Gender essentialism

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Gender essentialism is a theory which attributes distinct, intrinsic qualities to women and men.^[1][2] Based in essentialism, it holds that there are certain universal, innate, biologically (or psychologically) based features of gender that are at the root of many of the group differences observed in the behavior of men and women.^[3]

In Western civilization, it is suggested in writings going back to ancient Greece.^[4]: 1 With the advent of Christianity, the earlier Greek model was expressed in theological discussions as the doctrine that there are two distinct sexes, male and female, created by God, and that individuals are immutably one or the other.^[5] This view remained largely unchanged until the middle of the 19th century.^[4] This changed the locus of the origin of the essential differences from religion to biology, in Sandra Bem's words, "from God's grand creation [to] its scientific equivalent: evolution's grand creation," but the belief in an immutable origin had not changed.^[4]: 2

Alternatives to gender essentialism were proposed in the mid-20th century. During second-wave feminism, Simone de Beauvoir and other feminists in the 1960s and 70s theorized that gender differences were socially constructed. In other words, people gradually conform to gender differences through their experience of the social world. More recently, Judith Butler theorized that people construct gender by performing it. While rejected by many feminist theorists,^[4][6][7] gender essentialism sheds light on social constructs surrounding gender that are found in society as well as societal views on sex and sexuality.