Social Science : Gender Studies

Biology at Work brings an evolutionary perspective to bear on issues of women in the workplace: the "glass ceiling," the "gender gap" in pay, sexual harassment, and occupational segregation. While acknowledging the role of discrimination and sexist socialization, Browne suggests that until we factor real biological differences between men and women into the equation, the explanation remains incomplete. Browne looks at behavioral differences between men and women as products of different evolutionary pressures facing them throughout human history. Women’s biological investment in their offspring has led them to be on average more nurturing and risk averse, and to value relationships over competition. Men have been biologically rewarded, over human history, for displays of strength and skill, risk taking, and status acquisition. These behavioral differences have numerous workplace consequences. Not surprisingly, sex differences in the drive for status lead to sex differences in the achievement of status. Browne argues that decision makers should recognize that policies based on the assumption of a single androgynous human nature are unlikely to be successful. Simply removing barriers to inequality will not achieve equality, as women and men typically value different things in the workplace and will make different workplace choices based on their different preferences. Rather than simply putting forward the “nature” side of the debate, Browne suggests that dichotomies such as nature/nurture have impeded our understanding of the origins of human behavior. Through evolutionary biology we can understand not only how natural selection has created predispositions toward certain types of behavior but also how the social environment interacts with these predispositions to produce observed behavioral patterns. more...

Price: $26.00

Presents the reader with the essential primary texts on bisexuality for the last 100 years. Exploring the often controversial concept from a range of perspectives, this book places bisexuality in its historical and cultural context more...

Price: $36.95

Considers the treatment of gender blenders by the medical framework, in literature, the press and telephone sex lines and examines its prominence in recent contemporary cultural and queer theory. more...

Price: $180.00

Looking at a wide range of cultural practices and artifacts, including television, popular music, and pornography, Bodies and Biases addresses representations of sexual behavior and collective identity, homosexuality, and ideologies of gender in historical and contemporary Hispanic culture. more...

Price: $78.00

We all have a body, but how does it impact upon our everyday life? This new and accessible introduction to the sociology of the body explores how ordinary women, men and children talk about their bodies. more...

Price: $59.95