Gendering Intelligence: On the Misuse of Biological Determinism in Explaining Gender Inequalities in Education

• In Event: 035 - Section on Sex and Gender Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 08. Education

Abstract

For the last half century, sociologists have attempted to explain gender inequalities in education (assessed by measures of cognition through testing) through the framework of the societal realities of social and economic stratification. More recently, some sociologists have incorporated explanations of biological determinism onto the discourse of gender education inequality. By integrating data from the disciplines of biology, psychology, and neuroscience, these sociologists have fashioned theories on gender education differences through the intersection of biological and environmental factors. In the Annual Review of Sociology, sociologists Claudia Buchman, Thomas A. DiPrete and Anne McDaniel (2008) have gone so far as to chastise sociologists for their tendency to ignore biology as a causative agent in cognitive and educational disparities between the sexes. In contrast to most sociological understandings of educational variance, Buchman et al. reifies and reproduces ontological understandings for perceived "intelligence" differences between males and females. This paper hopes to assess two bodies of knowledge concerning gender intelligence differences (a social constructivist discourse vs. a positivist, "hard scientific" discourse) in their quest to construct their own regimes of truth. In so doing, I hope to explore whether there are objectively measurable intelligence differences between genders and whether a "value-free" scientific epistemology can operate within the larger gendered structures of society. In making these assessments, I plan to analyze these forms of knowledge through the framework of "gender as social structure" as outlined by Barbara J. Risman, who contends that gender is deeply embedded in society on an institutional, interactional and individual level.

Author

• Neil Schuldiner, City University of New York-Brooklyn College