Sophia Network

Biological sex may not be as simple as we think

Caster Semenya hit the headlines in August just before she won the 800m World Championship when it came to light that the IAAF had ordered her to undergo a gender test to ascertain whether she was truly female (although surely that should be called a sex test.) Celebrations of her decisive win were severely muted as she was advised not to talk to the press, although she received a rapturous welcome back in her native South Africa.

There has been tons of speculation and opinion in the media, and today the IAAF has distanced itself from an Australian newspaper that has reported that Semenya is a 'hermaphrodite', with both male and female sexual organs.

We are used to thinking of humanity in two neat categories of male and female but Semenya's story shows that it's not quite that simple. Human beings have a number of indicators of biological sex: chromosomes - males have XY and females XX, genitals, gonads - ovaries and testes, and hormones. Usually all these indicators are in alignment which is why we announce a baby's sex at birth based on the appearance of his or her genitals. But sometimes there are discrepancies between the indicators, and children are born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn't fit the typical pattern of male or female. Sometimes that's obvious at birth, and sometimes it doesn't become apparent until puberty. The term hermaphrodite is no longer officially used as its considered misleading and insensitive, and it's more usual to talk about disorders of sex development (DSD) or intersex.

The Intersex Society of North America has a useful website if you want more information about the range of conditions that fall into the category of intersex. They argue that biological sex should not be understood as two binary opposites, but rather as a spectrum. What I found interesting was their article on the frequency of intersex. The number of children born with atypical genitals is 1 in 1500 to 1 in 2000 births, but there are a lot more people who are born with subtler forms of sex anatomy variations that won't show up until later in life - around 1 in 100 births. So in a standard secondary school, there could be one person who has had or is considering surgery to 'normalise' their genitals, and 10 to 15 who know or will discover that their bodies aren't quite like other people of the same sex - food for thought for all youth, children's and schools workers.

Whatever the reality of Semenya's biology, it's clear that she has been brought up as a girl from birth and she and her family have always considered her to be female. How horrendous to have something as personal as your biological sex being questioned and dissected by the international media.  Let's be aware of how her story may impact others in youth groups and schools who may be struggling with similar issues.

Imagine a world where boys buy Tampax...

Ever wondered what it would be like to wake up and discover that you were a different sex to when you went to bed? That's the imaginary scenario of a viral advertising campaign for Tampax, believe it or not. Zach is a 16-year-old boy who discovers that he has girl parts 'down below' instead of the 'package' he was born with. His blog follows his journey of baking cakes with his sister, having to hover over toilet seats that boys have peed on and suffering from PMS before getting his period in the middle of a French lesson. As Kira Cochrane points out in the Guardian, it's hard to know exactly who this advertising is aimed at, but surely it's a gift to youth workers to get boys and girls talking about gender - that's if you can get past the 'yuk' factor of talking about periods. Let me know if you use this as a discussion starter with your group - I'd love to hear how it went!

Boys and girls - different or the same?

Fancy a heated debate? Just ask what are the differences between boys and girls, and more importantly, where do they come from? Are women hard-wired from birth to be nurturing and dependent while men are inescapably dominant and aggressive? Or is that something that's constructed and reinforced by the environment in which we grow up. Guaranteed to generate passionate views!

There was an interesting article in the Observer series on How to Understand People about men and women by Linda Blair. She argues that babies are treated very differently from birth: 'In reality, we tend to reinforce aggressive, dominant behaviour in boys and helpful, nurturing behaviour in girls. A study in the 1960s by Kagan and Moss found that mothers behaved more coldly and were more rejecting of their sons if they showed traditionally feminine behaviour (nurturance, dependence), and behaved more warmly to those who showed traditionally masculine behaviour (rowdy play, dominance). We assume that boys will be tough, whereas girls will need assistance, and these assumptions carry on through life.' She continues, 'When it comes to women and language ability, we know that girls are encouraged to talk more often from a young age, and they're spoken to more often than boys. Studies have shown that if a mother believes a baby is a girl, she'll talk more to that baby than she will if she thinks the baby is a boy. As they mature, women are encouraged to discuss their feelings in a way that isn't expected of their male counterparts.'

Sod the difference!

Greenbelt was fab. Thanks to those of you who came to the Sophia Network reception on Saturday - it was great to meet you. Sharon and I also ran a workshop exploring the impact of gender on youth work for both young people and youth workers.

Then I did a talk on Monday called Sod the difference! about the 'feminisation of the church' and how we might deal with the difference between the genders debate. If you're interested, you can get hold of a copy from the Greenbelt website here. There are also tons of other fantastic talks you can buy if you weren't at the festival or missed them in the programme.

Teenage drivers

We get so used to splitting humanity into the categories of men and women for so many different reasons that it’s easy to overlook the fact that human behaviour is not dimorphic; there is huge diversity within genders. And so treating all men the same way just because they are men is bound to discriminate against some. Take young people and driving, for example. Insurance premiums are incredibly high for a young person who has just passed their test, and young men are typically paying twice as much as young women – up to £3,000 a year. There are good reasons behind that – overall young men have more accidents and make bigger claims. But that doesn’t mean that all young men are worse drivers than all young women. Good, careful male drivers are penalised because of the reckless behaviour of some of their peers – is that fair?

Swinton Insurance now offer policies with a difference. If a new driver hasn’t claimed after six months, they can renew for a further six months at a discount of 30%, and get up to 45% off if they don’t claim for 18 months. It gives new drivers a chance to show what kind of a driver they are, instead of being lumped together with everyone of the same gender. More details here.

Photo: John Linwood

Girl Geek network

I was interested to read about the London Girl Geek Dinners in the Guardian today. Set up by Sarah Blow after she attended a technology gathering and found she was only one of 20 women in an audience of 150, its aim is to create oportunites for women in IT to meet each other and 'to get that confidence that comes from knowing other women in the industry'. They host regular dinners with speakers and men are allowed to attend if they are invited by a woman. According to Sarah, the idea to allow men along was partly to be inclusive, but also so that they would realise what it was like to be in a minority. Some interesting parallels (and differences) with Sophia. Their website is londongirlgeekdinners.co.uk.

I loved her account of being excluded from a conversation because guys assumed that she couldn't possibly know what they were talking about and that she must be in marketing. She explains how she 'showed them the binary watch she was wearing: "I lit it up, and they didn't say a word; absolute silence. Then they went completely white and apologised profusely for what they'd done. I said, 'don't make assumptions about people, because you never know who they are, or what they know - so whether I look like a techie or not shouldn't matter.' At that point they changed their attitude to all the females in the room." ' I wonder what it would take for the same to happen where it needs to in our sphere?

Girls and boys come out to play

Watch a few minutes of adverts during children's TV programmes and you'll notice the gender divide in toys and the way they are advertised. But did you realise that the split extends to muscial instruments as well? A recent study in the International Journal of Music Education reports that learning musical instruments is strictly divided along gender lines. 90% of harpists and 89% of flautists are girls, while 81% of guitarists and 75% of drummers are boys.

The study wonders whether physical interaction with an instrument dictates who might want to play it - do boys like to play things that they can hit?! - and the level of skill and practice required. In keeping with girls outperforming boys overall, more girls learn musical instruments anyway, are more likely to do music exams and to get good grades. And it recommends that schools set up single-gender orchestras or ensembles to make pupils play different instruments. Article in the Guardian about it here

Does it matter? In one sense, no. We don't have to be the same as each other, and if one way that men and women are different is expressed in the innstruments that we play that's fine! But I think I'd want to ask questions about why boys and girls are making these choices. Is it because of role models? Or because girls think that it's more feminine to to play the flute rather than the electric guitar?

And I'm not convinced that single gender orchestras are any kind of solution. That may seem hypocritical from someone who has set up a network for women, but our aim is to be a catalyst for discussion and change to enable men and women to work better together, rather than setting up a separate ghetto for women.  

photo: mawel

Book Review: The Myth of Mars and Venus by Deborah Cameron, OUP

Whether they’ve read John Gray’s books or not, everyone 'knows' by now that women and men communicate differently. Women talk more than men and they are more verbally skilled; men talk in order to get things done while women talk in order to make connections to people; men use language competitively while women use it cooperatively. These differences mean that men and women struggle to understand each other, and need help to communicate. And, according to recent books by Simon Baron Cohen and others, these differences are based not on the way we are brought up, but on differences in our brains; it’s the way we were made.

Or is it? In this excellent book, Cameron, an Oxford language professor, examines the evidence behind these beliefs and finds it seriously lacking. One by one, she tackles the myths in the paragraph above and discovers that none of them are substantiated by research. The belief that women talk more than men, for example, was boosted by a book called The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine which claimed that women utter 20,000 words a day while men utter 7,000. The claim got huge publicity because it made great soundbite science, but was not based on any actual research. When the author was challenged to reveal her sources, she admitted that there was no evidence for the claim and withdrew the statistic from subsequent editions of the book. But in terms of perpetuating myths, the damage has been done and the ‘fact’ of women’s talkativeness has entered our common mythology.

Hairdressing vs Engineering

One of the proposals in an education bill to be debated in Parliament today is that schools will have to give impartial careers advice to young people. There are concerns that teachers are encouraging teenagers down gender stereotypical career paths by promoting hairdressing to girls and the construction industry to boys. At the moment, only 3% of apprentices on childcare courses and 8% on hairdressing courses are men. In engineering 3% of apprentices are women, and in construction only 1% are women.

Of course there are some people who would say that these figures reflect the fact that the different genders are suited to different roles in life – see this review for example. But surely teachers are only one factor in the career choices a young person’s makes. Much more influential are the role models that they see around them, not least in their own families, and the cultural expectations that they grow up with. And that’s where there’s a vicious circle. If boys grow up, for example, with all female teachers especially when they are young then they are less likely to see teaching as a an ‘obvious’ career choice for them. It will need more than impartial career's advice to open up those possibilities.

More dumbbells but more Nobels

The world’s greatest thinkers were asked ‘what have you changed your mind about?’ to mark the start of 2008 by Edge Foundation. Helena Cronin, a philosopher at the London School of Economics, confessed to changing her mind about why men are dominant in society. She used to think that patterns of sex difference arose from ‘average differences between men and women in innate talents, tastes and temperaments’ combined with prejudice and barriers such as lack of child-care and unequal pay.

Now she believes that it’s to do with the distribution of those talents, tastes and temperaments. She says, ‘Females are much of a muchness, clustering round the mean. But, among males, the variance — the difference between the most and the least, the best and the worst — can be vast. So males are almost bound to be over-represented both at the bottom and at the top. I think of this as 'more dumbbells but more Nobels'.’ Read her article to get her argument in full and the evidence she uses to support it. The problem, as she sees it, is not that women suffer from prejudice and barriers, but that evolution has determined that there are more outstanding men than there are women and so they naturally take their place at the top.

Article: Rediscovering heart by Jenny Baker

It's a question almost as old as time itself. What is the difference between men and women? And there is no shortage of people ready to give an answer, from scientists to theologians, from counsellors to comedians. While campaigns for equality in the 60s and 70s stressed the equivalence of men and women, in recent years there has been a swing back to exploring and trying to define the differences between the sexes. Much of that has been profoundly helpful, leading to better communication and increased understanding between men and women. But is it all good? Or is there a danger that rigid definitions of difference, particularly ones with a Christian veneer, can actually perpetuate stereotypes, stifle diversity and drive us further apart?

How exactly are men and women distinct? John Gray popularised the difference debate with his 90s classic Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, his argument being that men and women are so different that they might as well have come from parallel planets. He focuses on the psychology of men and women, how they think and behave, and explores communication between husbands and wives - ideas that have been translated to other areas of life in his many subsequent books. Many people have found a resonance in his explanations that expose the assumptions that we make about each other and have led to greater clarity for both men and women in expressing their needs. Critics point out that ‘Dr' Gray's PhD was acquired at Columbia Pacific University, a correspondence school that has since been forced to close, and argue that he perpetuates stereotypes and justifies immature behaviour in both men and women.

A more recent addition to the debate is The Essential Difference by Simon Baron-Cohen, a Cambridge professor who is also the director of the Autism Research Centre. He argues that the female brain is predominantly hardwired for empathy, while the male brain is hardwired for understanding and building systems. Expressed crudely, these differences will be demonstrated in women getting together to chat while men play with their gadgets and put their CDs into alphabetical order. He argues that these differences are due to biological and social factors, both nature and nurture, with babies performing to type from a very young age. His description of the different tactics that teenage boys and girls use to establish dominance in a group will be recognisable to many youth workers. Boys tend to use physical force and overt intimidation to establish their place in the pecking order; girls tend to be more subtle and indirect, using bitchiness and manipulation with great skill to the same end. His book will carry more weight with many because of its scientific basis, but his conclusion that autism is a form of the extreme male brain is an easy target for parody and misunderstanding.

Review: The essential difference by Simon Baron-Cohen, Penguin

No one disputes that there are differences between men and women. Just what those differences are and where they have come from is a huge topic for debate. Baron-Cohen takes a scientific approach, and in particular looks at the differences in our brains. His argument is that the minds of men and women are different. Women are hard-wired for empathising, while men's brains are designed to analyse systems. Put crudely that's why most women love to chat while most men like playing with gadgets and putting their CDs in alphabetical order.

Baron-Cohen cites hundreds of scientific studies to back up his theory, and it makes really interesting reading. What heartens me about the book is that he is careful to talk about the diversity that is found within genders. He doesn't claim that all women are wonderfully empathetic, just that on average females spontaneously empathise to a greater degree than do males. Some men can be very good at empathising but that doesn't make them effeminate. He says, ‘Looking for sex differences is not the same as stereotyping. The search for sex differences enables us to discover how social and biological influences act on the two sexes in different ways but it does not tell us about individuals... Stereotyping in contrast judges individuals according to a set of assumptions about a group and is pernicious.' So he talks about what we can expect from people who have a ‘male brain' or a ‘female brain', rather than from all men or all women.

Nor does he suggest that we should just accept these differences as set in stone. Teachers, youth workers and parents can target their teaching and guidance to those areas of potential weakness - helping girls to be better at systemising and boys to learn how to empathise.

Understanding how the opposite sex thinks and feels can only help men and women to work, relate and interact better. The problem with this book, I think, is that it's very easy to distort what he's saying to maintain very traditional stereotypical roles of women being more suited to the caring professions and men being better at science or engineering. I'd encourage you to read it thoughtfully rather than just dip into it.

Reviewed by Jenny Baker, writer and co-founder of the Sophia Network