Hormones, Sex, and Gender

Anthropologists study human diversity but are sharply divided over the roles of culture and biology in that diversity. The division is clearly represented in distinctions between sex and gender as biological and cultural categories, respectively. The disciplinary divide is further reflected in the contrast between the study of sex differences and hormones by biological anthropologists and the critique by cultural anthropologists of the value of biological approaches to sex or gender differences. This review considers anthropological ideas and debates about sex, gender, and hormones and about the relationships among them. The rationale for such a review is that divisions over conceptualization and study of sex, gender, and sex or gender differences are partly grounded in misunderstanding or ignorance of current biological understandings of sex differentiation in particular and individual differences in general.