Gender essentialism

Gender essentialism is the belief that women and men possess fixed, innate characteristics that determine their identities, abilities, and social roles.

Gender stereotype: A generalized belief about traits or roles associated with people of a particular gender. Essentialist assumptions turn presumed innate differences into expectations for how women and men should behave.
Aristotle: An ancient Greek philosopher whose writings shaped Western thought on nature, politics, and ethics. His account of sex difference and household hierarchy helped establish influential naturalized gender roles.
Social constructionism: An approach explaining concepts and institutions as shaped by social interaction and historical conditions. It explains gender categories and roles through social processes rather than fixed natural traits.
Separate spheres ideology: The doctrine that men belong in public life while women belong in domestic and private life. It translates supposed innate differences into a division of social and political roles.
Gender role: A set of social expectations about behavior, responsibilities, and presentation associated with gender. Essentialism treats these socially assigned roles as expressions of natural differences.
Mary Wollstonecraft: An eighteenth-century English writer who argued for women's education and equal rational capacity. Her defense of women's reason opposed claims that their social position followed from nature.
Intersectionality: A framework for analyzing how systems of power overlap and shape distinct experiences. It shows why women and men cannot be treated as uniform groups with shared traits or interests.
Gender pay gap: The difference in average earnings between women and men in a population. Claims about natural abilities or priorities can legitimize occupational sorting and unequal pay.
Gender socialization: The process through which people learn cultural expectations associated with gender. Socialization can teach gendered expectations that essentialist accounts present as innate.
Charles Darwin: An English naturalist whose theory of evolution by natural selection transformed biology. Evolutionary explanations of sex differences have sometimes been used to support essentialist claims.

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