What is the impact of the gender roles that society creates and enforces?

“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” asks the exasperated Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady when he fails to understand his indomitable pupil, Eliza Doolittle. Why, indeed! The question of gender differences and roles has baffled and angered us, delighted and confused us.

What is the distinction between sex and gender? The former refers to biological identity; the latter has come to mean behavior that is learned. Some “socially constructed” gender roles result from beliefs about the proper way to behave. When do gender roles become stereotypes of what it means to be a woman or a man? These ideas vary according to culture and time. A look at men in the eighteenth century wearing wigs of curls tells us that what is considered appropriate in one context is wholly inappropriate in another.

What other forces define gender roles? How does ethnicity contribute to the expectations of what is masculine or feminine behavior? How does setting—a small town, an athletic field, a formal dinner—affect a group’s expectations?

Such issues take on even greater importance in the context of bias. When do socially constructed roles hinder individual expression or choice? Why are certain professions dominated by men and others by women? How do beliefs about sex or gender affect public policy, including education?

These are the questions taken up in this chapter, starting with an exploration into what “scientific evidence” has been marshaled to “prove” the intellectual superiority of men over women. Other selections focus on the social pressure to behave “like a man” and the communication differences between men and women. The serious economic and even medical consequences of beliefs about gender are also considered.

The fictional Professor Higgins was, in fact, asking a rhetorical question, but the authors presented in this chapter answer his question in specific and provocative ways that are bound to challenge—and deepen—our thinking about gender roles.