Preliminary study documents variable accuracy and inclusion among biology instructor gender/sex definitions

Abstract

Society generally presents sex inaccurately as a binary variable based on one or few trait(s), causing myriad issues, including the pursuit of reductionist biology experiments, the creation of laws that limit the rights of women, people with queer genders, and intersex folks, and greater student endorsement of gender stereotypes in undergraduate biology courses. Accurate undergraduate biology education can work to mitigate these issues; however, preliminary literature suggests that biology instructors hold variable views on sex and gender and are hesitant to teach topics that are politicized. We conducted a preliminary study to understand how college biology instructors are defining sex and gender, both personally and in their classrooms. We created and distributed an online survey in Qualtrics to capture instructor definitions. Overall, instructors provided variable personal and in‐class definitions of sex, ranging from mentions that sex is a binary based on gametes (i.e., eggs or sperm) to sex is multivariate and continuous based on a combination of genotypic and phenotypic traits. While all instructors defined sex in their courses, not all instructors defined gender in their courses, explaining they simply do not believe the topic of gender belongs in a science class. For instructors who did define gender in their course(s), their definitions included mentions of identity, expression, social norms, and comparisons to sex. These variable sex and gender definitions demonstrate that students receive inconsistent sex and gender education in undergraduate biology courses, resulting in real, variable outcomes for medical patients, research participants, and society overall.