Draft talk:Female (gender)/Archive 3

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"female gender is considered distinct from female sex characteristics."

This article kind of depends on this sentence being true, so it's worth examining. Treating sex and gender as completely distinct is a popular way to view gender, but I don't think there's a strong consensus among the experts. For example, Judith Butler doesn't make the hard distinction between sex and gender. According to traditional feminists, sex is a biological category; gender is a historical category. Butler questions that distinction by arguing that our "gender acts" affect us in such material, corporeal ways that even our perception of corporeal sexual differences are affected by social conventions. For Butler, sex is not "a bodily given on which the construct of gender is artificially imposed, but... a cultural norm which governs the materialization of bodies"[1] Sativa Inflorescence (talk) 00:22, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi Sativa Inflorescence, per WP:NPOV policy, the article depends on support in reliable sources, and I do not think Butler describing the concept of sex as culturally constructed undermines reliable sources that help support this article. There are also, e.g. other sources available that discuss this, as well as the sex and gender distinction article. Determining how to summarize and incorporate sources into this draft is a work in progress. Thank you, Beccaynr (talk) 01:06, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
And as a quick clarification, the full sentence from the article that is referred to in the heading is, "In academic and scientific research since the late 1970s, female gender is considered distinct from female sex characteristics." I think if we keep focus on the context and the sources that support the full statement, it will be easier to discuss and develop the content. Cheers, Beccaynr (talk) 01:17, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Name of article

I suggest a rename of this article draft

  • female (gender) --> female gender

Here are some reasons why:

  1. While there are several terms for this concept, "female gender" is as popular as any other
  2. Using a term without parenthetical clarification greatly increases understanding
  3. While Wikipedia editors should use the best term and not design Wikipedia for the sake of information indexing, nevertheless, the infrastructure of external search engines and Wikipedia handles terms much more effectively without parentheticals
  4. Parentheticals do not translate well across languages and this topic is likely to move across languages and cultures quickly

I could list reasons why not to do this, but there is not going to be a perfect solution, and I think that debate will only lead to listing costs and benefits of solutions which are nearly equal. I think sacrifice the precision of the clarification for the accessible of regular words is worth the costs and benefits. Bluerasberry (talk) 17:19, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

I want to try to submit this

@Beccaynr I will submit this as I think it might be ready for mainspace and hasn't been edited in a while Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 22:14, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

I do not agree it is ready for mainspace; I have planned to further discuss what to do with the content, but the creator of this article is on a wikibreak. Thank you, Beccaynr (talk) 23:06, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Publishing

@Beccaynr, it's been close to a year since someone has worked on this draft. I suggest that if someone (@Immanuelle, @CamandVyond) wants to take it upon them to get this into mainspace, we should not prevent that based on a consensus that clearly did not work out as intended. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 21:00, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

@Maddy from Celeste I agree, honestly I don’t understand the purpose of this draft but I want it to get a change rather than stagnate in draftspace forever. There was a lot of work done on it. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 21:04, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
I have been waiting for the article creator to return to regular editing so we could further discuss what to do with this draft. As a basic overview, I feel as if my research on this article has led me to a conclusion that it would not be appropriate to have this move to mainspace. I think a merge of content would be more appropriate. Unfortunately, today is not a great day for me to have an in-depth discussion about this. Thank you, Beccaynr (talk) 21:22, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

To add some further thoughts; one of the reasons I stopped substantively working on this draft is because a merge of the content into other existing articles seemed to become more reasonable as research developed and other articles further developed. For example, there was extensive discussion at the Gender article talk page, which led to the lead of that article approximating the lead in this article. I also think a general review of the sources in this article, which discuss sex and gender, also tend to support merging content into the Female and perhaps the Woman and Gender articles. Based on the sources that discuss female sex and female gender together, I am tending to think that Wikipedia policies do not support a further split of these concepts than what we already have in existing articles. Basically, I did not appreciate the risk of creating a WP:POVFORK until I had conducted further research into this topic area.

My suggestion at this time is to adapt the previous suggestion from Bluerasberry [2], i.e. to recognize that "female gender" is a more accessible search term for a variety of reasons. The adaptation I suggest is to move this article to a Female gender redirect, targeted at the Female article. My understanding is this would preserve the article history and its talk page, and then content can be merged with attribution to other articles. Beccaynr (talk) 16:48, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Merging to Female is actually pretty convincing to me. It is my impression that in contemporary scholarship, the sex–gender distinction is considered insufficient, not addressing the socially constructed aspects of "sex". So a well-implemented merge into Female would be a pretty good outcome to me. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 17:17, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
To add further sourcing to this, from the Gender article talk page [3], which includes:

the 2022 law review noted above, there is substantial discussion related to this point at 1855: judges need not be convinced to adopt postmodern theories about the social construction of sex to be persuaded that laws based on biological sex are suspect; explanations of how sex is assigned at birth from mainstream medical experts often suffice. At 1872-1874, there is discussion of the Sex and gender distinction, and the law review includes a critique of what is described in the conclusion at 1897 as the persistence of dualistic thinking about sex as biological and gender as social.

The sources listed in my comment above may also be included on the talk page here; this draft article talk page has been helpful for collecting and reviewing research. Beccaynr (talk) 17:39, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Publishing

@Beccaynr, it's been close to a year since someone has worked on this draft. I suggest that if someone (@Immanuelle, @CamandVyond) wants to take it upon them to get this into mainspace, we should not prevent that based on a consensus that clearly did not work out as intended. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 21:00, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

@Maddy from Celeste I agree, honestly I don’t understand the purpose of this draft but I want it to get a change rather than stagnate in draftspace forever. There was a lot of work done on it. Immanuelle ❤️💚💙 (talk to the cutest Wikipedian) 21:04, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
I have been waiting for the article creator to return to regular editing so we could further discuss what to do with this draft. As a basic overview, I feel as if my research on this article has led me to a conclusion that it would not be appropriate to have this move to mainspace. I think a merge of content would be more appropriate. Unfortunately, today is not a great day for me to have an in-depth discussion about this. Thank you, Beccaynr (talk) 21:22, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

To add some further thoughts; one of the reasons I stopped substantively working on this draft is because a merge of the content into other existing articles seemed to become more reasonable as research developed and other articles further developed. For example, there was extensive discussion at the Gender article talk page, which led to the lead of that article approximating the lead in this article. I also think a general review of the sources in this article, which discuss sex and gender, also tend to support merging content into the Female and perhaps the Woman and Gender articles. Based on the sources that discuss female sex and female gender together, I am tending to think that Wikipedia policies do not support a further split of these concepts than what we already have in existing articles. Basically, I did not appreciate the risk of creating a WP:POVFORK until I had conducted further research into this topic area.

My suggestion at this time is to adapt the previous suggestion from Bluerasberry [4], i.e. to recognize that "female gender" is a more accessible search term for a variety of reasons. The adaptation I suggest is to move this article to a Female gender redirect, targeted at the Female article. My understanding is this would preserve the article history and its talk page, and then content can be merged with attribution to other articles. Beccaynr (talk) 16:48, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Merging to Female is actually pretty convincing to me. It is my impression that in contemporary scholarship, the sex–gender distinction is considered insufficient, not addressing the socially constructed aspects of "sex". So a well-implemented merge into Female would be a pretty good outcome to me. -- Maddy from Celeste (WAVEDASH) 17:17, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
To add further sourcing to this, from the Gender article talk page [5], which includes:

the 2022 law review noted above, there is substantial discussion related to this point at 1855: judges need not be convinced to adopt postmodern theories about the social construction of sex to be persuaded that laws based on biological sex are suspect; explanations of how sex is assigned at birth from mainstream medical experts often suffice. At 1872-1874, there is discussion of the Sex and gender distinction, and the law review includes a critique of what is described in the conclusion at 1897 as the persistence of dualistic thinking about sex as biological and gender as social.

The sources listed in my comment above may also be included on the talk page here; this draft article talk page has been helpful for collecting and reviewing research. Beccaynr (talk) 17:39, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Research

Sources that may help with the development of this article:

  • Burke, P. (1996). Gender shock: Exploding the myths of male and female. Anchor Books/Doubleday. In "Gender Shock," Phyllis Burke explodes the many myths surrounding our rigid gender system of male and female by looking through 3 lenses of gender identity: behavior, appearance and science. Analyzing the latest research in psychology, genetics, neurology, and sociology, Burke finds that gender (or behavior) is not the result of one's biological sex (the body itself) and that gender and sexuality are separate elements of the self. Burke challenges the notion that men and women are from different planets by revealing how there are more variations within each sex than there are between the two.
  • Phillip L. Walker, Della Collins Cook (1998) "Brief communication: Gender and sex: Vive la difference" American Journal of Biological Anthropology. 106:255–259. A failure to make the distinction between gender and sex is analytically incapacitating in a field such as physical anthropology, whose strength lies in the integration of biological and cultural information.
  • Anthony Mulac, James J. Bradac, Pamela Gibbons (January 2001) "Empirical Support for the Gender-as-Culture Hypothesis: An Intercultural Analysis of Male/Female Language Differences". Human Communication Research, Volume 27, Issue 1, pp. 121–152. This investigation provided a test of the gender-as-culture, or ‘two cultures’, hypothesis proposed by Maltz and Borker (1982) to explain male/female differences in language use.
  • Paula Ruth Gilbert. (November 1, 2002). "Discourses of Female Violence and Societal Gender Stereotypes". Violence Against Women. Volume: 8 issue: 11, page(s): 1271-1300. Society's cultural stereotypes about women and gender color the way professionals in law enforcement, the legal system, the courts, and social policy agencies treat women who commit violent acts of aggression. This article will attempt to shed some light on how gender stereotypes that continue to permeate our society create the very cultural discourses that people in positions of power and in the population at large use to talk about women and violence.
  • Jocelyn Steinke. (2005) "Cultural Representations of Gender and Science: Portrayals of Female Scientists and Engineers in Popular Films". Science Communication. Volume: 27 issue: 1, page(s): 27-63. Images of female scientists and engineers in popular films convey cultural and social assumptions about the role of women in science, engineering, and technology (SET). This study analyzed cultural representations of gender conveyed through images of female scientists and engineers in popular films from 1991 to 2001.
  • Vincenza Priola (2007). "Being female doing gender. Narratives of women in education management". Gender and Education. Vol 19. The paper explores gender relations in academia and discusses how gender is constructed within academic institutions. It is based upon the study of a business school, part of a British university. The construction of gender relations within this institution was of special interest because the majority of managerial roles were occupied by women.
  • Chris Shilling (2009). "The female bodybuilder as a gender outlaw". Qualitative Research in Sports and Exercise. Vol 1. Issue 2. This paper is a sociological exploration of the female bodybuilder as a ‘gender outlaw’, a figure who is stigmatised not because she has broken a formal law, but because she has disregarded so flagrantly dominant understandings of what is aesthetically, kinaesthetically and phenomenologically acceptable within the gendered order of social interaction.

Beccaynr (talk) 15:38, 4 August 2022 (UTC) - updated Beccaynr (talk) 16:11, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

I noted this above, but with a typo in the title, and it seems better here. I think it also may generally help with ideas for article structure and development, because a variety of academic disciplines are identified:

  • Ruth Palombo Weiss. "Gender Biased Learning" Training & Development Vol. 55, Iss. 1, (Jan 2001): 42-48. (via ProQuest)
"How gender shapes the way we learn has been studied from two main perspectives: One, the examination of sex differences in biology and the cognitive-processing approach of brain research. Two, the perspective taken by sociologists, psychologists, educators, and feminists that cultural programming matters most."

Beccaynr (talk) 01:49, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

  • Asia A. Eaton & Suzanna M. Rose. "The Application of Biological, Evolutionary, and Sociocultural Frameworks to Issues of Gender in Introductory Psychology Textbooks" Sex Roles (2013) 69:536 – 542. The purpose of this paper is to explore the application of biological, evolutionary, and sociocultural frameworks to issues of gender in the 10 most popular introductory psychology textbooks in the U.S. The use of these metatheories is of interest to feminist scholars because they have implications for the extent to which students learn that gender and gender differences are fixed and innate or socially constructed. If gender and gender differences are seen as malleable, then efforts at social change to improve women’s status or men’s and women’s abilities or opportunities can be understood as promising endeavors.

Beccaynr (talk) 20:48, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

  • Thomas Eckes, Hanns M Trautner (2000) Developmental Social Psychology of Gender: An Integrative Framework Psychology Press. Gender is one of the most important categories, if not the most important category, in human social life. Though at first sight distinguishing between female and male may seem straightforward, a closer look readily reveals that this fundamental categorization is fairly complex - it is imbued with a host of cultural meanings and practices pervading each and every aspect of individual, interpersonal, group, and societal processes. Thus, all known cultures provide rich and well-differentiated sets of concepts and terms to categorize and characterize boys and girls, men and women, to separate between female and male roles, rights, and responsibilities. In all known cultures, females and males meet with distinct sets of gender-related beliefs and expectations exerting powerful, and often subtle, influence on their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
  • Hyde, J. S., Bigler, R. S., Joel, D., Tate, C. C., & van Anders, S. M. (2019). "The future of sex and gender in psychology: Five challenges to the gender binary." American Psychologist, 74(2), 171–193. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000307 The view that humans comprise only two types of beings, women and men, a framework that is sometimes referred to as the “gender binary,” played a profound role in shaping the history of psychological science. In recent years, serious challenges to the gender binary have arisen from both academic research and social activism. This review describes 5 sets of empirical findings, spanning multiple disciplines, that fundamentally undermine the gender binary. These sources of evidence include neuroscience findings that refute sexual dimorphism of the human brain; behavioral neuroendocrinology findings that challenge the notion of genetically fixed, nonoverlapping, sexually dimorphic hormonal systems; psychological findings that highlight the similarities between men and women; psychological research on transgender and nonbinary individuals’ identities and experiences; and developmental research suggesting that the tendency to view gender/sex as a meaningful, binary category is culturally determined and malleable. Costs associated with reliance on the gender binary and recommendations for future research, as well as clinical practice, are outlined.
  • Hilary M. Lips (2016) A New Psychology of Women: Gender, Culture, and Ethnicity, Fourth Edition examines how gender-related expectations interact with other cultural assumptions and stereotypes, and with social and economic conditions, to affect women’s experiences and behavior.

Beccaynr (talk) 02:21, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

  • In the NPOV discussion below, The void century has linked to a Statistics Canada website page titled "Gender of person" that includes: Gender refers to an individual's personal and social identity as a man, woman or non-binary person (a person who is not exclusively a man or a woman). [...] some people's gender may be different from their sex at birth", and in a section titled "Conformity to relevant internationally recognized standards" includes, This standard shares similarities with the definition of gender published by the Williams Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law in the "Best Practices for Asking Questions to Identify Transgender and Other Gender Minority Respondents on Population-Based Surveys" (2014). They define gender as "a multidimensional construct that has psychological, social, and behavioral dimensions that include gender identity and gender expression." (wikilink added)
  • Another source added by The void century is from UN Women, and includes: Gender: refers to the social attributes and opportunities associated with being male and female and the relationships between women and men and girls and boys, as well as the relations between women and those between men. These attributes, opportunities and relationships are socially constructed and are learned through socialization processes. They are context/ time-specific and changeable. Gender determines what is expected, allowed and valued in a women or a man in a given context. In most societies there are differences and inequalities between women and men in responsibilities assigned, activities undertaken, access to and control over resources, as well as decision-making opportunities. Gender is part of the broader socio-cultural context. Other important criteria for socio-cultural analysis include class, race, poverty level, ethnic group and age.

Beccaynr (talk) 13:50, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

  • Hilary M. Lips. (2020) Sex and Gender: An Introduction, Seventh Edition at p.xiii ...dramatic changes have been wrought over the past century and a half in male-female relationships, in the ways women and men think of themselves and each other, in the ways we think about gender, and in the societal norms for feminine and masculine behavior. For example, at the beginning of the 1900s, women did not have the right to vote in any country except New Zealand...

Beccaynr (talk) 05:43, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

The Quote box added to the Social construction section is titled "Gender stereotypes" per Lips at pp.4-5, Some researchers suggest that the notion of the two sexes as opposites and of femininity and masculinity as two opposing poles on a continuum may be one of the basic organizing principles human beings have learned to use when thinking about gender (Deaux & Lewis, 1984; Foushee, Helmreich, & Spence, 1979). It is not necessarily natural to think of women and men as opposites, however. Historians have noted in Western culture the "opposites" tradition succeeded an equally strong "hierarchical" one in which women and men were considered similar, with women less advanced than men along the same continuum of perfection (Laquer, 1990). Also at p. 5, there is further discussion of gender stereotypes, after the content quoted in the box. Beccaynr (talk) 16:05, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
  • APA Dictionary of Psychology, gender n. "1. [...] In a human context, the distinction between gender and sex reflects the usage of these terms: Sex usually refers to the biological aspects of maleness or femaleness, whereas gender implies the psychological, behavioral, social, and cultural aspects of being male or female (i.e., masculinity or femininity)." Beccaynr (talk) 21:49, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Discussion on research

Question. Is the above list a "reading list" of articles and books, that we should be searching for content to add to the article? Sideswipe9th (talk) 15:39, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

I have been adding sources that may be helpful, as I conduct research - sometimes I am not able to immediately figure out how to incorporate a source into the draft, but would at least like to offer it for consideration by other editors. I am also trying to keep track of research as it happens to help avoid duplicative efforts. Beccaynr (talk) 15:48, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

From the draft

Parking these here for now:

  • Wamsley, Laurel (2021-06-02). "A Guide To Gender Identity Terms". NPR. Retrieved 2022-07-29.
  • "Understanding Gender Identity". Cleveland Clinic. March 30, 2022. Archived from the original on 8 June 2022. Retrieved 24 July 2022.
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