Does Biology Limit Equality?

Abstract

This chapter provides a brief overview of theory and research that has investigated the relationship between physiology and gender difference with an eye toward understanding the role that biology may play in facilitating or inhibiting social equality. We present one extended example that simultaneously examined biological and social theories as structuring individual-level variation in women’s personality traits to document the complicated interplay of the biological and the social across the life course. We extend our analysis to discuss implications for the study of race and acknowledge the benefical contributions that intersex and transgender individuals’ experiences bring to bear on the study of the relationship between physiology and gender difference. We conlude by noting that though the road to equality is hard and paved with setbacks, it is not bound by biology.