Essentialism and Gender

Most people like to believe in free will. This may be especially true for Americans, raised on a philosophy that preaches that anyone can grow up to be president, can make of their lives anything that they wish. But at the same time, most people also understand that one's path in life is very much determined by certain immutable facts about oneself - including one's race, one's gender, one's age.

Anthropologists call these elements of a person's identity ascribed status (as opposed to achieved status, which comprises those elements of one's identity that a person has control over). These are the aspects of a person's life that he or she has no control over. But do these ascribed qualities matter because society treats people as if they do? Or do they matter because there exist essential differences between different types of people - between blacks and whites, for example, or between men and women? Those who believe that significant differences exist between different groups are called essentialists, for they argue that different groups of people are fundamentally different because of the accident of their birth into a certain category.

This paper examines the issue of essentialism as it applies to gender, discussing both the truthfulness and the usefulness of this model of human nature.

The essentialist argument has historically had a great deal of appeal. Sigmund Freud's famous dictum that "Sex is destiny" is one example of essentialist thinking. So - to skip a century and

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