Sex and Gender Anthropology

Understanding gender through an anthropological lens reveals how societies organize around biological difference, why gender systems vary dramatically across cultures, and how gender inequality emerged relatively recently in human history. This lecture challenges common assumptions about what’s “natural” or “traditional” when it comes to gender, attempting to capture the most important points of sex and gender anthropology at the introductory level.

Key Concepts

• Sex refers to biological differences (hormones, physical, chromosomal); gender refers to social expectations and roles attached to those differences. The term gender came into use in the 1970s through feminist theorists (317)
• “Gender*sex” is an academic term acknowledging that social expectations and biological differences are entangled — what boys and girls are expected to eat, do, and exercise shapes how their bodies actually develop (320)
• Non-binary gender categories have existed for hundreds or thousands of years across cultures: Samoan fa’afafine, hijra in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and Two-Spirit traditions in Indigenous America (325). European colonialism persecuted many of these traditions
• Neandertal evidence shows both male and female skeletons bearing trauma from dangerous hunting; tooth-wear patterns suggest females specialized in hide processing — gender differentiation appearing around 100,000 years ago (330)
• Female big-game hunters appear in the archaeological record, including the Wilamaya Patjxa burial in Peru (Haas et al. 2020) — hunting was not limited to males (332)
• The Birka Viking warrior burial (grave Bj 581), excavated in 1878 and long assumed male because of its weapons, was confirmed biologically female by DNA analysis in 2017 (Hedenstierna-Jonson et al.) — showing how archaeological assumptions about gender can persist for over a century (333)
• Patriarchy emerged with agriculture roughly 12,000 years ago — not from our evolutionary heritage. Patrilineal (inheritance through male line) and patrilocal (women joining husbands’ households) systems amplify it (334)
• European colonialism over the last 500 years intensified or imposed patriarchy on societies with more fluid arrangements — Māori cosmology depicted complementary, equal sky father and earth mother deities before colonization (334)
• The Minangkabau of West Sumatra are the world’s largest matriarchy — matrilineal and matrilocal, with women holding significant power. Many pre-colonial Native American societies are better called diarchies, where political and economic power was divided between genders (335-336)
• Bureaucratic state regulation of gender — through forms, documents, occupational sorting — is only 200-300 years old. The most restrictive gender systems are historically recent, not ancient

Part 1: Sex, Gender & Cross-Cultural Diversity

Sex vs. Gender: Key Terms

• Sex: Biological differences in sexually reproducing species — hormones, physical and chromosomal characteristics (317)
• Gender: Social roles and expectations placed on biological differences. The term came into use in the 1970s through feminist theorists (317)
• Gender*sex: Academic term recognizing that gender (social) and sex (physical) are “entangled and influencing one another in complex ways” (320)

Important: “Gender is socially constructed” does NOT mean everyone is biologically the same. It means our ideas about what biological differences should mean come from culture, not nature. A hundred years ago, boys wore pink (associated with masculine red) and girls wore blue (associated with feminine softness). The colors reversed; the underlying biology did not. The philosophical depth of this claim — what it does and does not mean — is treated at Gender Is a Social Construction.

The Sex Reveal Party Insight

“Gender reveal parties” should technically be “sex reveal parties” (318): ultrasounds show biological sex, not how a child will perform gender. The popular naming reflects how the word “gender” has become a polite stand-in for what we should just call sex. (Though “sex reveal party” would attract a different crowd.)

The Baby Experiment

Psychological studies show that when the same six-month-old infant is dressed in blue and identified as a boy, adults bounce it vigorously and play rough. Dress the identical baby in pink and identify it as a girl, and the same adults become gentle and coo softly. Same biological sex, completely different treatment from day one. The pattern continues into adulthood and shapes how children’s bodies develop.

Biological Sex Complexity

Biological sex is more complex than simple XX/XY categories. Looking at chromosomes, gonads, genitalia, and hormones reveals subtle and moderate variations across the range. Most people fall into clearly demarcated male or female categories, but intersex conditions and chromosomal variations demonstrate that sex is messier than simplistic binaries. Many people have subtle variations and never know it. Nature is complex; this is not anyone’s fault.

Gender*Sex: How Social Expectations Shape Biology

The Protein vs. Sugars Example: A century ago, boys got the biggest piece of chicken and the most protein because they were expected to do physical labor. Girls got carbs and sugars. This dietary difference created real biological differences in body development — not from biology, but from social expectations.

The NCAA Weight Room Example: Famous photos circulated of NCAA women’s sports locker rooms where no weights were provided, while men’s facilities had full equipment. For decades, girls were discouraged from strength training because muscles were “unattractive.” Restricted access creates measurable biological differences in muscle development.

This is gender*sex in action: social expectations shape biological development through food, activities, and socialization.

Binary Gender & Language

Binary gender dominates globally (321), shaping identities, roles, sports, jobs, and education (322). Language varies in how it encodes gender:

• Some languages gender every noun (Spanish, German). The same word can be masculine in one language and feminine in another
• English is lightly gendered grammatically (mainly pronouns), but still teaches boys and girls to speak differently
• Some languages have ungendered pronouns (Mandarin Chinese, for example) (323)
• Pitch, tone, and vocal patterns also carry gender meanings (322-323); women speaking in patterns expected of men face social punishment

Gender Norms & Cultural Scripts

We learn gender through cultural scripts (324): dress, language, body movement, posture. The textbook example: “manspreading” (men taught to take up space with wide knees) versus women taught to cross their legs tightly and stay compact. These patterns feel natural but are learned from infancy. Good performances get rewarded; deviations get teased, judged, or worse.

The Doctor Fit: Gender and Performance Evaluation

A male surgeon throwing a “doctor fit” in an emergency room — demanding a scalpel, barking instructions — is read as authoritative and capable, and nurses jump to attention. A female surgeon performing the exact same behavior gets called the B-word and described as harsh or cruel. The same pattern shows up in academic evaluations of male versus female professors. We reward expected gender performance and punish deviation, with measurable consequences for careers and credibility.

Beyond Binaries: Non-Binary Gender Categories Across Cultures

Non-binary gender categories are ancient and global, not new inventions. The textbook gives several examples (325):

• Fa’afafine (Samoa): individuals assigned male at birth who engage in activities considered women’s work — a traditional category in use for centuries (325)
• Hijra (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh): a recognized third-gender category, mostly assigned male at birth, often undergoing surgical alteration to inhabit this distinct gender (325)
• Two-Spirit (Indigenous Americas): the idea that people are born with two spirits, with traditional roles for individuals who do not fit into binary categories. European colonialism persecuted these categories, similar to its persecution of Indigenous languages, so we do not know how prevalent they were before colonization

These categories aren’t new — they’re thousands of years old across many cultures. Our idea that we can shove people into two opposed categories, like Mars and Venus, is not supported by the anthropological evidence.

Part 2: Patriarchy, Archaeology & Recent History

Where Did Binary Gender Come From?

Nonhuman primates show sex differences but don’t organize societies around gender categories (330). Chimpanzees and bonobos have different mating patterns and behaviors by sex, but they don’t socialize males and females differently or send them to different roles. Humans appear to be unique in creating elaborate cultural gender systems with different dress codes, schools, occupations, and social rules based on perceived gender.

Neandertal Evidence

Around 100,000 years ago, Neandertal evidence shows both males and females bearing trauma consistent with dangerous hunting (330). Tooth-wear patterns suggest females specialized in hide processing — gripping and stripping animal hides with their teeth. The division of labor existed but may have been more about women’s childcare advantages (331) than men’s hunting advantages. The textbook proposes that humans needed extra calories from meat to support large-brained offspring, and the women’s childcare role made the hunting division of labor possible — not biological hunting superiority on the men’s side.

Female Big-Game Hunters: The Wilamaya Patjxa Burial

Female big-game hunters appear in the archaeological record as researchers stop projecting modern gender assumptions backward. The Wilamaya Patjxa burial in Peru (Haas et al. 2020) showed a biologically female individual buried with a full big-game hunting toolkit (332). The find directly challenges the long-standing “man the hunter” assumption that hunting was a male-only activity.

The Birka Viking Warrior (Grave Bj 581)

The most famous archaeological reassessment of gender assumptions is Birka grave Bj 581 (333). The burial, excavated by Hjalmar Stolpe in 1878 with a full warrior’s kit — sword, spear, axe, two shields, arrows, two horses, gaming pieces — was assumed male for nearly 140 years. Osteological analysis in 2014 and a DNA study by Hedenstierna-Jonson et al. in 2017 confirmed the skeleton was biologically female. The reassessment shows how archaeological assumptions about gender can persist for over a century — and how many other interpretations may need revisiting.

Key lesson: Don’t project modern patriarchal assumptions onto the past.

Patriarchy & Its Timeline

Patriarchy (334): societies where men have dominant authority, hold most political positions, control most resources, and exercise control over home life. Patriarchy is especially powerful in patrilineal (inheritance through the male line) and patrilocal (women move to husband’s family) systems, where women leave their natal homes and reproductive capacities support male heirs in unfamiliar households.

Critical question — how long have we had patriarchies? Only about 12,000 years (334), since agriculture. Before agriculture, hunter-gatherer societies had gender roles but they were fluid and didn’t produce large gender inequality. Patriarchies emerge with property, inheritance, and agricultural land. This means patriarchy represents only about 6% of human history. For 94% of our existence, we organized gender differently.

Colonialism Intensified Patriarchy

European colonizers introduced or reinforced patriarchy globally (334), suppressing alternatives where they encountered them. Not all patriarchy comes from colonialism — there were and are many patriarchal societies outside colonial rule — but colonialism spread it worldwide and worked to eliminate alternatives.

• Māori example: traditional cosmology depicted the sky father and the earth mother as complementary, equal deities with interlaced power. Under colonialism, missionaries worked to suppress this complementary framing and introduce more patriarchal norms
• Two-Spirit suppression: Indigenous American non-binary categories were persecuted and outlawed under colonial rule, similar to the persecution of Indigenous languages
• Many other societies saw existing patriarchal tendencies reinforced or intensified through colonial governance and missionary intervention

Patriarchy Doesn’t Benefit All Men

Patriarchy is often most beneficial to the top men in a society, but it imposes difficult norms even on men who don’t reap the rewards (335). Working-class men often cannot support families at the level patriarchal expectations demand, and the resulting strain shows up as differential rates of poor health, depression, and suicide. During the Great Recession of 2007-2009, male depression and suicide rates rose as male-centered jobs became precarious and provider expectations became impossible to meet. Rigid gender roles constrain everyone, even members of the dominant group.

Matriarchies & Diarchies: The Minangkabau and Beyond

Anthropologists long argued that no true matriarchies existed — no societies parallel to patriarchy with women holding all the power. The picture is more nuanced. There are societies with substantial female power, even if not perfect mirrors of male-dominant patriarchy.

• Minangkabau in West Sumatra (335): called the world’s largest matriarchy. Matrilineal and matrilocal — inheritance passes through the female line, and when people marry the husband moves to the wife’s village. Men still hold some elected political positions, but women exercise much authority over autonomy and economic arrangements. A woman’s brother often matters more in her lineage than her husband
• Many Native American societies were matrilineal with female political councils. Inheritance through mothers, men leaving their groups to join wives, and women holding significant political and economic authority were common patterns before colonization
• For a theoretical account of matriarchies and the story of scholars who got banished for suggesting their existence, see Gardens of Adonis in The Dawn of Everything

Diarchy (336): societies where political and economic power is divided between genders rather than dominated by one. This may better describe many pre-colonial Indigenous societies than either “patriarchy” or “matriarchy.” The diarchy framework captures the practical reality of shared authority that gets obscured when we look only for societies that mirror European male dominance.

Contemporary Gender Disparities

Around the globe, contemporary gender disparities persist across many domains. Few countries have achieved gender equity. The patterns are not uniform but are pervasive:

• Health care access (including female genital cutting and cosmetic surgeries across cultures)
• Education access
• Employment and the wage gap
• Reproductive rights
• LGBTQIA+ recognition
• Gender-based violence (which disproportionately affects girls, women, and people who differently identify)

These are complex issues requiring understanding of both historical origins and contemporary perpetuations.

Timeline: The Big Picture

For most of human history (~300,000 years ago to ~12,000 years ago):

• Hunter-gatherer societies with fluid gender roles
• Both sexes hunted in many societies; Neandertal evidence around 100,000 years ago suggests some gendered task division but not gender hierarchy
• No evidence of large gender inequality or patriarchy

~12,000 years ago: Agriculture brings property ownership → patriarchies emerge (334), often alongside warfare and inheritance systems

~500 years ago: European colonialism spreads and intensifies patriarchy, suppresses gender diversity in colonized societies

Last 200-300 years: Industrial states begin formally regulating gender through documents, forms, schools, and occupational sorting

Key insight: some of the most restrictive gender systems are historically recent, not ancient or “traditional.” Much of the work that needs to be done is to recapture some of the fluidity and less restrictive nature of societies that were more prevalent in our past than in our present.

What’s Next for Gender*Sex?

The textbook closes the chapter by predicting that gender*sex is in flux globally, with women gaining more rights, innovations allowing physical transitions, and modern communication, media, and social platforms providing avenues to question and redefine gender.

The direction is contested. The lecturer notes that the textbook’s prediction may not be playing out as the authors anticipated. The political climate around teaching gender content in educational settings remains contested in the contemporary US, with some advocating for expanded recognition of gender diversity and others seeking to restrict such discussions in schools. In some US states, the material in this chapter could not be taught.

The anthropological evidence remains clear regardless of policy debates: gender systems are culturally variable across societies, non-binary categories are deep in human history, and patriarchy is recent. The current arrangement is one possibility among many, not biological destiny.

Sex and Gender Anthropology FAQ

What’s the difference between sex and gender?

Sex refers to biological differences between males and females — hormones, physical and chromosomal differences. Gender refers to the social expectations and roles attached to those biological differences. The term gender came into use in the 1970s through feminist theorists who wanted a way to distinguish biological sex from the social roles built on top of it.

What does “gender is socially constructed” actually mean?

It does not mean we are ignoring biological differences — those are real. It means our ideas about what boys and girls should do, wear, eat, and be are variable across societies and across time. A hundred years ago in this society, boys wore pink and girls wore blue. The colors reversed; the underlying biology did not change. Many other gender norms work the same way. The philosophical depth of this claim is treated at Gender Is a Social Construction.

When did patriarchy begin?

Patriarchies emerged with agriculture about 12,000 years ago — not from our evolutionary heritage. Before agriculture, hunter-gatherer societies had gender roles but they were fluid and not strongly hierarchical. Patriarchies were intensified through European colonialism over the last 500 years and locked in by bureaucratic state regulation only in the last 200-300 years. The most restrictive forms of patriarchy are historically recent, not ancient.

Are matriarchal societies real?

The Minangkabau of West Sumatra are called the world’s largest matriarchy — matrilineal and matrilocal, with women holding significant power, though men still hold some elected political positions. Many pre-colonial Indigenous societies might be better called diarchies, where political and economic power was divided between genders rather than dominated by one. A perfect mirror of patriarchy — women holding all power — does not appear to exist, but societies with substantial female political and economic authority do.

Were there female Viking warriors?

Yes. Birka grave Bj 581, excavated in 1878 with a full warrior’s kit and long assumed male because of its weapons, was confirmed biologically female by DNA analysis in 2017 (Hedenstierna-Jonson et al.). The reassessment shows how archaeological assumptions about gender can persist for over a century. Other female big-game hunters appear in the archaeological record once researchers stop projecting modern assumptions onto the past, including the Wilamaya Patjxa burial in Peru (Haas et al. 2020).

Sex and Gender Anthropology Resources

• See the Gender-Sex-Kinship Hub on this website
• The textbook The Human Story on Amazon (Commissions earned)
• For the philosophical depth of what “gender is a social construction” means, see Gender Is a Social Construction
• The book Sex Is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary by Agustín Fuentes provides an anthropological overview