ABSTRACT
Men and women are different. A highly sophisticated corpus of research documents biological, psychological, social, and cultural differences between them. This chapter seeks to view research on sex differences as itself a sociological phenomenon, an institution, in the context of the sociology of knowledge, examining such questions as: the objectives, latent as well as manifest, to which research on sex differences has addressed itself; the questions asked, that is, the kinds of sex differences the research has concerned itself with; and the methodological and ideological stance the research has taken. Research evidence leaves little doubt that more males than females test high on offensive aggressiveness, this typical macho variable, this Ur variable on which, it may well be argued, much of the superiority of males in so much of the research rests. Women are magnanimously recognized as the more viable sex. There is little value in a longevity that keeps powerless older people alive.
