Haslanger on the Definition of Gender

2024-2 Social Ontology Segment 2

 

Q) What type of definition of gender is Haslanger after? What purpose is her definition supposed to serve?

Regarding conceptual analysis (the philosophical methodology that asks the question in the form of “what is x?”), Haslanger argues that there are three distinctive ways of understanding this methodology: conceptual, descriptive, and analytical. A conceptual project seeks an articulation of our concepts of race or gender; a descriptive project aims to delineate the nature of concepts (what they are) through careful consideration of the phenomena. An analytical project involves asking about the practical usefulness of certain concepts and revising them to accomplish certain legitimate purposes (e.g., social justice). Haslanger is interested in the last type of definition of gender by considering what things have to be. Her approach is thus called “ameliorative analysis.”

 

Q) State the main components of Haslanger’s definition of “woman”. Does the female body feature in this definition?                                                                                                                          

According to Halanger, woman is defined as follows: 

S is a woman iff

i) S is regularly and for the most part observed or imagined to have certain bodily features presumed to be evidence of a female’s biological role in reproduction;

ii) that S has these features marks S within the dominant ideology of S’s society as someone who ought to occupy certain kinds of social position that are in fact subordinate (and so motivates and justifies S’s occupying such a position); and

iii) the fact that S satisfies (i) and (ii) plays a role in S’s systematic subordination, i.e., along some dimensions, S’s social position is oppressive, and S’s satisfying (i) and (ii) plays a role in that dimension of subordination.

It is worth noting that Haslanger distinguishes between woman and female, arguing that gender (woman) is not defined in terms of an individual’s intrinsic physical or psychological features, which are essential components of sex (female). Therefore, only observed or imagined bodily are components of Haslanger’s definition of “woman.”