positive association between the attribution of conflict and lower parenting competence, especially in the same-sex couple evaluation. Furthermore, the attribution of conflict appears to be associated with a conservative political stance, gender essentialist beliefs, and homonegativity. A moderated mediation model confirmed our prediction, revealing that right-wing (vs. center and left-wing) participants considered same-sex couples to be less competent as parents due to the attribution of conflict within the couple. Results might be useful to foster the dissemination of reliable information about same-sex parent families.

Tarrying with Trauma While Improvising Gender in Who Do You Think You Are?

Alice Munro’s 1978 collection of linked stories, Who Do You Think You Are? enacts what Lorraine York calls Munro’s theory of fiction as “tarrying with difficult emotions and knowledges.” Judith Butler’s seminal 1988 theory of gender performativity postulated that improvising gender incurs obvious and covert social punishments, but that performing gender includes the possibility of innovation. Rose, the protagonist, succumbs to and contests norms imposed on women in the southwestern Ontario township of Huron County during the 1940s to 1970s. This thesis explores Rose surviving punitive social conventions in her cultural context which are contiguous with trauma. For Rose, failure to conform is what Jack Halberstam defines as “queer failure”: it is a triumph of personal authenticity over gender essentialism and an acceptance of human imperfection. In the journey towards self-knowledge, Rose’s surviving trauma and defying gender scripts cause the “sticky affects” of shame and humiliation identified by Amelia DeFalco; the feeling that women are not afforded hope; and, in stressful situations, emotional dissociation and emotional economies, as identified by DeFalco and York. Rose’s marriage fails because of a sadomasochistic power struggle. Rose tarries with disconnection from others and from self; however, she innovates gender and subverts the intergenerational cycle of victimvictimizer by achieving a sense of community and strengthening personal authenticity, which Margaret Atwood says is, for “Munro’s women,” “an essential element, like air.”

Perceptions of women who confront hostile and benevolent sexism

ABSTRACT Little is known about the differences between confronting explicitly negative (hostile) vs. subjectively positive (benevolent) forms of sexism. Across three studies (N = 1315), we test a) whether confronting benevolent sexism is more costly for women than confronting hostile sexism and b) whether confronting some subtypes of benevolent sexism are more costly than others. We compared confrontations and non-confrontations of hostile sexism, benevolent sexism involving complementary gender differentiation (CGD), and benevolent sexism involving protective paternalism (PP). Surprisingly, confronting benevolent sexism was not more costly than confronting hostile sexism; a finding that replicated across studies and in two different contexts. Confronters of PP were evaluated more positively than confronters of CGD, but only when CGD embodied themes of gender essentialism (i.e., beliefs that men and women are naturally different). Confronters were mostly evaluated favorably relative to non-confronters and especially among women. Results imply that confronting benevolent sexism may have fewer consequences than anticipated.

Feminism contested and co-opted: Women, agency and politics of gender in the Greek and Greek-Cypriot far right

The literature on the gender dimension of far-right politics has established the constitutive role of gender and women’s involvement in the far right. However, knowledge about how far-right women negotiate and condition their agency within their parties and how they relate to gender, gender equality and feminism remains limited. This article builds on literature on conservative and far-right women’s agency, and on feminism’s employment by the far right. Based on interviews with female politicians and seasoned activists of the Greek Golden Dawn and the Greek-Cypriot National Popular Front, it examines how highly engaged far-right women construct their political agency at the intersections of often contradictory discourses and how, in doing so, they impact understandings of gender, gender equality and feminism. The analysis of the interview material identifies three different formulations of political agency the participants refer to: radical motherhood; female political militancy/political militant femininity and troubling of far-right gender roles. I argue that these different formulations of political agency show how, by using elements of feminism, far-right women construct flexible and versatile far-right gender discourses, which challenge gender essentialist positions that their parties convey. Moreover, they challenge delineations of far-right women’s political agency based on the compliance/(feminist) resistance dichotomy and expose the processes through which far-right women contest feminism by drawing on it. The article further argues that these formulations of political agency and far-right gender discourses may contribute to the far right’s appeal among women with diverse views on gender, gender equality, feminism and politics, as they may respond to an array of interests and demands that can be made from many different positions. Therefore, beyond contributing to discussions about the role of women, gender and feminism in far-right politics, the article demonstrates the importance of studying far-right women’s views for gaining a well-rounded understanding of this issue.

A neurocognitive approach to studying processes underlying parents' gender socialization.

Parental gender socialization refers to ways in which parents teach their children social expectations associated with gender. Relatively little is known about the mechanisms underlying gender socialization. An overview of cognitive and neural processes underlying parental gender socialization is provided. Regarding cognitive processes, evidence exists that parents' implicit and explicit gender stereotypes, attitudes, and gendered attributions are implicated in gender socialization. Other cognitive factors, such as intergroup attitudes, gender essentialism, internal motivation for parenting without gender stereotypes, gender identity, and conflict resolution are theoretically relevant mechanisms underlying gender socialization, but need further investigation. Regarding neural processes, studies demonstrated that attentional processing, conflict monitoring, behavior regulation, and reward processing might underlie stereotypes and biased behavior. However, more research is necessary to test whether these neural processes are also related to parental gender socialization. Based on this overview, a framework is presented of neural and cognitive factors that were theoretically or empirically related to gender socialization.

Acceptability and Preliminary Efficacy Testing of a Web-Based Coach Development Program Addressing Gender Essentialism Among Coaches of Adolescent Girls

Gender essentialism in coaching discourses often goes unnoticed by coaches yet promotes gender stereotypes. Currently, no coach development program addresses gender essentialism. This study tested the acceptability and preliminary efficacy of a novel web-based coaching intervention comprising seven self-led modules, aimed at reducing gender essentialism among coaches. A pilot randomized controlled trial was conducted with 102 coaches of adolescent girls across multiple sports. Coaches were randomized into the intervention condition (n = 54) or a waitlist control condition (n = 48). Both intervention and control group participants completed a baseline self-assessment prior. Intervention group participants undertook Coaching HER Foundation modules over 2 weeks and completed a postintervention self-assessment. Control group coaches completed the postintervention assessment without completing the Coaching HER Foundation modules. Based on the data, coaches found the intervention easy to follow, relevant, applicable, and enjoyable. Efficacy analyses illustrated the intervention group reported lower levels of gender essentialism at postintervention compared with the control group. Study results must be considered in relation to the small sample size and high attrition rate (72%). Study findings will inform intervention optimizations based on participant feedback, after which Coaching HER Foundation will be made freely available within a wider coach education and training framework.

Against Gender Essentialism: Reproductive Justice Doulas and Gender Inclusivity in Pregnancy and Birth Discourse

This article explores how reproductive justice (RJ) doulas support trans and nonbinary birthing people, while advancing more inclusive practices within the birth world. We begin by tracing historical changes in mainstream birth and pregnancy care to highlight how biological naturalism and woman-centered discourse became ingrained. Then, we analyze primary data, such as participant observations at doula trainings, interviews with RJ doulas, and training materials for birthworkers, to illuminate how RJ doulas mobilize RJ principles to provide gender-affirming advocacy and inclusive care to pregnant and birthing people of all genders. Key rhetorical strategies include (1) advocacy, (2) radical inclusion, and (3) self-reflexivity. Thus, our study extends existing feminist rhetorical scholarship on gender essentialism in popular pregnancy and childbirth discourse, expands scholarship on obstetric violence and marginalization of nonnormative birthing people, and explores rhetorical possibilities for redress.

Gender Essentialism at Work? The Case of Norwegian Childcare Workers

Abstract We examine the influence of gender essentialism, a key explanation of gender segregation in the labor market, by zooming in on childcare work, which remains a female-dominated occupation. Building on the assumption that gender essentialism is expressed through people’s perceptions of what jobs and tasks are suitable for men and women, we ask the following question: are childcare workers gender essentialists? We answer this question by investigating the attitudes and work-task participation of 2,549 Norwegian childcare workers. The results show that the workers did not display gender-essentialist attitudes. Male and female workers reported significantly different levels of participation in some work tasks, but the main conclusion is that gender is not an organizing principle of work-task participation. These results contradict findings from previous studies and contribute to ongoing debates about the causes of segregation because attitudes and behaviors are often evoked as explanations for the status quo.

Women Versus Females: Gender Essentialism in Everyday Language.

How do different words referring to gender/sex categories reflect and/or shape our understanding of gender/sex concepts? The current study examined this issue by assessing how individuals use gender/sex terms (females, males, women, men). Participants recruited through MTurk (N = 299) completed an online survey, rating the terms on nine dimensions, completing a fill-in-the-blank task, and reporting gender essentialist beliefs. Overall, participants rated the words females/males as more biological and technical, and women/men as higher on all other dimensions (e.g., appropriate, polite, warm). Preference for females/males correlated positively with gender essentialism among women. These findings suggest that use of certain gendered terms is linked to how people conceptualize gender/sex. Future research should further explore the relation between choice of gendered terms, how language choice reflects and shapes attitudes and beliefs about gender/sex, and factors (e.g., race) that may influence this relation.

Gender Equality Theology and Essentialism: Catholic Responses to Gender‐Based Violence and Inequality in Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACTThis paper addresses how Christianity, and in particular Catholicism, is deployed in response to gender‐based violence (GBV) in Papua New Guinea. It provides insights into the various ways the Catholic community, Church, and its clergy respond to and manage GBV. Focusing on a case study in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, the article reveals how Gender Equality Theology is used and received to address GBV in this region. What transpires is that despite supporting social change, Gender Equality Theology also advocates a particular status quo by essentialising gender relations, and thereby excluding non‐binary gender identifications and relations. The article will discuss this paradox, highlighting the importance of vernacularisation and how despite its conservatism, Gender Equality Theology provides victims, survivors, counselors, and activists with resources to respond to GBV and change gender inequality in the region.

Pursuing individualism without feminism: Leisure life and gender politics of young female bar-goers in urban China.

Drawing upon fieldwork data collected among young female bar-goers in China, we examine the gender politics manifested by their leisure activities and argue that these young women are pursuing individualism without feminism. By analyzing the act of bar hopping, we reveal the internal tension of individuation, which urges women to engage in gender labor in order to obtain preferential treatment regarding consumption and a competitive advantage in esthetic femininity. This indicates that the central axis of Chinese women's individualization is a hybrid of neoliberal individuals and essentialist gender roles. It encourages women to see themselves voluntarily as subordinate subjects in market transactions and feminized objects under male scrutiny. The pursuit of individualism without feminism prevents women from overcoming the highly gendered settings of bar scenarios, or imagining the female as a whole group with communal solidarity. The Chinese female individual manifests herself as a hostage of the collusion between the commodification of social life and a conservative gender regime. The case of China brings the individualization thesis out of its original compressed-modernity framework and indicates that East Asia's quest for modernity must address the compressed conditions of individualism and feminism simultaneously.

Gender Essentialisms and the Abject: Understanding Transgender Identity in Jackie Kay's Trumpet

This article focuses on the tensions between essentialist and fluid conceptions of gender identity in Jackie Kay's Trumpet (1998). Joss Moody, a Black Scottish jazz trumpeter who is posthumously revealed to have been biologically female, is constructed largely through external characterisations. The most significant of these narratives are his wife Millie's and his son Colman's. I first illustrate the importance of performativity in understanding gender identity through the work of Judith Butler. This provides context for my discussion of Millie and Joss, focused on the relationship between the pellicular and the sartorial. The narrative focus on skin and the body versus clothing serves to illustrate Millie's understanding of gender as fluid and performative. In the second section of the essay, I outline the abject and address Colman's expulsion of that which threatens his sense of self. Positing that his perception of Joss as a representative of the maternal that must be expelled in order to enter the Symbolic and constitute a self, his understanding of gender on binary terms is the key element in his internal struggle. Embarking on a journey to learn about his father's life, Colman's refocusing on personal, lived experience allows his views to align with Millie's by the end of the novel. Thereby, Kay illustrates the tension between binary and nuanced understandings of gender in Trumpet, and the method by which this can be overcome: an inclusive understanding that undermines notions of a hegemonic masculinity from which non-conformants can be excluded based on bodily attributes.

Review of Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism

Review of Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism Sunhay You (bio) Banu Subramaniam’s Holy Science: The Biopolitics of Hindu Nationalism, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019 Building on the insights of feminist, queer, postcolonial, science and technology, and religion studies, Holy Science deconstructs the binary between science and religion to reveal their entangled formations and uneven effects—the consequences of colonial legacies that privilege science over religion as a universally objective mode of knowledge production. In present-day postcolonial India, Hindu nationalism takes shape through the rhetoric of science to consolidate and integrate India’s past with its future destiny. The five case studies and chapters that make up the book present thick descriptions delineating how the rhetoric of science and religion come together to both clarify and amplify the hindutva of Hindu nationalism, an ideology that naturalizes “a great and grand Hindu past where science, technology, and philosophy thrived” (7). In this imaginary, Hinduism coheres with modern capitalism, neoliberalism, Western science, and technology to beckon a return to India’s prosperous past in the present. Offering analyses of scientific studies that undergird and extend the goals of Hindu nationalism, Subramaniam engages in an “experimental humanities,” a methodological approach that brings together the “empiricism and analytic conventions of experiments from the sciences and the rhetorical and contextual analyses from the humanities” (34). For instance, in her fourth chapter, “Biocitizenship in Neoliberal Times,” Subramaniam delineates how state investments in Indigenous medical systems (IMS) such as Ayurveda seek to establish the scientific basis of India’s ancient spiritual healing practices. Advances in Western science are to affirm what has already been discovered and intuited in India through more spiritual means of inquiry. Notably, using science to legitimize India’s cultural and historical authority has contradictory effects. While disrupting [End Page 278] colonial hierarchies of knowledge, the medicalization of Ayurveda also fortifies a vision of a unified Indian people with shared genetic origins and health concerns. Hindu nationalism ends up reinforcing the disenfranchising structures of the neoliberal and bionational governance that propounds the biological basis of nationhood and individuated citizenship. In this manner, studies in genomics and IMS can amplify essentialist politics of difference that buttress hierarchies of caste and sex in biological terms. India’s Vedic tradition, upon which Hinduism and Indigenous medical systems are based, valorizes India’s origins and serves as the basis of what Subramaniam terms “archaic modernity.” The “archaic” becomes synonymous with “modernity” as the past becomes the way of the future. The first chapter, “Home and the World: The Modern Lives of the Vedic Sciences,” reviews how the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) mobilized archaic modernity to gain state control and majority support at the dawn of the new millennium. However, this revamped image of Hinduism as synonymous with scientific and technological advancement reinvests in an essentialist gender hierarchy. These competing forces collide in the revival of Vaastushastra, an ancient Indian science for harmonizing living spaces in accordance with the five elements (water, earth, fire, air, and space). Subramaniam notes that this architectural science and style, marketed toward women, has gained much traction as a status symbol. As a gendered site of neoliberal consumerism, Vaastushastra redomesticates women as the bearers of tradition within the home and nation. In chapter 2, “Colonial Legacies, Postcolonial Biologies: The Queer Politics of (Un)Natural Sex,” Subramaniam delves into the Judeo-Christian roots of the biological sciences, especially those that dictate the organic basis of sexual difference and heteronormative sexual reproduction. This legacy lives on in the Indian Penal Code 377 (IPC 377), which identifies any form of “unnatural” intercourse as a criminal offense. Despite its colonial roots, the IPC 377 has garnered the support of Hindu nationalists, who align with its historical investments in eugenics and in identifying and penalizing “undesirable” citizen subjects along the lines of caste, religion, and class. Hindu nationalist lawyers have gone on to defend the code in court, describing nonheteronormative sex acts as abject markers of British and Muslim degeneracy, complicity, and anti-nationalism. While the code has changed to permit consensual gay sex and acknowledge a third gender for transgender people, it sustains the religious-scientific language of the “unnatural” as a...

Exploring gender and intersectionality from an assemblage perspective in food crop cultivation: A case of the Millennium Villages Project implementation site in western Kenya

Gender essentialism in development practice has been criticised for more than three decades with little effect. We use gender and intersectionality within the framework of assemblage to analyse the relations, practices, and intersections of both human and nonhuman elements within the context of the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) in Luoland in western Kenya. This framework permits us to tease-apart essentially categorised ‘women’ revealing changing dynamics of senior and junior women within the Luo polygamous homestead, dala, and their implication for food security within. This insight reveals the inadequacy of essentialising representations of Luo women and the relevance of their recognition as social beings who differently construct themselves and their actions, in interaction with both human and nonhuman elements. Gender and intersectionality from an assemblage perspective makes visible the involved human and nonhuman intersecting elements and the changing dynamics within an ongoing process in a specific socio-ecological context that better support development.

Stigma, stereotypes, and status: How North American outdoor educators understand and experience masculinity

Although multiple studies have considered women’s experiences in the outdoor education field and the impact on women’s notions of gender, little research has been conducted on men’s experiences and ideas about gender in the outdoors. This research explores male outdoor leaders’ notions about masculinity and how they may shape their practice. Interview, observation, and artefactual data were recorded and analyzed to determine the 18 male-identifying participants’ ideas about masculinity in the outdoor education realm. Participants expressed confusion about rapidly changing gender norms, worries about stigmatization, distaste for hypermasculine performances, and a generally progressive outlook about gender issues. In addition, multiple participant statements reinforced gender essentialism, demonstrating adherence to a hybrid masculinity.

Positionality and the dialectic of race and gender in British higher education: The issue with (mis) representation

Disappointed by countless academic resources and personal accounts that tend to situate women of colour as the racialised other, this article aims to critique Western representation of Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) women and query the production of knowledge in British Higher Education (BHE). Engaging in self-conscious introspective narrative where our personal experiences are linked to the social, we situate this paper in duoethnographic research by linking our personal experiences to the broader social context of “Whiteness” found within British Higher Education. Using our lived experiences as an entry point, we analyse personal challenges of negotiating “Whiteness” within British Higher Education. Drawing from the notion of gender and cultural essentialism, we discuss how Western discourse typically presents Arab and other women of colour as culturally oppressed and lacking a sense of agency. We call attention to the need to embrace decolonial feminism (Lugones, 2010), where the coloniality of gender is addressed and intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) is appreciated as an analytical tool for the experiences of women.