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Nature, Nurture, And Our Evolving Debates About Gender

How much does biology shape who we are, and how much is determined by culture and the environment in which we live?
Renee Klahr
/
NPR
How much does biology shape who we are, and how much is determined by culture and the environment in which we live?

When a baby is born, one of the first questions people ask the parents is this: "What is it?"

"Gender is unquestionably the most salient feature of a person's identity," says Lise Eliot, a professor of neuroscience at Rosalind Franklin University in Chicago. "That's the first thing we notice about someone and it is certainly the first characteristic infants learn to discriminate."

For some two decades, Eliot has pondered and researched the origins of gender differences between boys and girls. She says she didn't start by looking at boys' brains and girls' brains. She started with an insight about all brains. More than any other organ, the brain is uniquely adaptable, designed to change in response to the environment.

"My own research area has always been in the area of neuro-plasticity, or how our brains change as the result of experience. So I am always acutely aware that these little babies are absorbing things from the moment of birth."

Lise's research gets at some fundamental questions: How much are our identities determined by culture? How much are they shaped by chromosomes and hormones?

This week, we delve into debates over gender and the role of nature and nurture. Plus, we'll look at how society is pushing us beyond the traditional boundaries of those debates as we talk with Jamie Shupe, the first person in the United States to be officially recognized as neither male nor female, but gender-neutral.

Hidden Brain is hosted by Shankar Vedantam and produced by Rhaina Cohen, Maggie Penman, Jennifer Schmidt, Parth Shah, and Renee Klahr. Our supervising producer is Tara Boyle. You can also follow us on Twitter @hiddenbrain, and listen for Hidden Brain stories each week on your local public radio station.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Shankar Vedantam is the host and creator of Hidden Brain. The Hidden Brain podcast receives more than three million downloads per week. The Hidden Brain radio show is distributed by NPR and featured on nearly 400 public radio stations around the United States.
Jennifer Schmidt is a senior producer for Hidden Brain. She is responsible for crafting the complex stories that are told on the show. She researches, writes, gathers field tape, and develops story structures. Some highlights of her work on Hidden Brain include episodes about the causes of the #MeToo movement, how diversity drives creativity, and the complex psychology of addiction.
Tara Boyle is the supervising producer of NPR's Hidden Brain. In this role, Boyle oversees the production of both the Hidden Brain radio show and podcast, providing editorial guidance and support to host Shankar Vedantam and the shows' producers. Boyle also coordinates Shankar's Hidden Brain segments on Morning Edition and other NPR shows, and oversees collaborations with partners both internal and external to NPR. Previously, Boyle spent a decade at WAMU, the NPR station in Washington, D.C. She has reported for The Boston Globe, and began her career in public radio at WBUR in Boston.
Rhaina Cohen is a producer and editor for NPR's Enterprise Storytelling unit, working across Embedded, Invisibilia, and Rough Translation.
Parth Shah is a producer and reporter in the Programming department at NPR. He came to NPR in 2016 as a Kroc Fellow.