Evolved Gender Roles

Cordelia Fine (University of Melbourne)

Evolved Gender Roles:

A cultural adaptation to coordinate the division of labour

In debates about gender roles, evolutionary accounts are pitted against social constructionist accounts. In this talk I will propose a gender constructionist account of gender roles – not as a rival to an evolutionary account, but as an evolutionary account. This will build on the suggestion that gender roles evolved as a cultural adaptation to coordinate the division of labour, while drawing on the sociological concept of gender structure. I will also address two common objections to social constructionist accounts: that they are a theoretical impossibility; and that they are undermined by evidence from clinical populations with disruptions to early gonadal hormones.