The difference between sex and gender wasnt something new to learn for me. You hear about gender expression on the news all the time and how many different ways there are to express your gender. I also already knew about how hormonal expression and genetic variations can cause biological sex to become sort of a grey area and not the typical XX-female XY-male gene expression. What I did learn however is the correct terminology for the ideas, that hermaphroditism doesn’t cover all people with a genetic variation somewhere in between true XX and true XY. As far as my views on how biology affects gender, they’re still the same after this course. That is that there is a biological reason, chemical or physical, of why people are the way that they are. I know currently there is no concrete scientific proof of this, but I believe that we just haven’t found it yet or have the scientific means of which to find it. Who is to say that just a minor difference of 1ng of a hormone during development between two people couldn’t change the way synapses in the brain fire? This is just a rough example of what I mean however. With that being said however I didn’t realize how much gender roles in a country

can affect how a person can view their own gender (artifact 1, sex and gender).

One thing that stuck with me and I noticed every time is how the major religion of a culture would affect how different genders are viewed, either male, female, or non binary. The only time I didn’t see religion impacting gender roles is when I researched the Tonga of the South Pacific (Artifact 2). To be fair however, the research went into their cultural practices and their roles and never into their religion. However from the article it highly seemed that the way one of the genders was viewed was by their contribution to their society. This makes sense because let’s say you’re working on a group project with four people, and two people in the group show up on time and work habitually on it, one shows up and works on it as well but is always around 20-30 minutes late, and the final one shows up every other time the group meets. How highly is everyone thought of in the group? You also see this on survival shows

all the time, especially on naked and afraid where there is no previous history between the people. Male and female doesn’t matter as much as what that person contribute to the group. Some episodes the man is doing far more than the woman, sometimes the woman is pulling the man along, and sometimes they both contribute equally. In the episodes where there is equal contribution they see each other as equal, even when there are roles such as the guy goes and gets food while the woman stays in the camp and keeps the fire alive and works on the shelter. There are clear gender roles between the two, however each is equally important.

When looking at the global gender gap and comparing the countries you could see the effects religion have on the countries rankings (article 3). The Scandinavian countries which, while currently are Christian based, were historically Norse and Norse mythology and practices had a high value of females in the culture and the two genders were very equal. Then below the Scandinavian countries there were the Christian countries, Buddhist, and Hindu countries generally mixed together. Generally is important there as there are a lot of outliers. And at the bottom of the list are muslim countries and even more important than that are countries run by religious rules such as Sharia Law. In those countries women are treated more as objects or slaves because they have to take care of their husbands, the husbands can have multiple wives, forced marriages are common, women can’t even go outside the house by themselves or drive, and women can be killed on the street for breaking traditions in an “honor killing” and nobody would care.

I was surprised to see that even in the worst rated country on the global gender gap report, the healthcare gap was relatively small (article 3). The top and bottom country were 0.062 points away from each other. Because of this, seeing that America was only 0.007 points from the top position I thought that there really wasn’t anything different about males and females receiving medical treatment in the US. Article 4 made me rethink that however and realize that there isn’t a law stating that there is a difference or even really a social construct against women going to the doctor, but instead its a cost issue with insurance being higher for women because they have to go more often and see additional doctors.

Before this class I hadn’t ever really thought about circumcision as a bad thing, but that is because i was looking at it from the male perspective only because I had never heard of female circumcision or the negative effects it has (article 7). What writing these articles has done is made me explore and engage with subjects that I either oppose, have never really had a formed opinion on, or something I had no idea about and learn more about it than if it was just on a slide during class.