Biology Does Not Determine Gender Roles

I agree with Ruth Hubbard that biology does not determine gender roles, as the author indicates "... our biological and social attributes are related dialectically ( that is, they act on one another in producing an outcome.)" The part that I was very interested in, and very surprised about the statistics, was the paragraph in which the author talks about physical strength and gives the example about the Boston marathon, and how in twenty years women have improved their performance by running the same distance about one hour faster than when they initially started running the marathon, but that men's performance has improved only 15 minutes since 1908.

That segment made me think about the recent scandals in which athletes have lost their medals and records because they have been using anabolic steroids to artificially improve their performance. I wonder if the statistics that some scientists have been relying on to prove that men are better performers than women in some sports have been biased because of men using these types of substances. I know some high performance female athletes have been using them too, but based on the news coverage it seems that it is more prevalent in men. An aspect that she did not cover in the "Physical Strength" section is the fact that in sports women and men do not play together in the same leagues or play together on the same teams. The biological and social rationale behind this could have been explored by the author as an example of the biological and social interaction that creates gender roles.