FBE Gender Lab Interdisciplinary Seminar Series - Professor Cordelia Fine (University of Melbourne)

Title: Evolved Gender Constructionists? Integrating evolutionary and social constructionist accounts of gender

Abstract: Within the “standard” (non-evolutionary) social sciences, Wood & Eagly’s Social Role Theory (SRT) represents the most prominent and well-developed account of sex differences in personality (traits, abilities, values and motivations). However, the theory has been criticized for failing to consider the effects of evolutionary processes, particularly sexual selection, on male and female minds. Moreover, evidence that many sex differences in personality are no smaller, or are even larger, in more gender-egalitarian countries, goes against a stated prediction of SRT. Conversely, SRT’s main rival for explaining sex differences in personality, Evolutionary Psychology’s Sexual Strategies Theory, cannot comfortably account for cross-cultural and historical variation in sex differences in personality, among other issues. Drawing on cultural evolutionary perspectives, I explore whether recasting sex differences in personality as a component of culturally evolved gender roles offers a promising alternative framework for research.