Cordelia Fine, originally from Toronto, is a professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Melbourne, Australia. This book is an iconoclastic, extensively researched counterpoint to the widely held belief in the evolutionary scientific community that biological sex is a major determinant of personality and behaviour in humans. She provides more information than most readers would ever feel a need to know about the sexual behaviour and the roles of males and females in societies of dung beetles, cichlid fish, hedge sparrows, bush crickets, laboratory rats, fellow primates and Homo Sapiens around the world. Some measure of the extent of the underlying research is the fifty pages of reference notes, and the sixteen page index.
The basic premise is conveyed in one sentence in the introduction: “There are no essential male or female characteristics.” Differences in brain activity, interests and abilities in males and females is shown to be largely not due the effect of XX or XY chromosomal combinations or even due to the effect of hormones. Risk taking and aggression in men, nurturing and domesticity in women, etc, are stereotypical behaviours resulting largely from culturally ingrained and reinforced expectations and the effects of these on the highly adaptable developing brain.
Fine reserves her most scathing comments for the sex-segregated toy industry, advertisers, and marketers who play the part of reinforcing the myth of innate differences in the interests and abilities of boys and girls. But it seems to me that even ads directed at adults are guilty of reinforcing stereotypes, although perhaps less so than in the past. I have never seen an ad featuring a man dancing with a Swiffer, nor a woman at the controls of a New Holland prairie grain harvester.
“Biological sex can’t have nearly as potent an effect on behaviour as it does on anatomy.” is the bottom-line conclusion in the last chapter. But as I consider the personalities, interests and talents of my three offspring and the developing personalities and interests of my two granddaughters and two grandsons, I still have some doubts about this radical premise. Have I been guilty of subtlety reinforcing differences based on gender rather than on genetics, without intending to? Probably.
This is a very scholarly thought-provoking book whose conclusion deserves careful consideration by anyone interested in early childhood development or cultural anthropology. I am too unfamiliar with the complexities of either field to either endorse the conclusions or to refute them, but I find the premise interesting.
The Passionate Reader 