Unit – II: GENDER AND BIOLOGY

Unit – II: GENDER AND BIOLOGY

CHAPTER 1. Missing Women: Sex Selection  And Its Consequences

Sex Ratio / Overall Sex Ratio: The sex ratio is the ratio of males to females in a population. In most sexually reproducing species, the ratio tends to be 1:1.

In India, the Child Sex Ratio is defined as the number of females per thousand males in the age group 0–6 years in a human population. In the Population Census of 2011, it was revealed that the population ratio of India was 940 females per 1000 of males.

Causes for Decling Sex Ratio:

The main reasons for a decreasing sex ratio in India are:

•          Selective terminations of pregnancy, and female infanticide.
•        Abortions are legal in India, but determining the sex of the foetus is not. But finding a doctor or   a sonologist who's willing to tell you the sex of the foetus is ridiculously easy.
•         A third factor is that female babies are more likely to be undernourished, resulting in disease and death.

The underlying reason is basically that a girl is seen as a liability -

1. She will get married and leave the house, so cannot be counted for support in your old age
2. You have to pay a huge dowry (although this is illegal in India, the practice isn't uncommon)
3. Needs to be protected much more - so makes it difficult for both parents to work (i.e. somebody needs to be at home with the girl to make sure she is safe)
4. Much higher chance of bringing disgrace to the family if something goes wrong.

Demographic Consequences


India has a lot of social problems, and female foeticide is the perhaps the most depressing one. This is a very tough issue to tackle. The difference might look small in the chart, but that is 30-40 Million girls missing.
Simply put, there aren't enough girls in our country, and this will have a wide variety of problems in the future when the 0-19 age group moves on to the 25-39 age group. It is going to screw up productivity, fertility ratios, and the country as a whole.

Social Consequences of a Skewed Sex Ratio:

A skewed sex ratio may instead be making the lot of women worse. Sociologists say it encourages abuse, notably in the trafficking. Reports circulate of unknown numbers of girls who are drugged, beaten and sometimes killed by traffickers.

Men, especially if poor and from a low caste, suffer too. Women in India are sometimes permitted, even encouraged, to “marry up” into a higher income bracket or caste, so richer men find it easier to get a bride. The poor are forced into a long or permanent bachelorhood; a status widely frowned upon in India, where marriage is deemed essential to becoming a full member of society. Poor bachelors are often victims of violent crime.

CHAPTER 2 –  Gender Spectrum: Beyond The Binary

The gender spectrum perceives gender as having many options; it is a linear model, ranging from 100% man to 100% woman, with various states of androgyny in between.

Two or many?

Let’s see an example: When we meet a newborn baby, most of us ask the same question: boy or girl? Often, the answer is easy. Often, but not always.

Boy or girl? 

When we meet people for the first time, we look for gender cues in a way so automated we don’t even know we’re doing it.

Long hair, Dress, Makeup = Female.
Short hair cut, Broad shoulders, Well built body  = Male.

Then someone different from both of the above walks into the room, and everything we thought we knew about gender flies out the window.

Gender may seem simple, but the myths surrounding this concept mask its true complexity. Experts who work with youth and gender issues tell us the two most common myths are these: First, gender is binary, offering only two options; second, gender and sex are the same thing. Summed up, the myth goes like this: Every person is either male or female, and the distinction is based on that person’s anatomy.

For most kids, birth sex and gender identity match. This population is referred to as being cisgender. But in some cases, children’s gender identity—how they feel about themselves—differs from their biology. Some kids know their gender identities and birth sexes don’t match almost as soon as they begin to talk. For some it is as simple as wishing to swap one gender for another—“I was born a girl, but I’m really a boy.” For others, their sense of gender exists somewhere between male and female, at various points along what is known as the gender spectrum.

The terminology used to describe these identities is vast and evolving. Gender nonconforming and transgender are common terms. Increasingly popular are such phrases as gender independent, gender creative, gender expansive and gender diverse.

Struggles with discrimination:

Compared to the general population, gender-diverse kids face drastically increased rates of bullying, assault, depression, school drop-out, drug abuse, self-harm and suicide. A 2009 report from the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network paints a grim picture. Nearly 90 percent of transgender youth surveyed had experienced verbal harassment at school because of their gender expression. Two-thirds expressed feeling unsafe at school; more than half experienced physical harassment. A quarter experienced physical assault. Most of these incidents were never reported to school officials.

Students in the study who experienced high levels of gender-identity harassment were more likely to skip school for safety reasons and to have significantly lower grade-point averages than their peers who experienced little to no harassment.

Gender Diversity: Words You Should Know

Sex
Either of the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and most other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions.

Gender
The state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones).

Assigned Gender
The gender a baby is given upon birth, usually based on the child’s birth sex.

Gender Identity
How we feel about our gender in our hearts and minds.

Gender Expression/Gender Presentation
How we show our gender to the world through external choices (e.g. dress, behavior, hairstyle).

Cisgender
Describes a person whose birth sex and gender identity align.

Birth Sex/Biological Sex
A specific set of genetic, chemical and anatomical characteristics that we are either born with or that develop as we mature.

Binary Gender
The faulty concept that there are only two genders: male and female.

Genderqueer
A broad descriptor many people use to indicate a person does not identify as either male or female.

Transgender
Describes anyone whose gender identity and birth sex do not align. The word should be used as, “transgender,” not “transgendered.” For example, “My brother Sam is transgender. His birth name was Samantha.”

Preferred Personal Pronouns
In addition to the traditional pronouns (he/him, she/her, they), some people prefer to use gender-neutral pronouns, such as ne, ve, ze/zie and xe. If you don’t know a student’s preferred personal pronoun, it’s always best to ask.

The Humiliating Practice of Sex-Testing Female Athletes

For years, international sports organizations have been policing women for “masculine” qualities — and turning their Olympic dreams into nightmares. But when Dutee Chand appealed her ban, she may have changed the rules.

The tests were meant to identify competitors whose chromosomes, hormones, genitalia, reproductive organs or secondary sex characteristics don’t develop or align in the typical way. The word “hermaphrodite” is considered stigmatizing, so physicians and advocates instead use the term “intersex” or refer to the condition as D.S.D., which stands for either a disorder or a difference of sex development.

Scientists are trying to unravel the complex biological breakdowns of gender, and as they learn more, it’s becoming more apparent there aren’t just men and women among us.

The scientists discovered the XX and XY cells that differentiate between genders can actually behave in different ways. When scientists took a closer look, they found not all people have cells that contain the same set of genes. Instead, it’s more like a mosaic of different unevenly divided sex cells, which biologists have taken to calling “mosaicism.” Although it’s a rare condition that only affects about 1 in 15,000 people, it still leaves an unidentified population of society outside of the familiar dichotomy.

Dutee Chand, is one of the most fastest woman sprinters India  has ever produced.

She won India’s sprint title in 2013, but the following year, weeks before she was to run at the Commonwealth Games, the sport’s governing body informed her she was permanently banned from competition unless she had surgery or took other medical steps to alter her body chemistry. The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) ruled that she had failed a test for hyperandrogenism (the latest iteration of gender verification) because her natural testosterone level had been ruled too high for her to be considered a woman.

Ms. Chand was by all accounts mystified – she had not even known that gender testing existed. When the South African runner Caster Semenya faced a similar controversy in 2009, her country stepped up to defend her and filed a human rights complaint with the United Nations. India, however, did not seem prepared to fight for Ms. Chand.

Last year, the Court of Arbitration for Sport agreed with Indian athlete Dutee Chand's contention that hormone testing for females was discriminatory and ineffective.

It suspended the tests, allowing Chand and other "hyperandrogenic" athletes, including South African Caster Semenya, to compete.

Hyperandrogenism is a medical condition characterised by excessive levels of androgens (the male sex hormone) in the body. It is a common endocrine disorder in women of reproductive-age and a majority of patients also have polycystic ovary syndrome.

Manabi Bandyopadhyay:

Manabi Bandyopadhyay took charge of Krishnanagar Women's College in West Bengal's Nadia district. She is the first transgender person in the country to be appointed the Principal of a college. On 9 June 2015, Manabi Bandyopadhyay took charge of Krishnanagar Women's College in West Bengal's Nadia district. She is the first transgender person in the country to be appointed the principal of a college.

CHAPTER 3: ADDITIONAL READING: OUR BODIES, OUR HEALTH

This includes an extract from TARSHI’S “The Blue Book” about the sexual organs in male and female bodies.