Why would we want gender roles? What good can they serve or further? The answer I want to consider is diversity understood in a specific way. For this I’ll rely on Peter Hershock’s gloss in his book Valuing Diversity. Drawing on a particularly intriguing reading of the Buddhist idea of Interdependent Arising, Hershock distinguishes diversity from variation:

Variation is a means-to and has the meaning-of generating novel incidents of nonidentity—a process of increasing the quantity of individual things present. Diversity is a function of relational dynamics that are conducive to the production and sustained presence of a particular quality of interaction: a distinctive complexion of interdependence. Diversification is a means-to and has the meaning-of generating creatively enriching patterns of mutual contribution to sustainably shared welfare. It marks the advent of a distinctive qualitative shift in how things are present. (48-49) Keep reading…