Women's Brain By Stephen J. Gould Analysis

Throughout the course of the mid-late 1800’s, cases of both gynocentrism and androcentrism were evident within commonly accepted scientific “fact”. In his analytical paper Women’s Brains, Stephen J. Gould notes the particular biases among multiple leading scientists of the time in relation to the misconceptions about female intelligence. “In the most intelligent races, as among the Parisians, there are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of gorillas than to the most developed male brains” (Women’s Brains. Gould). Such were the ideas at the time of noted craniometrists, specifically Paul Broca and his disciples.
The particular quote from Gustave Le Bon, a prominent scientist of the time as well as someone considered …show more content…
All these factors make relating to the other sex a significant feature of nearly everyone’s daily experience. That, in turn, reinforces the role of gender as a significant definer of self and other in all social relational contexts. The othering process is the human tendency to believe that the group (race, religion, ethnicity, culture, gender, country, sexual orientation, species etc.) that they are a part of is inherently the 'right ' way to be human. As a consequence, social relational contexts become a significant arena in which the basic rules of the gender system are at …show more content…
The process of sex categorization in the routine activity of defining self in relation to another is so automatic and taken for granted that it is often assumed to be natural. However, as ethnomethodologists have clearly demonstrated, in everyday contexts, sex categorization is heavily socially constructed (Kessler and McKenna 1978; West and Zimmerman 1987). It involves the application of those widely shared cultural beliefs about gender that we have referred to as the instructions for the gender system.
In our gender belief system, physical sex differences are presumed to be the basis for sex categorization. Yet in everyday social relational contexts, we sex categorize others based on appearance and behavioral cues (e.g., dress, hairstyles, voice tone) that are culturally presumed to stand for physical sex differences (West and Zimmerman 1987). Knowing that they will be categorized in this way, most people carefully construct their appearance according to cultural gender rules to ensure that others reliably categorize them as belonging to the sex category they claim for