Biological theories can be seen to ascertain that gender differentiation of characteristics and traits are to be found at the genetic, biological foundation of human existence. Male characteristics are assumed to be genetically founded, as are the female traits, such as maternal instinct and altruism towards others.
Such biological theories as biological determinism argue that there is a genetically inherent aspect to the nature of gender roles that are associated with both males and females. Males are viewed to be the naturally dominant sex, as their genetic makeup has an aspect to it that makes them dominant to women. That same aspect is apparently found to be missing from women, which makes them the subordinate sex by nature of biological determinism. Women are not only content with their position in the social scheme of things, but also they derive a large amount of satisfaction with their position because it allows them to fulfil their maternal yearnings and instincts. Biological factors are used to establish an aspect of superiority / inferiority division within value systems that are in place in such ‘civilised’ countries as the UK.
Every human being ever born is destined to enter a complex series of relationships, many of which are based on an unequal division of any imaginable form, including gender divisions of labour and roles.
The environment into which an individual is born and raised can influence the roles to which they are assigned throughout their lives from childhood onwards.
In a cultural sense women can be symbolically linked to nature and its processes. Women’s childrearing capabilities are seen as being closer to nature due to the animalistic nature of such a process, in the eyes of those men who have been associated with culture, as women have been with nature and it is often viewed that culture attempts to dominate and subjugate nature in all its elements.
According to Simone de Beauvoir the female of the human species is ‘more enslaved to the species than the male, her animality is more manifest’.
Pg.239,The Second Sex
However women can be identified as being a lowly mechanism in that coveted culture, although that does not allow them a large degree of prestige or status. Women’s place in a man’s culture would assumabley be in the domestic environment, where she can care for the offspring produced so animalistically during her closer to nature childrearing sessions.
A woman’s affinity with nature assumes a cultural element as it becomes widely viewed that women are more suited to caring duties than men because they are more responsive to nature orientated aspects of caring and childrearing.
