Table of contents:
- The invisible woman in history
- The origin of the genre
- Concepts and definitions
- History of concepts
- Social impact
By Msc. Jeannette Vía Ampuero. March 8, 2018
The 70s of the last 20th century distinguished itself because studies related to women were formalized in the academic universe, although these had started in the 60s together with the feminist movements of the time.
These studies inquired about the invisibility of women in the field of knowledge. This led to a rereading of scientific knowledge.
It is evident that in different disciplines women, either as an object or as a subject, are absent. At PsicologíaOnline, we invite you to take a theoretical journey about gender.
You may also be interested in: Gender identity: what it is and how it is built Index- The invisible woman in history
- The origin of the genre
- Concepts and definitions
- History of concepts
- Social impact
The invisible woman in history
The issue of invisibility or the absence of women goes beyond confirming the denial of her in the different branches of knowledge, but rather the question is deeper since it involves the paradigms of understanding science, and this observation revealed that there is an ambiguous relationship with respect to women in the different disciplines.
Invisibility is not related so much to the empirical of the social sciences but rather to the representation that is made of it. So invisibility is more of a theoretical question, of interpretation models.
An analytical invisibility of women is then defined in the social sciences.
In the development of the contents about invisibility, it is stated that there are 2 prejudices that act interrelated in the social sciences:
- androcentrism
- ethnocentrism
Androcentrism alludes to a look from men and for men.
Ethnocentrism places the white, Western man as a model.
These biases will take place in analytical models and in the observation of reality.
Androcentrism is not related to the fact that the researchers are men but because they are men and women who explain reality with male models of analysis.
In the 1980s, there was a questioning by black intellectuals in the United States regarding the universality of the concept of women.
They stated that there are differences between the experiences and experiences of black and white women and therefore, people with different stories and experiences cannot be incorporated into the same category. Hence the term is pluralized and then talk about women because there is a recognition of diversity.
Returning to the studies of women during the first stage, they were dedicated to researching the position of women in history, literature, etc., and this revealed that the submission, devaluation, oppression of women is present in all historical times and in all societies.
All this process and development of events led, in the 80s, to Gender Studies.
The origin of the genre
The origin of Gender has been treated in various studies and the form of organization of societies has been considered as a cause of the sexual division of labor.
There are two theses that explain this division:
- The woman has the possibility of procreating and breastfeeding, she is then assigned the care of the children for which the space of the house is adequate, adding to this the attention of the house. This possibility of procreating gives women the power to guarantee their offspring.
- Men conceive doubts about exclusivity in terms of their paternity, in the face of this situation of insecurity they have rules to control sexuality as a guarantee that this woman was only for that man. It is controlled with motherhood, with marriage, and women are confined to the domestic space.
Although the concept of Gender began to take shape in the work of the psychologist Jhon Money back in the 1950s, to refer to a cultural category in the formation of sexual identity, it was none other than the psychoanalyst Robert Stoller, in 1961, who In his book Sex and Gender, he conceptualizes the concept of Gender.
We must not forget the pioneering studies of the anthropologist Margaret Mead in the three civilizations of New Guinea, year 1935, in which she develops approaches and discovers situations that lead to a break with the socially established in terms of "the natural" in the sexual division of the job.
And so it is, in 1946 the conviction is literally expressed that what we are is not biological but cultural, and this happens in The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoair, who expresses "we are not born women, we become women", she denounces the cultural, constructed character of female stereotypes and also demands the recognition of the rights of women, as human beings.
Later, in 1975 Gayle Rubin and her essay The Traffic in Women, provides tools to inquire about the origin of the oppression of women and how this oppression was "subjectivized".
This work, which has been written for 30 years, became the driving force behind Gender studies.
We can define Gender as a sociocultural construction made up of behaviors, attitudes, values, symbols and expectations elaborated from biological differences that refer us to the characteristics that society attributes to men or women, thus building what is known as male gender and gender. female.
The introduction of the concept of Gender produced an epistemological break in the way in which the position of women in society had been understood. Namely:
- He assumed the idea of variability: being a woman or a man obeys a cultural construction, so their definitions will vary from culture to culture. You cannot universalize the concept and speak of women or men as unique categories.
- It establishes the relational idea: gender as a social construction of sexual differences refers to the distinction between feminine and masculine and therefore to the relationship between them. If we talk about women we have to talk about men and vice versa. It is necessary to study the relationships between men and women since in most societies their differences produce inequality.
- The principle of the multiplicity of elements that constitute the identity of the subject, gender identity, emerges, since gender is experienced in ethnic, racial, class, etc.
- The idea of positioning arises: study of the context in which the gender relations of men and women occur and the diversity of positions they will occupy. Eg: a woman can go through different positions on the same day, of subordination to her husband, of superiority to her domestic worker, of equality with her peers at work, of superiority to the secretary, etc.
- Everything mentioned makes him creditor of his own epistemological field in which different disciplines flow.
The concept of Gender poses the challenge of exploring realities rather than assuming them as given.
It allows not only to know the relationships between men and women but also opens the possibility of change.
It should be noted that the Gender concept causes differences of interpretation and conceptual confusion depending on the languages.
In English Gender refers to the sexes while in Spanish the term Gender refers both to the species or class to which the objects belong and to the fabric, the literary, musical genre, etc., is also known.
Anatomy has been the most important support for classifying people, and thus, men and women are designated as male and female.
In Spanish, the issue of gender linked to the construction of the masculine and feminine is mostly known from the grammatical function and only people, who are familiar with the subject and with the academic discussion in this regard, understand it as the construction cultural that alludes to the relationship between the sexes.
Before there was talk of confusion and one of the most common is precisely to confuse gender with sex, that is, to use the concept gender as a synonym for sex, and what is more, it is quite often used as a synonym for woman, this error is given because in the Spanish language it is customary to speak of women as feminine gender and this creates the conditions to make the mistake of thinking that talking about gender is referring only to women.
It is of utmost importance to point out and reinforce that Gender involves both women and men, and that it understands the relationships between the sexes, the social relationships between the sexes. If we talk about women it is strictly necessary to talk about men, they cannot be separated.
To avoid these mistakes and confusion, it is convenient to refer to men and women as sexes and to leave the term gender for social evaluations about the masculine and feminine.
Both sex and gender allude to different issues, they cannot be used as synonyms, since sex refers to the biological and gender to the socially constructed, culturally, to the social construction of sexual differences (feminine and feminine). male).
Concepts and definitions
It is appropriate to include here some concepts and their definitions that are related to the concept of Gender, these are:
Sex: physical, biological, anatomical and physiological characteristics of human beings that define them as women or men. It is recognized from genital data. Sex is a natural construction, with what you are born.
Gender roles: Tasks and activities that a culture assigns to the sexes.
Gender stereotypes: they are simplified but strongly assumed ideas about the characteristics of men and women. They are the basis of prejudice.
Gender stratification: Unequal distribution of rewards (socially valued resources, power, prestige, and personal freedom) between men and women, reflecting different positions on the social scale.
The concept of Gender helps us understand that those issues, behaviors, and situations that we consider “natural” for men or women are actually social constructions that have nothing to do with biology.
The gender role takes place according to the norms dictated by society and culture and decides behavior, female and male behavior, that is, what is expected of a man and what is expected of a woman.
This dichotomy: masculine feminine focuses most of the time on rigid postulates that limit and, not infrequently, nullify human potentialities in order to fulfill gender requirements.
History of concepts
The Gender category has its origin in Psychology and as stated at the beginning of this work, it was Robert SToller who, after studies and research on disorders in sexual identity, concluded that the assignment and acquisition of an identity is more important than the genetic load, hormonal and biological.
The Gender concept began to be used as a way of establishing a distinction between biological sex and the socially constructed in order to expose the situations of discrimination against women, situations that were always protected by the supposed sexual difference, when in reality what is involved is a social issue.
This sexual difference and the consequent distribution and assignment of roles are not "naturally" biological, but as has already been said, but it is necessary to insist, it is a social construction.
It must be recognized that culture creates sexism, that is, discrimination based on sex through gender.
By considering the different anatomy of women and men, each culture has social representations, behaviors, attitudes, and specific discourses for men and women.
Society elaborates the ideas of "what should be" women and men, of what is supposed to be "proper" to each sex.
This is the reason why inequalities between the sexes cannot be modified if the social constructs that have prevented equality are not considered.
This suggests that legal provisions that establish equality between men and women cannot be effective because what is needed are actions that expose the factors that are covertly intervening to reinforce the subordination and discrimination of women.
Talking about Gender, we said before, does not mean talking about women only, but about men and women, their social and cultural relationships, and in doing so it is necessary to address the issue of the gender perspective.
The gender perspective refers to the fact that it is necessary to identify the sexual difference on the one hand, and on the other, and with a very different connotation, the ideas and social representations that are made taking these sexual differences into account.
M. Lagarde in Gender and Feminism defines it as “a feminist conception of the world, the center of which is a critique of the androcentric conception of the world. It is a critical, alternative and explanatory vision of what happens in the Gender order. It is a scientific, political and analytical vision ”and adds that“ the objective of this perspective aims to contribute to the subjective and social conception of a new configuration of the conception of the world based on history, culture, politics, from women and with women".
The essential principle of the gender perspective is, says Lagarde: the recognition of the diversity of genders and the diversity within each one.
For quite some time now, various disciplines have been given the task of investigating what is innate and what is acquired in male and female characteristics, and what was observed is that in all times and at all times the distribution of roles It was not always the same, but there was one constant: the subordination of women to men. And this was explained, until not long ago, from sexual differences, from the biological difference between the sexes and of course that difference gave rise to imposing the stamp of the "natural".
Motherhood has become the supreme expression of biological difference and the origin of women's oppression is explained from this interpretation, that is, from motherhood as the absolute representative of sexual, biological difference.
The error is that although the ability to be a mother establishes a difference between men and women, this does not mean that biology should be considered as the origin and cause of the difference between the sexes and even more, of the subordination of women.
In 1976, a colloquium was held directed by André Lwoff, Nobel Prize in medicine, in which the biologist positions were demolished.According to what was approached in this colloquium, it is suggested that it is possible that there are behavioral differences between men and women as a result of a genetic program. but these differences are minimal and in no way do they translate as a sign of superiority of one sex over another.
Culture, society grants specific personality characteristics depending on whether it is a man or a woman, but the truth is that there are no personality characteristics or behaviors exclusive to one sex.
- Men and women share human traits, tendencies, characteristics.
- A woman is soft, delicate, loving, and a man is also soft, delicate, and loving.
- A man is brave, strong, determined and a woman is also brave, strong and determined.
All these prejudices and stereotypes are so ingrained in human subjectivity that it is more difficult to produce changes in social constructions than in natural facts. The example that M Lamas proposes in this regard is very illustrative, and says: “it is easier to free the woman from the natural need to breastfeed than to get her husband to take charge of giving her the bottle ”.
The repeated discourse of the "natural" is maintained and is gaining more and more force and validity because in this way it reinforces the difference between men and women and in doing so it also reinforces discrimination and domination.
In all this chain of events we cannot overlook an element of indisputable value and importance when analyzing the concept of Gender, analyzing sexist patterns, I mean education.
It is known that even today in schools, institutions and at home, behaviors “appropriate” for girls and others for boys are maintained.
The media are essential if we talk about education, it is not enough for professionals to improve, meet, discuss, participate in events, etc. if all this does not come out to the masses, if all this is not shown with examples, with behaviors, with proposals for reflection.
Both education and the media are essential to promote changes in entrenched and stereotyped gender behaviors.
Discrimination and sexism seem easy to combat for some people and for this they propose to solve the problem by offering women positions equal to men, if the issue were so simplistic it would not have been necessary so much study or so much research to solve it. And according to M Lamas, "considering that sexist discrimination can be eliminated if men and women are treated the same is to ignore the weight of gender."
The purpose of the Gender perspective is to eliminate discrimination against women by women and men by men.
It seeks a new reordering of responsibilities between men and women, redistribution of roles, etc. It seeks equal opportunities.
If what concerns us is what is related to discrimination, domination, inequality, it is necessary to review the history and observe that legal equality, that is, the achievement of the right to vote achieved by the feminist movement during the 1st Wave, did not bring about the expected changes, the woman continued in the same conditions.
The fight for the right to vote was not sustained by the mere fact of voting, the slogan went beyond simple action, it was thought thus to reach the category of citizen, but it did not work.
Equal rights is a significant achievement in this long and harsh struggle, but what it is about is equity, equal opportunities, and to speak of the former does not imply the achievement of the latter.
Equal rights is a necessary but not sufficient condition to achieve equal opportunities because the elements, the conditions that generate inequality are present in all the work of the human being and are transmitted and installed in education and in the subjective of people, even before birth.
This reminds me of the comment of a co-worker who, during her pregnancy, used to say: “I want a female, to help me”.
Socialization, the subjectivization of events, cultural processes, etc. they cannot change by the mere existence of laws.
The sustained situation of women in terms of discrimination, undervaluation, aroused the interest of feminist movements to elaborate theories that explain the oppression of women.
Between the 1960s and 1980s of the last century, we can locate what was called the 2nd Wave of feminism and in the 1970s the study of inequality between men and women and not of the difference began, since for At this time, there is already a clear awareness of the existence of inequality between men and women and that this inequality is nothing other than hierarchical relations, power relations between the genders.
Social impact
It is evident that the differences do not respond to natural causes and this leads to the claim of equality between women and men.
As indicated above, it is at this historical moment, 1975, that Gayle Rubin's essay The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex appears. The author gives an account of the oppression of women, explains the origin of this oppression as a socio-cultural construction and for this she uses the category that she herself defined as the sex-gender system and of the same she says that it is the “set of provisions by the which the biological raw material of human sex and procreation are shaped by human and social intervention and satisfied in a conventional way, however strange some of the conventions may be. " In other words, each society has a gender-sex system, that is, a set of provisions by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity,then each human group has a set of norms that regulate sex and procreation, and exemplifies this by saying that hunger is hunger everywhere, but each culture determines what is the right food to satisfy it, and in the same way sex is Sex everywhere, but what is accepted as sexual behavior varies from culture to culture.
In this essay G. Rubin gives great significance to sexuality based on the diversity of experiences in men and women.
She pointed out that sex is determined and obtained culturally and that the subordination of women is a consequence of the relationships that gender produces and organizes, that is, the relationships that originate differences between men and women.
During this tour, concepts such as "masculine", "feminine", social and cultural construction, etc., have been addressed, which leads us to think about identity, gender identity.
In this regard, MC García Aguilar says in The Gender Identity Crisis that “what determines the identity and behavior of women and men is not biological sex but rather having experienced experiences, myths and behavior throughout their lives. customs assigned to each of the genders ”.
According to what gender studies indicate, identity unfolds in three stages, namely:
-the assignment of gender: from birth and from the external appearance of their genitals a cultural content is deposited that is interpreted as expectations, as what they should be and do according to whether they are a boy or a girl.
- Gender identity: from 2 or 3 years old. According to gender, it identifies with feelings, behaviors, games, etc. As a boy or girl, the family, society reinforce the culturally established patterns for the genders, after establishing the gender identity it becomes a filter through which all their experiences will pass and once assumed it is very unlikely to reverse it.
- The gender role: Socialization characterizes this stage, interacts with other groups, identities are reinforced, and gender roles are learned as a set of norms that society and culture dictate for male and female behavior, and without that there are doubts about what is expected of a child, "what they are and what they should do".
Following García Aguilar and considering this development, it can be said that gender identity is relative to the position that both men and women occupy in certain contexts of their interaction, contexts in which they live, interactions that occur throughout life. life and that suggest that identity is then shaped by those contexts and interactions and not from the biological. From this it follows that identity cannot be built from scratch, but rather is built from the person's self-awareness.
The gender identity thus exposed leads us to think about the need for historical knowledge, understand experiences, experiences, historical knowledge that gives meaning to the existence of the person, when it does not exist, when it is lost, then we fall into an imbalance.
García Aguilar says that this is precisely what is happening with our identities: they are out of balance.
The current reality, the modern world in which we live is plagued with distressing phenomena and situations: crime, drugs, violence, poverty, inequality of opportunities, etc. Considering this panorama and taking into account gender, it is valid to underline that "in societies in crisis the conformation of genders is not determined", this means that there are no patterns to follow, that our behaviors are changing, in short, that the cultural paradigm is on crisis.
Say for example: unisex clothing, earrings and necklaces for women and men, long or short hair for both sexes, homosexuals, lesbians claiming their rights…
Faced with this baggage of events, how can gender identity be constructed?
The answer to this question can be located in two poles, one negative and the other positive, says García Aguilar.
The first associated with the lack of guidelines, of patterns, which, of course, leads to destabilizing the development of girls and boys, causing confusion in their generic identity.
But the second point of view, the positive one, is that precisely in these crisis situations is when it is possible to intervene and generate changes, changes that go beyond their sexual differences and behaviors, rather putting the weight of those changes in their relationships, in how they are related.
We cannot forget that in the construction of gender identities, changes must take place at the conceptual level and from there, the changes in different conceptions such as sexuality, family, couple, work, spaces, etc. operate.
Once these changes have been achieved, only then can we talk about modifying attitudes, languages, feelings, needs.
It is a challenge, it implies a greater share of responsibility for women and men.
So far, a development about Gender has been sought and different aspects that are related to it have been addressed, however, it still remains to consider a concept that integrates and shows, reflects what has been expressed above, that is, the relationship between the sexes, discrimination, subordination, prejudices, etc.: language.
When we refer to language, it is also necessary to address thought since the first is nourished by the second and vice versa.
Language is the extension of thought, we decode into words what we have learned and incorporated throughout our socio-cultural history.
The process of making symbols, creating languages and symbolic systems constitutes the phenomenon of humanization. (Purificación Mayobre Saying the world in feminine).
But during this process, the man becomes the "owner" of the discourse and declares himself the sole representative of humanity, the woman being excluded.
Purificación Mayobre explains this from the bivalent system or binary system, and says that: "our culture, from language, which is its most important source of expression, to the last manifestation contained in it, is organized binary."
Let's see how thought is organized in Western society, this is from the bivalent system, in this system the valences have different values, since one is always the depository of the positive and the other of the negative. P. Mayobre exemplifies this with the black white binomial, the first is associated with the light, snowy, pure and the second with the dark, gloomy.
This bivalent system gives rise to the hierarchy of the component parts of the dichotomy and applied to the sexes (male and female) the same thing happens, that is, it gives rise to a hierarchy or asymmetry, as was said above lines, the man constitutes in the only one capable of naming the world according to their experiences, experiences, needs, etc.
The man would therefore be the positive. The negative woman, therefore, denies and excludes herself.
Suffice it to review our own everyday language, that of the media, that of knowledge. For example: "the mark that man has left in time", "the evolution of man in history…", "attention to man", "children need…", "film festival for the Latin American child", "The health of man."
Although we must consider that in recent times this way of naming the world is being questioned and with this it is urged to develop a discourse where women are present with all the potential of which they are capable.
The task is arduous, since as has been said on another occasion, all our experience, experiences, are mediated by subjectivity.
It is not enough to say boys and girls, human being, individual instead of "the man", if that has not been internalized, if it has not been felt, if it has not been incorporated.
It is not only about information, the issue is to provide tools that lead to questioning.
Language constitutes a powerful instance to name, to make appear or disappear, for this reason the purpose is to make women visible in the field of language because what is not named does not exist and, as P. Mayobre says: "because it is with the language with which a culture is constituted ”.
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Bibliography- GARCÍA AGUILAR, Ma. The crisis of gender identity
- LAGARDE, Marcela The multidimensionality of the Gender category and feminism
- LAMAS, Marta The gender perspective.
- LAMAS, Marta Uses, difficulties and possibilities of the Gender category.
- MAYOBRE, Purification Saying the world in feminine
- MONTECINO, Sonia Oral Word, Univ. Of Chile, Faculty of Social Sciences Electronic books collection, 1977
- RUBIN, Gayle Trafficking in women: notes on the “political economy” of sex.
- VASALLO, Norma The Gender: an analysis of the "naturalization" of inequalities.