The basic premise of difference theories is that physiological makeup determines gender and since males and females are created differently, they should occupy different positions in the continuum of life. Contemporary feminist theory is careful not to
distinguish between sex and gender. While Millet ( 1977) and Oakley (1972) argue that sex differences may be natural, biological and anatomical differences between men and women, poststructuralist and postmodemist perspectives have questioned the social construction of both sex and gender. For example, Humm (1995) argues that like gender, sex has social meanings since it has become a tool for the subordination of women by men. Gender is described as relating to social and cultural attributes and behaviours, relative to time and place that are ascribed to females or to males. Humm further argues that gender emanates from power politics of difference as inequality, identity and subjectivity that structure every society.
In the school system, biological theories of difference have been used extensively in Zimbabwe to separate boys' activities from girls' activities. This has resulted in the separate pursuit by males and females of technical subjects including home economics, fashion and fabrics, agriculture, wood technology, metal technology, building technology and technical drawing and design. The same trend has been noticed in the sciences where mathematics, chemistry, physics and biology have been strongly gendered in their
enrolments. In sports, separate competitions have existed for men and women while in textbooks, prominence is given to male activities. Alton-Lee and Praat (2000) argue that essentialism, sex role, identity, social construction and cultural production and
reproduction theories offer explanations concerning difference. These terms are discussed in the next sections beginning with essentialism.
Essentialism embraces the notion that creation has endowed males and females with "essentially and immutably biological, genetic or hormonal differences" (Alton-Lee & Pratt, 2000, p. 41). These endowments are perceived to manifest themselves in
physiological differences. As a result of the differences, the essentialist view posits that male and female education should be tailored differently in response to these immutable differences (Smith, 1996). The essentialist view took root and informed much of the second half of the nineteenth century. Early research on physiological differences between men and women by Le Bon (1903) claimed that the male brain was bigger in size to that of a woman. Arguments were put forward historically contending that
women's emotionality, supposed lack of reason and inferior intellect were related to their smaller brain size. Le Bon drew conclusions that because men had bigger brains,
therefore they had superior cognitive capabilities and higher intelligence than women. Arguments toward the turn of the last century include research on how female and male
Chapter Four: Difference in perspectives used to study girls and technology 44 brains have been structured differently (McGlone, 1980, Gray, 198 1). This line of
thinking has linked cognitive tasks to biological differences in brain symmetry with male brains being perceived to be more suited to spatial functions than female brains. Research by Smith ( 1996) on the structure of the brain has also been used to suggest that females have a physiological disposition to a facility for language skills and men a disposition for spatial ability. Supposed inferior spatial abilities in girls have been suggested as
explaining the relative poor participation and achievement rates of girls in the physical sciences (Gray, 1 98 1 ; Alton Lee and Praat, 2000). Thus, genetic and biological
differences in genitalia have been seen as biologically shaping the destiny of boys and girls.
In New Zealand, O'Neill (2000) suggests that some biological, physiological and neurological theories were historically closely linked to a number of global, cultural and racial fears. According to O'Neill, people in power justified the domestic roles of women by saying that if women used their brains too much, it would result in a number of physical weaknesses, including the "shrinking of ovaries and the weakening of the reproductive system" (p. 88). This was perceived to decrease fertility resulting in women producing sickly and unhealthy babies. This biological deterministic belief saw as innate that women were naturally suited to a domestic role and that they should, in view of perceived roles, receive some preparation for them. Accordingly, the education that women received well into the 1930s and 1940s was based on such women's
predispositions to physiological and biological traits. O'Neill further argues that the
notion of naturalness of female domesticity was founded on the common belief in the past that "in a nuclear family, based on heterosexual marriage, the father was the breadwinner while the mother was the nurturer of the family and the children were primarily dependent on the mother" (p. 88). It is argued in this research that similar essentialist discourses have been used in the Zimbabwean context in separating the roles of males and females as was seen in the last chapter.
Research critical of essentialism argues that biological explanations offer inadequate explanations of observed behaviours. While there may be anatomical
differences of genitalia and hormones, Giddens ( 1997) for example, points that scientific evidence has not been found linking biological dispositions to behaviour of females and males. Similarly, Gilbert and Gilbert (1998) also argue that biological claims of
behavioural difference based on brain sizes are inconclusive owing to lack of medical research evidence linking concrete and measurable brain and hormonal differences to observable behaviour. They posit that the body, being an open system, is more liable to be influenced by external environmental forces than by biological attributions suggested by essentialist formulations. In support, Abbott and Wall ace (1995) argue that the
Chapter Four: Difference in perspectives used to study girls and technology 45
expected behaviour of "boys and girls is both encouraged and reinforced by adults with whom they come into conduct and the institutions of which they are members" (p. 10). I count myself to be in this group and offer that institutional role socialisation offers better explanations of observed behaviours than biological attributions.
In relation to brain spatial differences, the suggestion that inferior spatial skills may be genetic or biologically determined has been widely rejected because differences between sexes may not be found in all cultures and cannot be perceived as universal (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1 981). Furthermore, research by Linn and Hyde (1989), found that sex differences in cognitive tasks were too small to warrant any significance. More research has revealed that spatial skills are more a product of the social environment rather than internal brain and hormonal differences (Solomon, 1997; Brickhouse, 1994). In terms of girls' and boys' differential uptake of technology, Harding (1991) and Linn and Hyde ( 1989) reject biological explanations and claim that the problem of girls' lack of participation lies not with the girls but with the way science and technology is practiced and projected in society. Social explanations for the differential participation and achievement of both girls and boys in science and technology thus become
implicated. Harding, for example, perceived that it is science and technology as well as society that need to change.