All Posts Tagged Tag: ‘gender stereotypes’

Author: Amy Goodloe
Category: Gender Studies, Readings-Academic
Tags: biology textbooks, gender stereotypes, scientific research

Martin, Emily. “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 16.3 (Spring, 1991): 485-501. martin-science-romance.pdf

READING NOTES

This article is very popular among students, so you may have read it before. Martin brings up some great points that are directly relevant to our investigation of the “rhetoric” of gender and sexuality, in that she shows how the language some biology textbooks use directly reinforces certain gender stereotypes. Her main example is the one she bases her title on: how textbooks frame the logistics of conception in such a way that the egg is “passive” and docile, while the sperm is “active” and “victorious,” which is problematic for two reasons.

One reason is that such language reinforces the idea that all females/women/feminine beings are and should be “passive,” while all males/men/masculine beings are and should be “active.” But as if that wasn’t bad enough, the second problem is that this way of describing conception isn’t even accurate! The egg is far from passive, and the sperm is hardly the heroic manly being it’s made out to be.

HOWEVER… given that another important learning goal for our class is to become more critical of the way authors produce knowledge, including even academic authors, I strongly encourage you to take a close look at Martin’s research methods and to see if you can figure out why they’re seriously flawed. Bonus points if you can figure out what would’ve been a better way to research this topic!