Gender and Social Kinds

Individuals belonging to a kind share properties in virtue of which they are members of that kind.¹ Consider the social kind asylum seeker. Roughly, what it is to be an asylum seeker is to be someone who is seeking protection outside their country of origin. Thus, someone is an asylum seeker if and only if they are seeking protection outside their country of origin. Similarly, what it is to be a capitalist is to own and profit from owning the means of production. Thus, someone is a capitalist if and only if they own and profit from their ownership of the means of production. [see Social Metaphysics]

It is widely (though not universally) accepted that genders are social kinds not biological ones. In particular, many feminists deny that members of the kind woman belong to that kind in virtue of having certain biological properties. However, there is considerable disagreement about whether any properties are necessary and sufficient for belonging to gender kinds like woman, and, if so, which properties these are. Some philosophers analyse gender kinds in terms of relational features (e.g. how they are perceived or treated), whereas others analyse genders in terms of non-relational features (e.g. their psychological states or dispositions). Hybrid views analyse gender kinds in terms of both relational and non-relational features.

Each analysis must overcome what has come to be known as the ‘inclusion problem’. Given the fact that members of gender kinds belong to many intersecting social categories (e.g. Black, disabled, queer) it is difficult to provide membership conditions for gender kinds that do not exclude prima facie kind members. The intractability of the inclusion problem has led some philosophers to embrace gender eliminativism (there are no gender kinds) or gender pluralism (there are a plurality of gender kinds).

One question that has not received much attention in the philosophical literature on gender is how to differentiate gender kinds from social kinds that are not genders. For example, why are kinds such as woman and genderqueer gender kinds, whereas the kinds kindergartner and Canadian citizen are not? One possibility is that although gender kinds are not constituted by biological properties, their existence or nature bears some causal or metaphysical relationship to sex, or properties associated with sexual reproduction (e.g. producing sperm, producing ova, having a uterus, etc.).