‘Feminists Are Wrong to Try and Change Gender Roles Because Men and Women Evolved to Be Different’. Evaluate This Claim.

‘Feminists are wrong to try and change gender roles because men and women evolved to be different’. Evaluate this claim.

Whilst there is some truth behind the claim that men and women evolved to be different, this need not affect gender roles in society today. It is true that there was once a need for the stereotypical roles of men and women, men were the hunters, women the gatherers. The need for these gender roles was entirely pragmatic, and has been for a vast period of time. However, in modern society the idea that men and women need to maintain their traditional gender roles is very outdated and actually harmful to society. Today we have the resources and technology that means both females and males can look after infant children. The implications of this are that humankind need not live as it has been for thousands of years, especially now that there are very few jobs that explicitly require men.

The idea that men and women should live up to stereotypical characteristics is mainly based on the physical characteristics of both sexes. Typically men are larger and stronger, whereas women are smaller and weaker. This has ingrained the idea that men should be aggressive and that women should be caring and maternal. However, these ideas are based on a person’s biological sex. Studies such as that of Judith Butler (1990) have shown that biological sex and gender are in fact separate. Butler argued that gender is not who you are, but what actions you perform at any one time. This idea that sex and gender are not directly related asserts that we should not assign gender roles in society based on the sex of a person. It is here that women are oppressed in modern day society; it is entirely possible for a man to take on a female gender role, yet it is made much harder by society for a woman to take on the gender role of a man.

If gender roles are not determined by biological sex then there must be another reason why it is expected that men and women should fulfil...