Abstract
Gender: Crossing Boundaries is a very well written text about gender from a multicultural perspective. More than any other psychology text I know, every topic includes comparisons and contrasts from around the world. While this provides ample evidence that gender has been constructed in various ways in different places and times, the relative lack of familiar examples runs the risk of White, middle-class students interpreting this gender diversity as an anthropology lesson rather than an issue that is directly relevant to themselves.
The first section, Foundations for a Psychology of Gender, is very strong. In it Galliano establishes her point of view, which is multidisciplinary as well as multicultural, focuses on ethnicity rather than race, and adopts the gender-in-context perspective. These three chapters combine material that is covered in most texts on women and gender in a different order. The reader learns about what gender is, how it has been studied, critiques of logical positivist methodology in relation to the study of gender, and psychological theories about gender before the biology of sex and gender is introduced in the second section or media representations are analyzed in the last section. The organization works well.
The second section begins with an outstanding chapter on “Gender and the Body,” which includes discussion of brain differences, comparisons of cognitive abilities, and sex chromosome and hormonal disorders, and intersexuality. The next chapter, “Life Span Gender Development,” is among the weakest, trying to fit womb to tomb lifespan development into roughly 30 pages, with no discussion of menstruation or menopause. The developmental picture does get filled in with the other two chapters in the section, one about relationships and one on gender as social performance, but I would prefer the developmental perspective to be carried out more fully in the three-chapter sequence.
The last two sections are heavily sociological. The third section, The Gendered Life, includes chapters on sexuality, education, work, physical health, and mental health. Given this framework, I expected a chapter on the family as well, but I did not find it. The fourth section, The Gendered Society, includes chapters on media, power, and the future. While the reframing of the traditional “violence against women” chapter into a power analysis is excellent, as is the historical perspective that is included in nearly every chapter, I missed a more psychological balance. Although feminism is mentioned frequently in the text, its absence in the chapter on the future is unfortunate.
Grace Galliano presents her text on gender as an improvement over texts that focus on women, because it focuses on gender similarities and differences rather than only differences. This is a sham argument, as texts like Margaret Matlin's (2002) Psychology of Women also clearly emphasize gender similarity. Instead, I see a text about the psychology of “gender” rather than “women” as an acknowledgement that all psychology of women courses have in fact become gender courses, even when the title has remained the same. This reflects the success of women's studies analyses, which have become widely accepted and applied to the lives of men. It also reflects the growing understanding of sex and gender that has resulted from transsexual and intersexed individuals becoming more visible and articulate, as Joanne Meyerowitz (2002) has documented well in her history of transsexuality. Still, psychology of women courses typically explore more than gender similarity and difference. They also present issues that are particular to women, topics that male-dominated psychology overlooked. While many gender texts continue this function, it is here that Galliano's book disappoints. Check the subject index and you will find menstruation, which is mentioned on one page yet never discussed, but not pregnancy, childbirth, or menopause. If teaching about gender focuses only on topics relevant to both genders, it is not progress.
This text covers some topics, especially multiculturalism, better than other texts but neglects other topics. Galliano emphasizes the public world and gives limited attention to family issues. This provides professors with a fuller choice of textbooks. What do you wish to emphasize? What organization do you prefer? What do you rely on a text to provide, and what do you like to bring to the class yourself?