The Egg and the Sperm: Do Biology Textbooks Exacerbate Gender Norms?

In the early 1600’s Galileo Galilei made the distinction between primary and secondary characteristics of knowledge. The former refer to scientific findings that are objective and quantifiable, while the former refer to subjective characteristics that cannot be measured scientifically. Throughout history, ‘science’ has thus become analogous to ‘objectivity.’ However, is it possible that societal biases somehow seep into and infiltrate the way scientific knowledge is dispersed and communicated? In her article “The egg and the sperm: how science has constructed a romance based on stereotypical male-female roles,” Emily Martin elaborates on some of the many ways biology and physiology textbooks inadvertently are grounded on gender norms, and thus exacerbate gender stereotypes. 

In her article, Martin stresses how diction in academic textbooks subtly reinforces gender roles. Specifically, she argues that female physiological processes are depicted as degenerative instead of productive and fertile, and within the fertilization process, the sperm is presented as the active agent, while the egg is portrayed as a passive entity. For instance, while describing menstruation, Martin states that most medical texts designate it as the process by which the “debris” of the uterine lining is shed, and often refer to it using adjectives with negative connotations such as “wasteful”, “dying”, “losing” and “ceasing”. A best-selling biology textbook even states “oogenesis is wasteful.” In stark contrast, however, male’s vast production of sperm is seen as anything but wasteful, with most textbooks complimenting the “amazing magnitude” pertinent to the process of spermatogenesis. This contrast is quite salient in the classic text by Vernon Mountcastle, Medical Physiology: “whereas the female sheds only a single gamete each month, the seminiferous tubules produce hundreds of millions of sperm each day”. While the male produce “fresh” sperm daily, female’s eggs are stockpiled and merely degenerate slowly as they sit on the shelf.

Perhaps Martin’s most compelling argument stems from her discussion pertaining to the language used to describe the fertilization process. She postulates that, in accordance to stereotypical male and female roles, the egg is normally portrayed as a passive entity that relies on the action of the sperm to adequately fulfill her duty and even survive (see Figure 1 below for a classic example). For instance, Martin states that in most texts, the egg does not move and is instead passively transported, is “swept” or “drifts” along the fallopian tube. The sperm, on the other hand, travels in an “impressive velocity” to “deliver the genes to the egg” with their “strong” and efficiently powered tails, which, with a “whiplash motion and strong lurches” journey into “the deepest recesses of the vagina” where they “burrow through the egg coat and penetrate it.”  Although for a long time it was assumed that the egg had an impenetrable coat which the sperm had to break through, research has shown that in reality, the sperm is extremely weak. The egg traps the sperms and adheres to it tightly; in fact, the sperm’s movements are generally an attempt to escape the egg’s chemical grasp (Martin, 1991).

Perhaps even more striking, Martin comments on how some texts anthropomorphize the agents involved in the process and construct a fairy-tale like narrative in which the distressed egg must be rescued by the brave sperm. For instance, a text refers to the egg as “a dormant bride awaiting her mate’s magic kiss, which instills the spirit that brings her to life” and sperm as having a “ mission to move through the female genital tract in quest of the ovum” in a “perilous journey.” While some fall away “exhausted,” the “survivors” get to claim the prize and “assault” the egg. An article published by Discover Magazine emphasizes how perhaps most importantly, the egg is portrayed as a helpless damsel in distress, whose life depends on the success of the sperm’s rescue mission: “once released from the supportive environment of the ovary, the egg will die within hours unless rescued by a sperm” (Martin, 1991).

As Martin states, biology textbooks are importing cultural ideas about passive females and heroic males into the “personalities” of gametes, which means that science has the potential to be grounded by, and therefore exacerbate cultural norms. This notion becomes particularly salient when talking about how seemingly objective findings are being interpreted by scientists and disseminated to the public. For instance, attributing neural anatomy differences between males and females to evolutionary processes or to stereotypical or gender norm congruent skills (or lack thereof) can be a dangerous process that prescribes, rather than ascribes gender and sex differences, thereby perpetuating the cycle.

Figure 1. Typical example taken from google image search of 'fertilization'. The sperm is usually depicted as playing an active role in approaching and infiltrating the egg, while in reality, the egg attracts and envelops the sperm in a complex chemical process. (Image taken from carsonnfcb4c.wordpress.com)

References

Martin, E. (1991). The egg and the sperm: how science has constructed a romance based on stereotypical male-female roles. The University of Chicago Press, 16(3): 485-5011.