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ABSTRACT
A course on gender and public policy can introduce students to methods of policy analysis in the context of social-justice problems. Using a combination of empirical studies and analytic tools, students learn how social conditions and policies differentially affect women and men, and they can identify implications for gender equity. But our world includes non-binary gender types—transgender, genderqueer, and intersex people (some of whom are our students). How can an analysis built on strictly binary comparisons be reconfigured to include more gender diversity? The answers depend in part on how gender is conceptualized (is it a fixed, measurable dimension of identity or something socially constructed?). Exploring three conceptual approaches to gender, this article identifies three more inclusive teaching and research strategies: the expansion of gender types in quantitative analysis, the consideration of non-binary gender social roles, and the interrogation of binary inequalities assumed to be natural and inevitable.
KEYWORDS:
Notes
1. Some writers use the term “sex” to refer to biological categories and “gender” to cultural constructions. I use the terms relatively interchangeably, because I agree with Kessler and McKenna (Citation1978) that the differential use of the two terms suggests that the biological dichotomy is not in any way socially constructed. See also Butler (Citation1990), who argues that “sex” only has meaning because of the social construction of “gender” through performance. Some more recent writing has returned to a distinction in which sex designates biological categories, but acknowledges that these are subject to construction (see Westbrook & Saperstein, Citation2015).
2. In this context, note that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin, but contains an exception for cases in which religion, sex, or national origin may be a “bona fide occupational qualification”—in other words, the legislation suggested that there would be no circumstances under which race or color could be arguably relevant to employment, but that is not the case for sex (though in application the BFOQ exception has been narrowly construed for all of its categories). Additionally, in a series of equal protection analyses, the Supreme Court found racial classifications to be invidious and thus subject to strict scrutiny, but gender classifications were neither clearly invidious nor innocuous, and thus subject to an intermediate rather than strict level of scrutiny (Craig v. Boren, 429 US 190, 1976).
3. The identity dimension of sexual orientation is obviously relevant to gender/sex identity, and an argument can be made for incorporating the dimension of sexual orientation into a broadened gender/sex variable because of the relationship between social norms attached to straight and gay identity by gender/sex (e.g., gay men may be associated with femininity). At the same time, some argue that identities of race and class also have powerful effects on the construction of gender/sex identity (it means something different to be a white woman than a woman of color). Here, I have chosen to separate both sexual orientation and other social identity dimensions such as race from “gender” but I hope that new theory and research will clarify these relationships.
4. The three approaches are not the only ways of thinking about gender in relation to policy, but they do capture a range that reflects much of the diversity to be found in gender theorizing.
5. Here, I am treating gender as a binary variable, to raise questions relevant in that context before exploring the implications of non-binary gender. Most textbooks that focus on gender and public policy have relied on a basic male/female sexual dichotomy, even if they acknowledge a role for social construction of gender roles and do not necessarily assume heterosexuality (for the earliest examples, see Kirp et al., Citation1986; Winston & Bane, Citation1993; Margaret, Ahern, & Steuernagel, Citation1995; Bacchi, Citation1999; more recently, Henderson & Jeydel, Citation2010). These works identify policy areas in which the differences between female and male experience are most clearly relevant (e.g., employment discrimination, fertility control, child care, regulation of pornography), consider the impact of various policy arrangements, and reflect on the role of government in addressing gender-linked inequality. Another, large body of work has focused on particular issues or policies—such as social security—that can be understood differently when examined through a feminist lens, showing how women and men are differently affected (see Benería, Citation1995; Donath, Citation2000; Himmelweit, Citation2005; English & Lee, (Citation2010).
6. I indicated that I probably should have said “cis-men don’t get pregnant” (cis-gender people being those whose current gender identification is the same as their assigned sex at birth, in contrast to transgender people).
7. See Note 5 above. Additionally, many policy research publications rely on data that assumes a gender binary; see, for example, the reports of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research https://iwpr.org/.
8. With respect to “accidents of birth,” there is no social consensus as to the obligations of a society to address resulting inequality. Writers on the left argue for an ethical obligation to reduce such inequality (Rawls, Citation1971), but those on the right insist that such social intervention is detrimental (Harsanyi, Citation1975; Nozick, Citation1974).
9. This third approach is unusual in policy literature. I use Peterson and Runyan’s (Citation2010) text as the best example of a comprehensive treatment that relies on a more critically informed but still policy relevant approach. Other literature that applies a critical lens (e.g., queer theory) to policy questions tends to be comprised of pieces confined to single policy questions and/or essays not directly relevant to those practicing policy analysis (which, arguably, Peterson and Runyan could be).
10. The category “genderqueer” represented an other understanding of gender (including postgender, two-spirit, other); “intersex” at birth represented those whose genitalia at birth were between prototypical structures. It is not clear from this article whether the authors considered the possibility that gender identities might differ between those who currently called themselves “transgender” and those who said their current gender identity was the “opposite” of the one given at birth.
11. I do not use the term “intersectional” identities here, because I wish to point out that for most people, our social identities include both dominant and subordinate social groups. “Intersectionality” highlights connections between structures of oppression/privilege (Collins, Citation1990).
12. These observations can form the basis of critical questions in the classroom: if a student asserts that all forms of marginalization are somehow identical, what is the definition of “marginalization” that supports such an assertion? Students cannot be taught to think critically about “social justice” without being challenged to clarify the language they use. For those not accustomed to discussing structural systems of oppression, but who wish to do so, think about the components: the structure of our economic systems, legal precedents, and historical policies—who could own property, who could benefit from public subsidies in housing or agriculture, who has configured the delivery of medical care? Instructors should also be aware of powerful psychosocial influences that have been the subject of considerable social-psychological research (see Dovidio & Gaertner, Citation1986, for an early primer).
13. For example, the 2010 Census was the first to include the option for same-sex people to identify themselves as unmarried partners or spouses, but did not include questions about sexual orientation or gender identity. Even if surveys do come to include more diverse gender categories, analyses of samples of the full population will present practical difficulties. Both because of the potential reluctance of respondents to answer these questions honestly, and because the proportion of people in the non-dominant gender categories will be quite small, reliable datasets will be limited. Only with very large sample sizes or significant oversampling of small sub-populations will it be possible to report and analyze differences by non-binary gender identity—as was often the case with race-based analyses before population diversity increased (and is still often the case for some groups, such as Native Americans).
14. Virtually all large-scale survey research relies on two gender categories: female and male. When we start to think about moving away from a binary definition of gender, we have to raise numerous questions about this research. First, do the categories “women” and “men” include trans-women and trans-men? If not, are these people not included (because of “inappropriate” survey responses) or are they captured in a gender category that does not represent their current identity? In either case, we should assume that the binary analysis is a bit unreliable.
15. See the discussion of these issues in Schilt and Wiswall (Citation2008), referencing Schilt’s unpublished work.
16. There is evidence suggesting that trans-women delay their transition relative to trans-men, in whole or in part to delay the disadvantage of being seen as female (Schilt & Wiswall, Citation2008).
17. For annual rates of non-fatal IPV, women victims experience it more frequently than men—although the differences have been diminishing over time (U.S. Department of Justice (USDOJ), Citation2013). In 2010, for fatal cases in which the relationship between victim and offender was known, 51% of female victims were killed by an intimate, and 6% of male victims were killed by an intimate (U.S. Department of Justice (USDOJ), Citation2013).
18. According to the 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS), 18.3% of women and 1.4% of men report having been raped at some point in their lives (Black et al., Citation2011).
19. The only studies to look at IPV among transgender people are based on purposive rather than representative samples, so conclusions are very tentative (see Brown & Herman's Citation2015 review).
20. There is some variation in the prevalence by type of IPV, and differences are not always statistically significant between heterosexual and lesbian women, but overall, bisexual women are consistently most likely to be victimized.
21. Differences between bisexual, gay, and heterosexual men are often not statistically significant, with the exception of rates of sexual violence other than rape, for which both gay and bisexual men have higher prevalence than do heterosexual men.
22. One intriguing question that arises in this policy approach concerns the role of choice in gender identity. The traditional treatment of gender as relevant to law and policy assumes that one’s sex/gender is not entirely a matter of personal choice. The argument for including sexual orientation in the list of “protected categories” in anti-discrimination law has also relied on the assumption that such people do not choose to be homosexual. Note here that it is not illegal to “discriminate”—we, and the state, do it all the time in innocuous ways—the problem is certain types of discrimination in certain contexts. In the law, we have generally provided protections for members of groups that have been disadvantaged on the basis of what are considered “innate” or unchanging characteristics (such as race), as well as identities historically subject to systematic oppression—rather than self-selected aspects of identity or aspects of identity not subject to oppression (such as being blue-eyed). Religion is an obvious exception to the “innate” qualification, due presumably to the history of the founding of the colonies by many fleeing religious oppression, which at the time probably was linked to more innate characteristics. In this legal context, is it appropriate to assume that gender identity is not an expression of free individual choice? And to the extent that it is a matter of choice, how do we articulate the argument that certain gender identities—as opposed to certain other individual choices such as body art—should be protected under the law? For those not familiar with the distinctions in classifications, see the discussion of definitions of “invidious” versus “innocuous” classifications in law in Baer (Citation2018).
23. See Schilt (Citation2006) for ethnographic reporting on male privilege experienced by some trans-men. These points are not to suggest that trans-men always experience male privilege. In particular, there is a perverse interaction with race: trans-men of color may find themselves the subject of racial profiling by police and others to a degree not experienced when they were female (Bahrampour, Citation2018).
24. See the account of Chris Edwards in Bahrampour (Citation2018).
25. Several scholars have pointed out that stereotypes associate leadership with agency, and masculinity with agency, but femininity with communality rather than agency, making it difficult for us to see women as leaders. In addition, as Carli (Citation2001) explains, the process of influence compounds this difficulty: in general, people are influenced by those they perceive as competent and likable, but when women are perceived as competent, they tend to be less likable. “Because men and women typically fill different roles, with women more often occupying caretaking, domestic, and lower status occupational roles and men more often occupying higher status occupational roles, people expect men to behave more agentically than women and women to behave more communally than men. Moreover, the prescriptive nature of stereotypes about men and women leads to greater scrutiny of women’s than men’s leadership behaviors and to penalties against women whose behavior is too status asserting or insufficiently communal” (2001, p. 725–726).
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Carol Chetkovich
Carol Chetkovich is Professor Emerita of Public Policy and former Director of the Public Policy Program at Mills College. She has taught in the areas of public and nonprofit management, gender and public policy, and qualitative research methods. She is the author of several journal articles and of two books: Real Heat: Gender and Race in the Urban Fire Service, a study of workplace culture and diversity in the Oakland Fire Department, and From the Ground Up: Grassroots Organizations Making Social Change, a study of grassroots social change organizations (coauthored with Frances Kunreuther).