Margaret Mead o la dificultad de ser una mujer genial al comienzo de la modernidad.

Abstract

This text will revise Margaret Mead’s life and production. She was perhaps the first women who defended the cultural construction of “sexual roles” (now called “gender”). A close analysis of her work shows, however, that contradiction is embedded in her theories, the same contradiction that characterized her personal life. Although she defended the cultural construction of gender, the huge pressure of the patriarchal order of the beginnings of the 20th century could have make her doubt of her condition of woman. This would explain her constant effort in demonstrating her maternal instinct (denied by her own daughter, by the way) that only women would have. The problem is that this argument is not only completely patriarchal, but it also contradicts the cultural construction of gender, connecting it biologically to sex.