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Gender stereotypes have existed since the beginning of modern man. We've all heard them before; male dominance and female weakness, a controlled male and a flustered female, aggression and passion, and many others that all basically boil down to the same thing. Emily Martin, in her essay entitled The Egg and the Sperm, takes this problem of gender stereotype to a new and much more serious level. As an anthropologist, Martin is concerned with the socio-cultural impacts on many different aspects of everyday life, including biology. In doing her research for this article, Martin was trying to uncover suspicions she had about socio-cultural gender stereotypes, and the affects they had on the diction used to describe egg and sperm interactions in numerous biology books and research reports.
Martin believes that if in fact if her suspicions are true, then what we learn in biology class would be more then just biology. We would also be learning about the cultural beliefs the authors where influenced by when they were writing. If Martin's assertions proved to be true, this meant a very scary thing. It would show that silly, but
serious gender stereotypes were making their way in scientific materials and further into our culture.
When doing her research, Martin made sure that nobody would have any room to criticize her credibility or the credibility of the article. The shear volume of research that she did is shown in the fact that there are over seventy end-notes in The Egg and the Sperm. Martin spent her time reading through endless biology books; from not as well known, to national best sellers like Molecular Biology of the Cell, written by Bruce Alberts. She also found (at the time of research) current material from...
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...st makes the reader think, what is she trying to get at then? Leaving that paragraph out of her article would boost the viability of the purpose, and would also get rid of any contradictions that may lie within.
Despite the contradicting citation she offered, Martin makes a valid and noteworthy conclusion in her research. The fact that such an age-old stereotype of the knight in shining armor and the damsel in distress could possibly effect how biology is presented, is scary and disturbing at the same time. It needs to be addressed and erased in the very near future as Martin argued, especially when it gets to the point where it could actually alter known scientific data. Through careful research and close attention to specific diction used, hopefully Martin has brought up a more then valid point that can be dealt with properly before it goes on any longer
there are thousands of years of evidence to go against these new gender roles, society assumed
Martin is confident that the extinctions must have been caused by “something outside the normal experience of mammals.”
To begin, I think it is important to analyze the difference between “sex” and “gender”. Up until researching for this paper, I though that the two terms were interchangeable in meaning, rather, they are separate ideas that are connected. According to Mary K. Whelan, a Doctor of Anthropology focusing on gender studies, sex and gender are different. She states, “Western conflation of sex and gender can lead to the impression that biology, and not culture, is responsible for defining gender roles. This is clearly not the case.”. She continues with, “Gender, like kinship, does have a biological referent, but beyond a universal recognition of male and female "packages," different cultures have chosen to associate very different behaviors, interactions, and statuses with men and women. Gender categories are arbitrary constructions of culture, and consequently, gender-appropriate behaviors vary widely from culture to culture.” (23). Gender roles are completely defined by the culture each person lives in. While some may think that another culture is sexist, or dem...
In the first half of the book, “Half-changed world”, “Half-changed minds”, the author argues about how social and environmental factors influence the mind on the gender differences. She also includes the history and impact of the gender stereotypes we see and how science has been used to justify the use of sexism. In the first chapter in the “Half-changed world” section of the book she uses an example of if a researcher tapped you on the shoulder and asked you to write down what males and females were like if you would write down things such as compassionate for females and aggressive for males or if you would look at the researcher and tell them that every person is unique.(Fine,3) Based on the information in the book most people would pick up the pencil and write down descriptions of each gender based on the way the world perceives gender. She also talks about marriage and how “the husband is the breadwinner and works outside the home to provide financial resources for the family. In return, his wife is responsible for both the emotional and household labor created by the family…” (Fine,78)
...ok goes back and forth between factual writing and narrative making it really confusing. To add to the confusion there is a Glossary for “scientific words” which means if you do not understand something you will have to go back and forth pages. Most of the things touched in the book we have already discussed in classes like General Biology, Molecular Genetics and Bioanalytical Techniques. I feel the book is geared towards people with some degree of knowledge in Biology (like High School students) and an interest in Genetics and honestly society works now on instant gratification, why would I have to pay to hear the opinion of an incredibly accomplished old man when I can look up in the internet the opinion of someone maybe less ignorant than you and form myself an opinion based of someone else’s firm opinion.
Gender roles are often used in our own society to tie people to a certain representation for what is socially acceptable. These roles perpetuate gender inequalities because they often make the female end of the spectrum worth less than the male. One example is equating masculinity with strength and femininity with weakness. Because of this sayings such as “You run like a girl” become negative. Gender roles create a system where people are set to a different standard based off gender alone. In trying to follow what is socially acceptable based on gender people are forced into roles. There is a lower percentage of women in science than men because girls are taught at a young age that being smart isn’t feminine. These roles harm boys too, teaching them that they have to be hyper-masculine to be considered
Gender inequity is caused by old stereotypes that no longer apply in society, but still exist.
During the nineteenth century, gender roles were outrageously strict. Linda Brannon, a Doctorate Professor of Psychology at McNeese State University, states “a gender stereotype consists of beliefs about the psychological traits and characteristics
... history, it is proven that gender changes along with social, political, and cultural change. Despite all, many women continue to face other kinds of discrimination. Women continue to experience sexism, the idea of traditional gender roles. Women are still thought to be more involved in taking care of their children and the household. Women often face unconscious stereotypes in the workplace as well. In some cases, women have a less change of obtaining better, and higher paying jobs. Women often don’t get promoted to higher positions in office, despite their qualifications and experiences. Female candidates running for public office experience forms of sexism as well. The variations and adaptions of society are evidence that reinforce the idea that gender is formed under social construction rather than the essence from biology alone.
Gender stereotypes are common in the United States today, even though many men and women have been working hard to defeat it. The task is made difficult however, when society in general implants the idea of gender roles into the mind of a child. Two authors, Judy Mann of The Difference and Bernard Lefkowitz of Our Guys face the issue of gender roles and stereotypes, and how they affect our lives today.
In the summer of 1995, the periodical Wilson Quarterly published "Enemies of Promise," an essay by J. Michael Bishop, a Nobel Prize-winning professor of microbiology from the University of California, San Francisco. The essay addressed the renewed criticism the scientific community has received in recent years by an ignorant and unduly critical public. The overall effect this single work has had on the world may be nominal, but the points Professor Bishop raises are significant, and provide ammunition against the ignorants who maintain this "intellectual war," centuries after it was sparked.
This article was written to bring attention to the way men and women act because of how they were thought to think of themselves. Shaw and Lee explain how biology determines what sex a person is but a persons cultures determines how that person should act according to their gender(Shaw, Lee 124). The article brings up the point that, “a persons gender is something that a person performs daily, it is what we do rather than what we have” (Shaw, Lee 126). They ...
Martin, Emily. "The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles." Gender, Sex, and Sexuality. New York: Oxford University, 2009. 248-53. Print.
Female to Male as Nature is to Culture Gender relations form an integral part of human social interactions and are of great interest to anthropologists. Since the feminist movement in the late 1960s, one question that has been discussed is to what extent the opposition between women and men can be thought of in terms of the dichotomy between nature and culture and what implications this has for the position of women in society. This structuralist perspective was first formulated by Ortner (1974), drawing on Levi-Strauss and de Beauvoir, but has since been criticised for being simplistic and ethnocentric. I will delineate Ortner’s argument and look at its application to male and female roles in childbirth before examining the ways in which her line of reasoning has been found wanting. The universality of the opposition between nature and culture is questioned, and the cultural specificity and complexity of gender, power relations and sex is explored before concluding that the parallel dichotomy of nature / culture and female / male is a relatively recent Western concept which does not necessarily help us understand other societies’ gender relations.
First we need to examine the cases where this is present. Less obvious stereotypes are those of women. Women?s roles in society have changed throughout the times. Are the...