“Making difference: theories on gender, body and behaviour”

Abstract

Since the end of the nineteenth century, when Darwin published his work on evolution, several female scientists have reacted by adopting basically two points of view: while some deny the potential of the biological sciences to explain social arrangements, others reinterpret biology studies on sex differences, admitting that these may explain human behavior and social inequality. In an attempt to appraise how social differences are assigned to the human body, this article discusses theoretical trends in recent works of biological sciences, which try to either reaffirm or deny the plausibility of theories that resort to sex differences presumably located in the body (brains, genes, male and female physiology) to explain variations in human beings’ skills, abilities, cognitive patterns, and sexuality. And, given the influence of the media on our views on male and female, it also discusses the repercussion of such essentialist views on national and international print media.