What do we mean by gender?
A while ago, a dear colleague introduced me to Joan’s Scott’s “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis” published back in 1986. She believed the article was highly relevant to current gender conversations and considered it her best response to my question, “okay, but what do you mean by ‘gender’”? Commenting on Scott’s work is challenging, but I am ready to share some thoughts on this article and how its ideas can inform gender transformative research, monitoring and evaluation (RME).
The first line of the article reads: “Those who would codify the meaning of words fight a losing battle, for words, like the ideas and things they are meant to signify, have a history.” (p.1053). This sentence alone suggests that the author views gender as contested, dynamic, and connected to social systems. Indeed, the author begins by referring to the multiple ways in which gender has been used across fields of knowledge. She refers to descriptive usages of the term gender, such as ‘gender as a synonym for women’, or ‘gender as describing social relations between the sexes’. Scott explains how these descriptive categories lack the analytic power to address and change historical paradigms. Later, the author also introduces causal usages of the term gender, aimed at explaining how gender is constructed, functions and evolves. She draws from the work of feminist historians to refer to three theoretical positions. First, to an “entirely feminist effort” which refers to gender as it relates to patriarchy. Second, to a Marxian tradition, which focuses on the “material” explanations for gender. And third, to psychoanalytical approaches[1], which focus on gender as it relates to the formation of subjects’ identities. Scott describes how each of these theories is incomplete: they overly rely on fixed physical characteristics, and they are unable to explain relationships between gender and larger systems of inequality, to name a few. She ends up calling for a “refusal of the fixed and permanent quality of the binary opposition, a genuine historicization and deconstruction of the terms of sexual difference” (p. 1065).
Later in the article, Scott introduces her own definition of the term gender, which has two parts. First, gender is a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes. Scott identifies four interrelated elements that explain and/or conceptualize how gender operates within social and institutional networks: a) culturally available symbols, b) normative context, c) politics and reference to social institutions, and d) subjective identity. Conceiving gender in this way can help move away from viewing the relationship between ‘male’ and ‘female’ as immutable. For example, by examining how normative concepts create the illusion of fixed notions of the ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine,’ and by studying the connections between these notions and broader institutional systems, one can unpack the rationale behind the promotion of certain cultural symbols and/or identify entry points to disrupt these seemingly fixed relationships. Scott suggests several ways of applying these ideas in research, particularly for historical inquiry.
Second, gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power. In other words, gender is used to legitimize and construct power dynamics, both literally and symbolically. This second aspect of Scott’s definition highlights the intimate relationship between gender—in its social dimension—and power. Power in all types of institutions, both private and public, is tied to the social dimension of gender. For example, she describes how associations between male and female, such as strength and weakness, are used to maintain or challenge political power: “when middle-class reformers in France, for example, depicted workers in terms coded as feminine (subordinated, weak, sexually exploited like prostitutes), labor and socialist leaders replied by insisting on the masculine position of the working class (producers, strong, protectors of their women and children).” (p. 1073). As she explains, these metaphors do not explicitly reference gender but rely on naturalized social relationships between men and women. Importantly, throughout the piece, she argues that the relationship between social organization and power hierarchies is bidirectional; both parts of her definition are connected in complex ways.
I am sure I am leaving key insights behind, as this article is dense, and the author leaves no word to chance. However, I would like to offer two thoughts on how these ideas can inform gender-transformative RME. The first thought that comes to mind is that we should not treat gender as a traditional variable in quantitative research and evaluation. As Scott states in another article: “When gender is an open question about how these meanings are established, what they signify, and in what contexts, then it remains a useful – because critical – category of analysis” (Scott, 2010, p13[2] ). The moment we gather information about participants’ gender and reduce it to a set of categorical options, the term loses its critical power. Treating gender as a variable in RME contexts involves defining categories (e.g., woman, man, non-binary) and using these categories to interpret other outcomes, such as self-confidence. Even with the most fluid definitions, connecting 'gender categories' to other variables creates the illusion of a fixed relationship, thereby perpetuating the problem. But we must still include information about gender, as excluding it would move us backwards in knowledge and awareness. One might consider reverting to 'sex' as the category of interest, but focusing solely on sex would overlook the experiences of people whose identities do not align with their sex assigned at birth. Another solution would be to expand the questions used to describe gender and apply reduction techniques to develop more complex indexes. Frankly, the most reasonable solution that I can think of is to integrate qualitative methodologies alongside quantitative ones, allowing us to capture the messiness and depth that precedes and follows the use of gender categories.
A second thought that comes to my mind is the analogy between power and methodology. Scott establishes a relationship between the gendered social order and power, which I interpret it in the following way: (a) perceived differences between sex categories are valued in ways that create or maintain unequal power dynamics (e.g., between men and women), and (b) the ‘powerful’ create conditions – by promoting certain representations, enacting laws, etc. – that allow people like themselves to retain power. If my interpretation is correct, methodology can be thought of as a tool that highlights or values certain characteristics, thereby influencing perceived social differences. The outcomes that we choose to evaluate progress carry consequences. Even in the context of a small program, as an evaluator, I define criteria by which participants are judged. If I focus on sex-based differences, I may reinforce or challenge the existing power dynamics within the social order. To use an absurd example: if I decided to focus on participants’ tone of voice, rewarded a lower tone, and measured changes for boys and girls during adolescence, at the endline, I would surely rate boys as having made greater gains and thus as more deserving of rewards. It is less obvious how these dynamics play out when we focus on other outcomes. As methodologists, we must keep thinking about these nuances.
I will conclude by emphasizing that Scott’s article is a powerful invitation to expand our understanding of the term gender. Gender-transformative RME must continuously question the purpose behind the categories and methodologies we choose to use, as these decisions not only shape our research but also influence the very structures we aim to analyze and transform.
[1] French post-structuralist and Anglo-American object-relations theorist
[2] Scott, J. W. (2010). Gender: Still a Useful Category of Analysis?
