Sandra Bem, 1944-2014

Although Sandra Bem died a year ago, I didn’t hear about her death until this week, when I read The Last Day of Her Life, an interesting account of Bem’s death; Bem committed suicide in order to avoid the final ravages of dementia.

But as interesting as Bem’s choice to commit suicide was (and feel free to discuss that in the comments here, if you want), for me her significance is in her work, which was very influential on my thought (and many other people’s thoughts) in the 1990s, although she is less known today. Her book The Lenses of Gender is available very cheaply used on Amazon (and probably elsewhere).

I’m reproducing an essay about Ben’s significance in feminism, written by Anya Moon. This essay has disappeared from where I first read it, but can still be viewed on wayback.

Sandra Bem and the Sex Role Identity Debate
Anya Moon ’02

With the publication of the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) in 1971, Sandra Bem revolutionized the way in which psychology viewed gender. Further breaking down “male” and “female” categories, Bem introduced the labels of androgyny, displaying both high male and female characteristics, and undifferentiated, displaying both low female and male characteristics. Bem has continued to further examine sex roles and gender labels and what they contribute to society and culture. In her ground-breaking book Lenses of Gender in 1993, Sandra Bem outlined her newest theories of gender roles, and how androcentrism has led to a male-dominated culture in which females are still at the disadvantage.

The BSRI lists sixty adjectives, twenty socially desirable female traits, twenty socially desirable male traits, and twenty that are considered to be neutral. Examples of male traits include forceful, analytical and self-sufficient. Examples of female traits include sympathetic, loyal and compassionate, and examples of neutral items include truthful, sincere and friendly. Participants are asked to rate each item from a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 indicating almost always or always untrue, 4 meaning half true or half untrue and 7 indicating always or almost always true (Bem, 1974).

Because they are scored separately, an individual may receive high marks for both female and male traits, a phenomenon Bem called androgyny. The first psychologist to view masculinity and femininity as two separate aspects of a person, Bem believed that androgynous people were the most effective and well functioning individuals in society. Since the creation of the BSRI, it has been used countless times in psychological gender research.

In her book Lenses of Gender, Bem delves further into the implications of gender roles and definitions. The book’s title is indicative of the approach Bem takes to gender within the society of the United States. Bem contends that hidden assumptions about gender remain imbedded in culture, despite efforts to the contrary. These assumptions are referred to as lenses, which Bem works to render visible “to enable us to look at the culture’s gender lenses rather than through them” (Bem 1993, p. 2). The first lens is identified as androcentrism, or male-centeredness, the second lens is gender polarization, and the third is biological essentialism. After discussion of these lenses, Bem then discusses why the culture of the United States has inherently disadvantaged women through androcentric policies. Bem explains that the entire cultural debate of gender must be reconstructed to reflect the needs of females that have been overlooked for centuries or veiled in so-called “equal” measures. Cultural debates must be redefined, not in terms of male-female differences, but rather through reexamining how adrocentrism has created a male-advantaged-female-disadvantaged culture.

The second chapter of Lenses of Gender, “Biological Essentialism”, deals with the idea that biology has consistently been used as a weapon for the theory that inherent biological differences between men and women indicate inherent inequalities. Bem contends that while this may be true, of course men and women are biologically different, advocates of this view look at biological data out of context, drawing incorrect conclusions and furthering wild speculation about such things as brain differences between the sexes. Bem offers instead an interactionist theory. She contends that if biological differences were really examined in context, the overlap in the two sexes would be so great as to render the differences inconsequential. Also, no matter how slight or large the biological differences in the sexes, this does not account for centuries of sexual inequality inherent in society.

Chapter 3, “Androcentrism”, attacks the idea that the push toward equality, including feminism, has done nothing to attack the core sexual inadequacy of the United States culture. Superficially “equal” policies have been implemented, but these policies are still products of the androcentered male-dominated society from which they were born. Bem cites examples of insurance cases that are centered around the male body, for example, allowing leave time for prostate operations, while ignoring pregnancy. Bem contends that these “equal” rights policies so further magnify the differences between the sexes that they are further promoting adroncentrism and continuing to place women at a disadvantage.

“Gender Polarization”, Bem’s fourth chapter, introduces the idea that even if biological differences and adrocentrism were eliminated, society would still divide along the gender lines of male and female. Herein lies the foundation for the BSRI, or the idea that sexes do not have to be dichotomously organized. Bem asserts that not all societies separate their members into only two genders, but that in the United States anything other than male or female is problematic. Although these definitions of masculinity and femininity are continually examined and redefined (especially in new-wave feminism), as Bem states, “these homogenized visions are but the flip side of the polarized, gender caricatures of androcentrism” (Bem 1993, 131). In other words, sexual differences, sexual similarities, and cultural constructs must all be considered in order to form a dialogue which views gender as not either androcentric or homogenous.

Bem’s final chapter, “Transforming the Debate on Sexual Inequality”, outlines a new vision of the sex role debate, one that “requires a radical restructuring of social institutions” (Bem 1993, p. 176). Bem suggests that in order to get past gender polarization and androcentrism, we must reshape our culture without dividing individuals into cultural categories based on their gender, such as different clothes, different social roles, or different personalities. In other words, culture would not be organized around gender and what each gender can or cannot do. Bem draws the parallel between a society not structured around sexes just as today’s society is not structured around eye color. The danger of supporting gender polarized values lies in the fact that cultural roles and norms remain dictated by males and highly polarized male values.

Gender depolarization would require not only cultural restructuring, but also psychological restructuring. Bem ends her book with the theory that gender depolarization would result in the redefinition of core traits. Instead of seeing ourselves as male or female, we would view “the biological fact of being male or female in much the same way that we now view the biological fact of being human” (Bem 1993, p. 196). We would no longer feel the need to justify or elaborate on our sex, because we would instead view our sex as given by nature, capable of exerting its influence naturally and automatically and not requiring further examination.