Yoshino 1

Brendon Yoshino
English 115
Professor Beadle
14 September 2015

Two Genders and Seven Billion People

In society we have submitted our children, our family, and ourselves to specific categories
of gender, male and female. We go about life with the assumption that mere biology can define
who a person is instead of who they are, or desire to be. We take that assumption, and change it
to expectations of that specific person. For example, at birth (and sometimes before birth) a girl
is declared female by the appearance of genitalia. At that very moment everyone who knows this
have already made up specific expectations in which she must fall in line with in order to receive
approval. A double gender classification system leaves little room for variations, which can
better the human race. In Night to His Day, author Judith Lorber confronts the differences in
gender status within our society. Ruth Hubbard in her essay, Rethinking Womens Biology,
sets out to make her point that women may not be so physically different to men after all. Aaron
Devor in, Members of Society: The Social Meaning of Gender, writes about masculine traits,
and how culture has tied them to positions seen at the top of societies pyramid.
In our society we have many different normalitys and situations which we overlook every
day. Some gender expectations are so infused into our deeper consciousness that we do not even
realize how hard we work to follow them, or expect others to work. Within our culture we have
developed a two gender society, which is used as a classification and sometimes identity.
Externally there may seem to be nothing wrong with having two genders, and classification is
not always a bad thing. The issue is that in order to maintain and establish this two gender

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society one must succeed at the front of society, while the other one must take a back seat. Judith
Lorber, a professor of sociology and womans studies at the University of New York, points out
in her essay, Night to His Day, that in a two gender society one must be more acceptable, and
the other weak and less necessary. As a computer science major, under the department of
engineering, it is very rare that I ever see any women in the department related classes. Just the
other day I ran into a girl in my English class and realize that she was in my Computer Science
class as well. We got to talking about our Computer Science class, along with Math. What I
realized from that conversation was not that women are not intelligent, or informed enough to
handle engineering. Rather I myself was further informed about how truly intelligent the
conversation was, and how weaknesses were clearly based on the person and not their gender or
sex. Engineering consists of some of the most important positions in the world, not to mention
the extremely high pay rates. There is over seven billion people living on earth, roughly 49.6
percent of them are women (worldmeter.info). It is no surprise that because of our unbalanced
gender structure we see few Women in the field. That does not mean, however, that women are
incapable of doing the job as well or better than men.
In a lot of our everyday scenarios we naturally assert that there are things woman do better
than men, and visa-versa. This ideal stems from the assumption that people can only perform
tasks exceptionally well that are better suited to their gender classification. Many point to
professional sports as an example of male dominance in the physical aspect of performance. It is
true that in sports such as swimming, the men do indeed swim much quicker than women as is
the case in many other sports. Ruth Hubbard, a professor emerita of Biology at Harvard
University, makes the point in her essay, Rethinking Womans Biology, that most to almost all
common assumed weaknesses are actually a result of inequality instead of a cause. She presses

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her point with reference to the development stages of gender identity. On a playground you
might see girls jumping rope and boys digging in the sand playing sports on the field even quite
often a mixture doing some of the same things. For further comparison, imagine a teacher finds
that she needs help carrying something into her classroom, she would naturally refer to a boy in
the class as a common choice. If this one ideal is replicated numerous times throughout this
boys life you could imagine his upper body strength development would certainly surpass that
of the girls, given the girls are neglected from similar tasks. This fictional scenario of the
physical development brings to light the effects of gender presuppositions. The girls are seen as
capable of developing leg strength by jumping, but not wielding the ability to carry something
for the teacher. In most cases we can make the assumption that anything a prepubescent boy can
carry, a prepubescent girl can carry as well. If we were able to change this development flaw we
most definitely see a shrink in the physical margin of women and men. (Hubbard)
With this knowledge we can see that from the earliest stages of development there is
discrimination of the two genders, by the way they are expected to behave. Society has classified
certain traits only acceptable for men, and others for women. For example very few women enter
the engineering field because society has deemed the necessary traits as un-feminine. To
understand why certain traits are seen as more valuable we need to first understand how these
traits fit into the society at large. In Becoming Members of Society: The Social Meanings of
Gender, author Aaron Devor persuades readers to the idea that masculinity better succeeds in
our complicated social infrastructure compared to femininity. Devor believes that this in large is
because jobs and positions which require traits that are better matched with those seen in
masculinity are considered higher in social status. This is not to say that woman cannot
demonstrate these traits, as stated by Hubbard in Rethinking Womens Biology, but that they

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will not due to gender molds that make up the normal. Divergence from this mold result in push
back from society, and thus success at the equal caliber as men almost impossible. (Devor)
If indeed we are making jobs which for the most part require masculine biased traits, the
social and financial pinnacle of our social ladder. While at the same time restricting women from
demonstrating masculine traits from as far back as birth. We have not just built a society which is
unequal, but a society which has denied one gender the social upward mobility from the very
beginning. A world which there is no avenue for variation of traits amongst sexes.
If we look back at my reference to the engineering field, and how I have seen few to no
woman in the department. We begin to see a pattern, and a result from these patterns. The few
woman who are bold enough to enter the fieldmy friend in English class, in most cases are
seen as inferior to their male counterparts. However, if we allow ourselves to be free of the
presupposition that women are indeed inferior in this field we can see societys flaws, and
strengths from a broader point of view. Based on informative essays such as Rethinking
Womans Biology we can make the natural assertion that out of the billions of woman in the
world, at least one of them is bound to exhibit the traits to be an excellent engineer. One in a
billion is an absurd ratio, of course, but this is just an example of the ridiculousness at hand. By
continuing on this common path of inequality we are not just segregating one sex to social
inferiority their entire lives. We are rejecting adversity by segregating mankind from
extraordinary individuals who have much to give. (Hubbard)
Adversity is one of the greatest assets to the human race. It is our greatest obstacle and at the
same time our greatest reward. We have billions of people living on the earth, with traits that
make such a number seem small. I believe that we may never see a perfect society, but I hope in
my lifetime I will see women succeed in workplaces, not because the position is best fit to their

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gender, but because because of the wonderful traits which make them individuals. If we limit one
group of people to expectations and presupposition solely on biological features at birth, we have
truly lost a runner in the great relay race towards a better world. In Ruth Hubbards own words,
There is enough variability among us to let us construct a society in which people of both sexes
contribute(Hubbard)

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Works Cited

"Current World Population." World Population Clock: 7.3 Billion People

(2015). N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Dec. 2015.
Groner, Rachel, and John F. O'Hara. Composing Gender: A Bedford Spotlight
Reader. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2014. Print.