Kontakt 2007, 9(2):318-324 | DOI: 10.32725/kont.2007.049

Unpredictable consequences of genderHealth and Social Sciences

Petr Saforek

Ostravská univerzita v Ostravě, Filozofická fakulta, katedra psychologie a sociální práce v Ostravě

The problem of the gender is considered in the contribution through the optics of the Thomas theorem. It deals with certain real consequences of the use, which is understood as intentional social behaviour, of the concept gender in the Czech (scientific) environment. In the contribution, three areas of unpredictable consequences of gender within the scope of intentional social behaviour are delimited.
1. In the field of the language. Czech reader, listener, student, etc. is suggested that the only correct understanding (translation) of the English word gender is a social oppositum to the biologically given sex and that only this meaning is ascribed to the word in contemporary English (including the American one). As if the original meanings gender = sex, grammatical gender and their use would not exist any more. The problem is not in the reduction of the meaning of the word gender itself, but in obvious attempts of the underestimation of its use in other scientific disciplines.
2. Conceptual uncertainty of the word and questioning of the meaningfulness of the gender identity. In social sciences, gender is a typical construct of the social reality, which passed through stages of habituation, institutionalisation and objectivization from the time of its first occurrence, and is considered as a "social fact", which is undesirable in its existing form, and which should be changed (in a revolutionary way). Thus, gender is being changed from its neutral, scientific concept into an ideological concept with all the negative consequences resulting from this.
3. Delimitation of gender roles. Diffuse nature or directly refusal of gender roles forms stress situations on several levels of the human activity.
4. The contribution furthermore comprises partial information about results of research, where the gender identity and gender role are parts of moderators and mediators of the stress resistance.

Keywords: Unpredictable consequences; gender; gender identity; gender roles

Received: October 4, 2007; Accepted: October 29, 2007; Published: December 21, 2007  Show citation