Discuss this statement: The notion of gender is a social construction that facilitates inequality.

There is much to be said both for and against each part of this statement.

On the one hand, we can argue that gender is not completely a social construct.  We know that there are real differences between people of different sexes.  If people of different sexes have different physical features and different levels of different hormones, it is not unreasonable to say that there are innate differences in how they are likely to, on...

There is much to be said both for and against each part of this statement.

On the one hand, we can argue that gender is not completely a social construct.  We know that there are real differences between people of different sexes.  If people of different sexes have different physical features and different levels of different hormones, it is not unreasonable to say that there are innate differences in how they are likely to, on average, behave.

However, we can also argue that gender is mostly a social construct.  One of the best ways to prove this is to note that our ideas about gender have changed over the years.  There was a time when we believed that being a woman, for example, meant being submissive.   We no longer believe this.  If we can change our attitudes about some aspects of what it means to be male or female, then our views of gender must in some ways be socially constructed.  Since our attitudes have changed so much (and since they are so different from those of some other cultures, we can imagine that most of our ideas about gender are socially constructed.

The second part of this statement holds that our social constructions of gender facilitate inequality.  We can certainly argue that this is true.  In the past, social constructions of gender have clearly worked to reduce the opportunities available to women.  We have believed that women were not meant to have meaningful careers outside the home, thus contributing to sexual inequality.  Today, we continue to expect that women will be more involved in raising children than men are, which continues to make it harder for women to reach the highest levels of many careers.

However, there is (arguably) nothing about social constructions of gender that requires them to facilitate inequality.  It would be possible to socially construct gender in ways that were fairly neutral.  We could imagine that men and women have different mixes of good and bad qualities but that neither of these mixes was superior to the other.   In other words, we could clearly construct gender in ways that allowed us to believe that there was a difference between male and female, but not one that should imply that either gender is superior or inferior.