Abstract
Empirical research has demonstrated that women’s aggressive behavior is widespread and displays regularities across societies. Until recently, however, discussions about the aggressive behavior of women and gender differences in aggressive behavior have been based largely on data from nonhuman primates, children, or laboratory experiments. Using a unique corpus of naturalistic data on aggressive human interactions both between and among men and women, I explore the complexity of our questions about sex differences in aggression and further illuminate the ways in which men and women may use aggression in human interactions. In this paper I compare the aggressive behavior of men and women in an Australian Aboriginal community. In doing so I argue for the continuing use of a “sex differences” framework for organizing our understanding of gender relations and gender hierarchy. I believe, however, that this form of analysis benefits from, if not requires, a sensitivity to the most taken-for-granted aspects of our gender ideology and a commitment to attend to evidence that challenges our convictions about men and women.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adams, D. 1983 Why There Are So Few Women Warriors.Behavior Science Research 18:196–212.
Attili, G., and R. Hinde 1986 Categories of Aggression and Their Motivational Homogeneity.Ethology and Sociobiology 7:17–27.
Bjorkqvist, K., and P. Niemela, eds. in pressOf Mice and Women: Themes on Female Aggression. New York: Academic Press.
Bolger, A. 1991Aboriginal Women and Violence. Darwin: Australian National University, North Australian Research Unit.
Bourdieu, P. 1977Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, D. 1991Human Universals. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Browne, A. 1987When Battered Women Kill. New York: Free Press.
1988 Family Homicide: When Victimized Women Kill. InHandbook of Family Violence, V. Van Hasselt, R. Morrison, A. Bellack, and M. Hersen, eds. Pp. 271–292. New York: Plenum Press.
Burbank, V. 1980Expression of Anger and Aggression in an Australian Aboriginal Community. Ph.D. dissertation, Rutgers University. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms.
1985 The Mirriri as Ritualized Aggression.Oceania 56:47–55.
1987 Female Aggression in Cross-Cultural Perspective.Behavior Science Research 21:70–100.
1992a Fight! Fight! Men, Women, and Interpersonal Aggression in an Australian Aboriginal Community. InSanctions and Sanctuary: Cultural Perspectives on the Beating of Wives, D. Counts, J. Brown, and J. Campbell, eds. Pp. 33–42. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.
1992b Women, Anger, and Aggression: An Exploration. Manuscript. Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis.
Campbell, A. 1982 Female Aggression. InAggression and Violence, P. Marsh and A. Campbell, eds. Pp. 135–150. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
1984 Girl’s Talk: The Social Representation of Aggression by Female Gang Members.Criminal Justice and Behavior 11:139–156.
Connell, R. 1987Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Cook, H. in pressSmall Town, Big Hell: An Ethnographic Study of Aggression in a Margariteño Community. Caracas: Fundación La Salle de Ciencias Naturales, Instituto Caribe de Antropología y Sociología.
Cook, J., and M. Fonow 1990 Knowledge and Women’s Interests: Issues of Epistemology and Methodology in Feminist Sociological Research. InFeminist Research Methods: Exemplary Readings in the Social Sciences, Joyce McCarl Nielsen, ed. Pp. 69–93. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.
Crawford, M., and J. Marecek 1989 Psychology Reconstructs the Female: 1968–1988.Psychology of Women Quarterly 13:147–165.
Daly, M., and M. Wilson 1982 Homicide and Kinship.American Anthropologist 84:372–378.
1988Homicide. Hawthorne, New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
1990 Killing the Competition: Female-Female and Male-Male Homicide.Human Nature 1:81–107.
Epstein, C. 1988Deceptive Distinctions: Sex, Gender, and the Social Order. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Fienberg, S. 1977Analysis of Cross-Classified Categorical Data. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Flax, J. 1987 Postmodernism and Gender Relations in Feminist Theory.Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 12:621–643.
1990Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary West. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Flynn, C. 1990 Relationship Violence by Women: Issues and Implications.Family Relations 39:194–198.
Frodi, A., J. Macaulay, and P. Thome 1977 Are Women Always Less Aggressive Than Men? A Review of the Experimental Literature.Psychological Bulletin 84:634–660.
Gilmore, D. 1987Aggression and Community: Paradoxes of Andalusian Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Glazer, I. 1992 Aggression, Human Rights, and the Multiple Voices of Feminist Anthropology. Manuscript. The Jewish Museum, 1865 Broadway, New York.
Hasselt, V., R. Morrison, A. Bellack, and M. Hersen, eds. 1988Handbook of Family Violence. New York: Plenum Press.
Heelas, P. 1982 Anthropology, Violence and Catharsis. InAggression and Violence, P. Marsh and A. Campbell, eds. Pp 45–61. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Hiatt, L. 1965Kinship and Conflict: A Study of an Aboriginal Community in Northern Arnhem Land. Canberra: Australian National University Press.
Hintze, J. 1990Number Cruncher Statistical System. Kaysville, Utah.
Hyde, J. 1986 Gender Differences in Aggression. InThe Psychology of Gender: Advances Through Meta-Analysis, J. Hyde and M. Linn, eds. Pp. 51–66. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
1990 Meta-Analysis and the Psychology of Gender Differences.Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 16:55–73.
Klama, John 1988Aggression: The Myth of the Beast Within. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Kushner, H. 1985 Women and Suicide in Historical Perspective.Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 10:537–552.
Langton, M. 1988 Medicine Square.Being Black: Aboriginal Culture in “Settled” Australia, I. Keen, ed. Pp. 201–225. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Levinson, D. 1989Family Violence in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Macaulay, J. 1985 Adding Gender to Aggression Research: Incremental or Revolutionary Change? InWomen, Gender, and Social Psychology, V. O’Leary, R. Unger, and B. Wallston, eds. Pp. 191–224. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Laurence Erlbaum Associates.
Maccoby, E., and C. Jacklin 1974The Psychology of Sex Differences. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Marsh, P., and R. Paton 1986 Gender, Social Class and Conceptual Schemas of Aggression. InViolent Transactions: The Limits of Personality, A. Campbell and J. Gibbs, eds. Pp. 57–85. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
McKnight, D. 1986 Fighting in an Australian Aboriginal Supercamp. InThe Anthropology of Violence, D. Riches, ed. Pp. 136–163. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Mednick, M. 1991 Currents and Futures in American Feminist Psychology: State of the Art Revisited.Psychology of Women Quarterly 15:611–621.
Morawski, J. 1987 The Troubled Quest for Masculinity, Femininity, and Androgyny. InReview of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 7: Sex and Gender, P. Shaver and C. Hendrick, eds. Pp. 44–69. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Mukhopadhyay, C., and P. Higgins 1988 Anthropological Studies of Women’s Status Revisited: 1977–1987.Annual Review of Anthropology 17:461–495.
Myers, F. 1986Pintupi Country, Pintupi Self: Sentiment, Place, and Politics among Western Desert Aborigines. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Pagelow, M. 1984Family Violence. New York: Praeger.
Pilling, A. 1957Law and Feud in an Aboriginal Society of North Australia. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms.
Riches, D. 1986 The Phenomenon of Violence. InThe Anthropology of Violence, D. Riches, ed. Pp. 1–27. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Rohner, R. 1976 Sex Differences in Aggression: Phylogenetic and Enculturation Perspectives.Ethos 4:57–72.
Rosaldo, M. 1980 The Use and Abuse of Anthropology: Feminism and Cross-Cultural Understanding.Signs: The Journal of Women in Culture and Society 5:389–417.
Saunders, D. 1988 Wife Abuse, Husband Abuse, or Mutual Combat? A Feminist Perspective on the Empirical Findings. InFeminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse, K. Yllo and M. Bograd, eds. Pp. 90–113. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Schieffelin, E. 1985 Anger, Grief, and Shame: Toward a Kaluli Ethnopsychology. InPerson, Self, and Experience: Exploring Pacific Ethnopsychologies, G. White and J. Kirkpatrick, eds. Pp. 168–182. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Schuster, I. 1983 Women’s Aggression: An African Case Study.Aggressive Behavior 9:319–331.
1985 Female Aggression and Resource Scarcity: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Manuscript. [To be published inOf Mice and Men: Themes on Female Aggression, K. Bjorkqvist and P. Niemela, eds. New York: Academic Press, in press].
Segall, M. 1989 Cultural Factors, Biology and Human Aggression. InAggression and War: Their Biological and Social Bases, J. Groebel and R. Hinde, eds. Pp. 173–185. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shields, S. 1991 Gender in the Psychology of Emotion: A Selective Research Review.International Review of Studies of Emotion, Vol. 1, K. Strongman, ed. Pp. 227–245. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Stanner, W. 1968The Boyer Lectures; After the Dreaming. Sydney: Australian Broadcasting Commission.
Steinmetz, S., and J. Lucca 1988 Husband Battering. InHandbook of Family Violence, V. Van Hasselt, R. Morrison, A. Bellack, and M. Hersen, eds. Pp. 233–246. New York: Plenum Press.
Stets, J., and M. Straus 1990 Gender Differences in Reporting Marital Violence and Its Medical and Psychological Consequences. InPhysical Violence in American Families: Risk Factors and Adaptations to Violence in 8145 Families, M. Straus and R. Gelles, eds. Pp. 151–165. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.
Straus, M., and R. Gelles 1986 Societal Change and Change in Family Violence from 1975 to 1985 as Revealed by Two National Surveys.Journal of Marriage and the Family 48:465–479.
1990a (editors)Physical Violence in American Families. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.
1990b How Violent Are American Families? Estimates from the National Family Violence Resurvey and Other Studies. InPhysical Violence in American Families, M. Straus and R. Gelles, eds. Pp. 95–112. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.
Tieger, T. 1980 On the Biological Basis of Sex Differences in Aggression.Child Development 51:943–963.
Walker, L. 1984The Battered Woman Syndrome. New York: Springer.
1989Terrifying Love: Why Battered Women Kill and How Society Responds. New York: Harper and Row.
White, J. 1983 Sex and Gender Issues in Aggression Research. InAggression: Theoretical and Empirical Reviews, Vol. 2: Issues in Research, R. Geen and E. Donnerstein, eds. Pp. 1–26. New York: Academic Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Research for this paper was supported by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.
Victoria K. Burbank is a psychological/cultural anthropologist whose work focuses on issues of gender in Aboriginal Australia. She received her Ph.D. from Rutgers University and did three years of postdoctoral training at Harvard University. Currently a research associate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis, she is completing a book on women, anger, and aggression. Her publications includeAboriginal Adolescence: Maidenhood in an Australian Community (Rutgers University Press, 1988).
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Burbank, V.K. Sex, gender, and difference. Human Nature 3, 251–277 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02692241
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02692241