Heroism: Gender Roles and Heteronormativity

The empirical concern in "The Heroism of Women and Men" (Becker & Eagly, 2004) is to decipher the extent to which cultural associations with heroism correspond to actual heroic behavior within 'natural' contexts. The authors operate under the idea that two necessary conditions for heroic behavior include risk taking and "service to socially valued goal(s)." The difficulty with their treatment of heroism under this paradigm is that they fail to account for acts which are not generally thought of as "heroic", possibly due to a lack of spontaneity, but ought to be considered heroic in an equally robust sense. For instance, the act of giving birth involves extreme pain, risk (emotional, physical, economic), and in many instances ought to be considered as satisfying the "service to socially valued goals" condition.

One particular merit of their discussion involves their critique of the Evolutionary Psychology perspective on gender and heroism. Evolutionary psychology assumes that humans evolved in the context of competition. They rightly point out the limitations of this presupposition, for instance, that it tends to favor male behaviors as characteristically heroic. However, they don't take this critique far enough: it is not only the case that the evolutionary paradigm favors males, more accurately, it cannot treat (i.e. explain) any other kind of male except one that is heterosexual. In acknowledging this, the authors ought to have brought up bisexual or homosexual females and males that were considered heroic. Instead, they attributed physical differences (in particular, strength and endurance) as one explanation for the significant difference in reported male heroic acts vs. female. This explanation, however, is entirely consistent with the heteronormative foundation of the evolutionary perspective. Thus in a more fundamental sense, their account fails in a way that is at least analogous to the Evolutionary Psychology perspective. Psychology ought not limit its treatment of heroic acts to only one particular (and hardly necessary, not to mention politicized) type of male and/or female. This shortcoming is lessened due only to the nature of the discussion as one based on (historic) case studies and anecdotal evidence.

It was also be helpful, not to mention precise, to mention to which population of women these studies are concerned with. Becker and Eagly seem to generalize to the entire population of women, but the cultural and historic variance of their case studies ought to give reason to pause. The sociopolitical climate during the Holocaust period is very different from contemporary American consensus regarding the roles of women. Failure to mention and/or describe these discrepancies lends to overly generalized conclusions regarding characteristic gender roles as they pertain to heroism.

Carol Gilligan, in Women's Place in Man's Life Cycle, does a stupendous job of pointing out historic examples of psychological theories contingent on certain dangerous presuppositions regarding differences between males and females. As its intend is mostly critical, it is difficult to ascertain the empirical worth of the piece. However, one could easily point out that Gilligan's efforts are worthy of scientific merit because they are critical of both the way data was construed in previous landmark studies and the subsequent implementation of that data expressed in theories of development. However, as in the aforementioned publication, Gilligan fails to treat gender as it intersects with sexuality (she assumes heteronormativity).

Works Cited

Carol Gilligan, "Woman's Place in Man's Life Cycle," Harvard Educational Review 49. (1979)

Becker and Eagly, "The Heroism of Women and Men", Am Psychol. Apr;59(3):163-78 (2004)