Gender: a juxtaposition of genes?

 Wikipedia opens its explanation of gender role as follows: “A gender role is defined as a set of perceived behavioral norms associated particularly with males or females, in a given social group or system.”

The roles assigned to males and females are generally defined by the society into which one is born. The course of one's career is most often defined by the acknowledged gender role to which society ascribes you. Schools have, for a very long time, been guilty of educating on a predetermined gender role model. While this is changing, historical stereotypes often remain in place, so that girls might be directed towards domestic skills, humanities or languages, while boys are encouraged to take on perceived male-orientated disciplines such as engineering, economics or scientific research. The list is not exhaustive and modern educational philosophy has generally opened its mind to the fact that gender does not govern the direction in which a person's life must inexorably go. Education in the West, at least, has tried to be “gender neutral” to some extent, acknowledging the individual student's abilities, interests and objectives -- as far as they can be ascertained -- rather than their gender. The old days of separated schools -- boys' and girls' -- is largely obsolete as the mixed Comprehensive and Secondary School system burgeoned in the UK from the late 1960s.

I live about four kilometers from Norwich's city center. Most days I walk in and out as the bus fare is too expensive for me. Occasionally, however, either because I am too tired or the weather is so inclement, I catch a bus. Often, the driver is a woman. Have you ever seen a female bus driver in Turkey? My landlord owns a taxi company and occasionally employs female drivers. When was the last time you took a taxi in İstanbul, İzmir or Ankara driven by a woman? Women are supposed to be nurses, teachers, cooks and cleaners, aren't they? Well, no, obviously not. But there persists a pernicious practice both in the East and the West that insists upon gender stereotyping, regardless of internationally recognized and applied laws. On both the right and left and despite all the evolution that has occurred both socially and legally, gender-specific zoning still exists in the minds of certain people. When did you last have a female “usta” (handyman) come to fix your water heater?

Turkey's business and industrial sector is massively male-dominated, and this may be due to deeply inculcated cultural or religious factors that have, for so long, left females out of the loop. Yet in a modern democratic society, the concepts are changing. It will be a longer and slower process, perhaps, in Turkey than in the West. France's finance minister is a woman, Christine Lagarde, and for the first time, the head of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) is a woman, Helen Alexander. So things are changing. Güler Sabancı is ranked among the most powerful women in the world. Nevertheless, it escapes no one's notice that women are still faced with an uphill battle for recognition, equality and a place at the top table.

All is not lost, fortunately. The rolling out of broad education reforms in both the East and the West are beginning to affect the panoply of possibilities open to both males and females. Access to all the “important” jobs is open to both genders. There are an increasing -- though unjustifiably small -- number of women in the top echelons of enterprise, economics and engineering as exampled above. The glass ceiling has been fractured and in parts forced through, but it remains a sad fact that females remain disadvantaged due to their gender specification, and it is not simply a question of culture or religion. In the satirical comedy “Yes Minister,” a senior civil servant is accused of male-chauvinism by his minister. “Certainly not!” he replies, “Why, some of my best friends are women; my wife, for example.” In a male-dominated and still misogynistic society, such joshing was, and still is, acceptable. “Women, eh? Can't live with them; can't live without them!” Oh really? Because men are so good to be around?

Male domination in society has remained a constant for centuries and remains at an unjustifiable level in Turkey. Education reforms that have -- finally -- opened the way for more girls to aspire to school and university education and beyond have fulfilled Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's vision and aspiration. Not enough, however, is being done at the societal level, where patriarchal, paternalistic dominance and taboos remain so prevalent in some sectors of Turkey's society. In some parts of Turkish society, women still remain invisible; this is absurd. To deprive a dynamic and expanding country such as Turkey of all the benefits and beauty of more than 50 percent of the population can only handicap the nation at every level.

What gender really is

Some genetic researchers have -- since the days of James D. Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, who discovered DNA -- been trying to unravel that helix in order to better codify what gender really means and how it affects who we are. There are many stories of men who feel that they are women and vice versa.

 Hermaphrodites remain an enigma and transvestites, cross-dressers and just about any blurring of the gender role as perceived in society, culture or religion continue to confuse and disturb the morals and mores for most of us, however “liberal” we claim to be. At 52 percent of the world's population, women constitute a formidable force. While gender roles may still be blurred or even considered abstract and we do not fully understand all the connotations of what gender and specific male/female roles may -- or ought -- to be, it can surely no longer be debated or doubted that men and women are equal, have equal rights in all aspects of private and professional life and should be judged on merit and experience rather than gender. Yes, I know; some jobs are physically beyond the majority of women, and most people accept that with equanimity. But in today's largely computerized and service-based industry, there are very few positions that a woman can not fill.

The deputy leader of the Labour Party in the UK, Harriet Harman, who is, by the way, also the minister for women and equality, was recently pilloried for claiming that male ministers needed a female equivalent to keep them on the right track and that if Lehman Brothers had been “Lehman Sisters,” none of the global economic disasters would have happened. It has been said that behind every successful man there is a powerful woman. If men are from Mars and women from Venus, then we are all in deep trouble. If, however, there is a coherent cohabitation possible, then we can all take our appropriate place in society and recognize the mutual value of both genders. Could this then be an appropriate juxtaposition of genes?