Gender Nature Vs Nurture

The nature vs. nurture debate on whether it is biology or the environment that causes human beings to behave in a certain way and choose certain roles is an ongoing debate in social science, but in more recent years the debate has been extended to whether nurture, i.e. culture, can outweigh biology when explaining gender. Many times it is difficult to differentiate sex and gender as they are closely related. Gender is commonly described as the state of being male or female and some sociologists take this further and suggest that “Gender is not a set or traits, nor a variable, nor a role, but the product of social doings” (West & Zimmerman, 1987: 129). Whereas sex refers to the biological differences between men and women such as hormones, reproductive …show more content…
The biological approach suggests there is no difference between sex and gender, therefore our biological sex creates our gendered behavior: masculine or feminine. Gender is determined by two factors: hormones and chromosomes. Hormones are chemical substances concealed throughout the body and carried within the bloodstream. Men and women have the same sex hormone called testosterone and oestrogen, but they vary in amounts and they have different effects on various parts of the body. Testosterone is a sex hormone, which is present in both males and females but it is produced at higher levels in men than women. It is known to affect behavior as well as physical development. Testosterone can help stimulate many masculine traits such as aggression, competitiveness, courage, higher sexual drive etc. These personality traits are commonly found in men, thus emphasising the idea that our gender is innate rather than being socially constructed. Conversely to testosterone, women also produce a sex hormone named oestrogen. When released oestrogen can also stimulate many feminine stereotypical traits such as nurturing, patience and …show more content…
For example Young (1966) altered the sexual behavior of male and female rats. This was done by Young influencing the amount of sex hormones (testosterone and oestrogen) they received from birth. As a result the animals displayed a direct reverse in sexual behavior and these effects were non-reversible. Female rats began to mount behind male rate and take a different position. Since Young’s study his results have become highly replicable and animal studies have become common when testing gender. However, the research carried out on animals (ibid) was conducted because it would be unethical to carry out the same research on humans; simply because, animals and humans are fundamentally different. Due to the significant difference, it is not valid to generalise animal findings to