Gender ideology
Gender ideology refers to the study of cross-cultural beliefs and perceptions regarding women, men, and alternative gender identities, emphasizing the socially constructed nature of gender. S.U. Philips, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences 2001 states that the study of gender ideologies is concerned with describing and explaining cross-cultural similarities and differences in human views on women, men, and alternative gender identities. The use of the term ‘ideology’ reflects two aspects of research on this topic: (a) its roots in the feminist position that women are conceptualized as inferior to men to justify and sustain social and cultural systems dominated by men; and (b) the culturally constructed (as opposed to ‘natural’) nature of gender. Key foci in this predominantly, but not exclusively, anthropological area of research include: (a) the ideological gendering of private vs. public social domains; (b) the extent to which a nature–culture distinction organizes gender ideologies about women and men; (c) the nature of intra-societal organization of diversity in gender ideologies; (d) the ideological gendering of colonialism, nationalism, and international relations; (e) dialogue between ‘third world’ and ‘first world’ feminists on the universality vs. ethnocentrism of first world feminists' supposed claims that women are universally ideologically subordinated to men; and (f), theoretical and political debate over the appropriateness of binary as opposed to nonbinary concepts of gender, with the latter providing more conceptual room for attention to alternative sexual identities and social change in gender identities.[1].
Gender ideology is sometimes simplified to refer to beliefs that anyone can be what gender they want and that numerous genders exists. This form of gender ideology refutes the significance of biological sex.
