Hardwired for Sexism? Approaches to Sex/Gender in Neuroscience

Abstract

Gender theorists and some feminist scientists approach gender as a multilevel and complex structure that shapes human relations and perceptions, cognition, and institutions, including the research questions and methods used in science (Fausto-Sterling 2000b; Risman 2004; Ridgeway 2009). Neuroscientists, on the other hand, typically approach gender as a status or a collection of characteristics that male versus female people (and sometimes other animals) have, and the goal of many neuroscience studies is to add to an ever-growing catalogue of male/female differences – both what they are, and how they arise (e.g. Hines 2004: vii). Disagreements over the nature of gender are unlikely to be resolved anytime soon, but we suggest that whether understood as a cultural frame or as an individual cognitive structure, gender is so powerful that it is difficult to get a useful purchase on how it operates. It is a bit like the sun: there is a limit to what we can learn by looking straight at it, and we might just go blind trying. Thus, we argue that a more sophisticated and ethical approach to understanding sex/gender in the brain and behavior will require the somewhat paradoxical strategy of turning away from sex/gender differences in our research.