THE Book of Genesis had it wrong.
In the beginning God created Eve,” says Johns Hopkins Medical
Psychologist John Money. What he means is that the basic tendency of
the human fetus is to develop as a female. If the genes order the
gonads to become testicles and put out the male hormone androgen, the
embryo will turn into a boy; otherwise it becomes a girl. “You have to
add something to get a male,” Money notes. “Nature's first intention is
to create a female.” Nature may prefer women, but virtually every culture has been partial to
men. That contradiction raises an increasingly pertinent question : Are women immutably
different from men? Women's Liberationists believe that any
differences—other than anatomical—are a result of conditioning by
society. The opposing view is that all of the differences are fixed in
the genes. To scientists, however, the nature-nurture controversy is
oversimplified. To them, what human beings are results from a complex
interaction between both forces. Says Oxford Biologist Christopher
Ounsted: “It is a false dichotomy to say that this difference is
acquired and that one genetic. To try and differentiate is like asking
a penny whether it is really a heads penny or a tails penny.” As
Berkeley Psychologist Frank Beach suggests, “Predispositions may be
genetic; complex behavior patterns are probably not.” The idea that genetic predispositions exist is based on three kinds of
evidence. First, there are the “cultural universals” cited by Margaret
Mead. Almost everywhere, the mother is the principal caretaker of the
child, and male dominance and aggression are the rule. Some
anthropologists believe there has been an occasional female-dominated
society; others insist that none have existed. Sex Typing. Then there is the fact that among most ground-dwelling
primates, males are dominant and have as a major function the
protection of females and offspring. Some research suggests that this
is true even when the young are raised apart from adults, which seems
to mean that they do not learn their roles from their society. Finally, behavioral sex differences show up long before any baby could
possibly perceive subtle differences be tween his parents or know which
parent he is expected to imitate. “A useful strategy,” says Harvard
Psychologist Jerome Kagan, “is to assume that the earlier a particular
difference appears, the more likely it is to be influenced by
biological factors.” Physical differences appear even before birth. The heart of the female
fetus often beats faster, and girls develop more rapidly.
“Physiologically,” says Sociologist Barbette Blackington, “women are
better-made animals.” Males do have more strength and endurance—though
that hardly matters in a technological society. Recent research hints that there may even be sex differences in the
brain. According to some experimenters, the presence of the male
hormone testosterone in the fetus may “masculinize” the brain,
organizing the fetal nerve centers in characteristic ways. This
possible “sex typing” of the central nervous system before birth may
make men and women respond differently to incoming stimuli, Sociologist
John Gagnon believes.
