ABSTRACT
In May 1998, Newsweek published a cover story entitled “Boys Will Be Boys” (Kantrowitz & Kalb, 1998). The writers noted that boys are different from girls in a number of respects, both obvious and subtle. They posited biological roots to these differences. They speculated that these differences are universal and difficult (if not impossible) to alter. They framed research findings in terms of broad generalizations (“Boys…”), without circumscribing the claims either by noting confounding factors (e.g., “White, middle-class boys ages ten to 12 who were raised in the Midwest …”) or by noting exceptions (e.g., “56 percent of the boys in this sample …”). One of the most interesting things about this article was how the authors treated gender (in this case, differences between boys and girls) from an essentialist perspective.
