The hormones responsible for these dramatic changes—testosterone and estro-
gen—have been held responsible as well for differences between men and women.
Much hormone research concerns the effect of testosterone on behavior, since
males have much higher levels than females, and its effects seem far more noticeable.
Everyone “knows,” for example, that testosterone “causes” aggression. Increases in
testosterone levels do cause increases in aggression. But it is also true that aggressive
behavior leads to an increase in production of testosterone. So biology causes behav-
ior, and behavior (which may be culturally induced) causes biological changes. For
example, one study matched two males in athletic contests. The one whose
testosterone level was higher usually won. But then they put two males with equal
testosterone levels in the competition: The winner’s testosterone level went up, and
the loser’s went down. Testosterone levels are thus responsive to changes in our social
circumstances as well, so it is difficult to say that biology caused those changes (see
Kemper, 1990; Sapolsky, 1997).
Biology is not necessarily destiny. Biology gives us the raw material from which
we develop our identities. That raw material is shaped, molded, and given meaning
within the culture in which we find ourselves. As in the example of testosterone stud-
ies, it makes far more sense to understand the interactionof biology and culture—to
explorebothnatureandnurture—than to pretend that something as complicated as
personal identity and social arrangements between women and men can be reduced
to either nature ornurture.
Exploring Cross-Cultural
Variations of Sex and Gender
One way in which social scientists have demonstrated that gender behavior cannot
all be biologically determined is to observe the remarkable differences in women and
EXPLORING CROSS-CULTURAL VARIATIONS OF SEX AND GENDER 285In the nine-
teenth century,
opponents of
women’s equal-
ity used biological arguments to prevent
women from going to work and to col-
lege, from voting, or even from serving
on juries. Women were said to be too
weak, irrational, or emotional, or too
fragile and delicate.
Some tried to use statistical data to
prove that women were not biologically
capable of a college education.
According to Edward C. Clarke,
Harvard’s first professor of education,
the demands of a college education
would be too taxing for women, and if
women went to college their brains
would grow bigger and heavier, but their
wombs would shrink.
His evidence? It turned out that
college-educated women had fewer
children than noncollege-educated
women. And 42 percent of women
admitted to mental hospitals were
college educated, compared with only“Biology Is Destiny”
How do we know
what we know
16 percent of men. (Remember that in
the Middle Ages, the cause of insanity
for women was believed to be a
detached uterus that then floated
through the body poisoning it; the word
hysteriameans “wandering womb”; thus,
“hysterectomies.”) Could it be that
college education was actually driving
women crazy—and causing them to stop
having babies?
As we’ve seen earlier, in Chapter 4,
one can draw no causal inferences from
even such a strange correlation. Today,
we would be more likely to attribute
the decrease in family size to women’s
expanding opportunities, not to their
shrinking wombs.