Observing Gender

My Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality students will want to take a look at these current posts.

1) From Savage Minds: Kerim (or maybe not?) discusses an article from The New Republic dscussing the poor performance of boys in grade school and the corresponding drop in numbers of men in college courses. This quotation jumped out at me:

Between 1992 and 2002, the gap by which high school girls outperformed boys on tests in both reading and writing–especially writing–widened significantly. Given the reading and writing demands of today’s college curriculum, that means a lot of boys out there are falling well short of being considered “college material.”

Kerim’s commentary continues and he notes that most of the university-level classes he teaches are comprised of female students. I have noticed the same thing — my anthropology classes are usually weighted about with about 2/3 of my students being women and 1/3 men. Nothing suggests to me, however, that once in college the men are any less able to excel than the women.

2) From Anthropology.net: Kambiz Kamrani discusses vervet monkey research and articles which wonder about the kinds of toys with which male and female vervet monkeys like to play. There are several links to studies of non-human primates and the role that kind of research has in understanding human gender differences. The studies wonder, for example, about the age old question of biology versus culture:

People used to think that boys and girls played differently because of the way they were brought up. Now scientists such as Alexander say a creature’s genetic inheritance also plays an important role.

Kamrani critiques the research, ultimately concluding that it: “neglect[s] the socialization process entirely” and is generalizing.

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