Gender Role Development

1. Gender Role Development • Introduction • Categorizing males and females • Sex-role standards or stereotypes • Cross-cultural trends • Facts and fictions about sex differences • Sex differences that appear to be real • Cultural myths • Developmental trends in sex typing • Development of Gender Identity • Discrimination of male versus female • Development of gender constancy • Acquiring Gender-role Stereotypes • Development of Gender-typed Behavior • Theories of sex-typing and gender role development • The biological approach • The psychoanalytic approach • Social learning theory • Direct tuition • Observational learning • Kohlberg’s cognitive-developmental theory • Martin & Halverson’s gender schema theory

2. Categorizing Males and Females • Sex-role or gender-role standards: • A value, motive, or class of behavior that is considered more appropriate for members of one gender than the other • Girls and the expressive role • Boys and the instrumental role

3. Gender Typing in Non-Industrialized Societies Sex differences in the socialization of five attributes in 110 non-industrialized societies Percent of societies in which socialization pressures were greater for: Attribute Boys Girls Nuturance 0 82 Obediance 3 35 Responsibility 11 61 Achievement 87 3 Self-Reliance 85 0 Source: Barry, Bacon, & Child (1957)

4. Facts and Fictions About Gender Differences • Actual differences between the genders • Verbal ability: Girls have greater verbal abilities than boys • Visual/Spatial ability: Boys outperform girls in visual/spatial tasks

5. Gender Differences in Visual-Spatial Ability Mental rotation and Water Level tasks:

6. Facts and Fictions About Gender Differences, con’t • Actual differences between the genders • Verbal ability: Girls have greater verbal abilities than boys • Visual/Spatial ability: Boys outperform girls in visual/spatial tasks • Mathematical ability • Beginning in adolescence, boys show small but consistent advantage in arithmetic reasoning • The role of social factors? • Aggression: Boys are more physically and verbally aggressive than girls

7. Facts and Fictions About Gender Differences, con’t • Differences that may be real: • Activity level: Boys are more physically active than girls • Fear, timidity, and risk taking: Girls or more timid than boys • Developmental vulnerabilities • Boys are more physically vulnerable than girls • Boys are more likely to display developmental problems • Emotional expressivity: • Girls are more emotionally expressive than boys • Empathetic sensitivity? • Compliance: Girls are more compliant than boys

8. Developmental Trends in Gender Typing • Development of the gender concept: • Discrimination of males versus females • Children’s knowledge of boys versus girls • Gender constancy • Development of gender-role stereotypes: • Timing of gender stereotypes • Growth of gender stereotypes during preschool and elementary school • How serious are gender-role prescriptions? • Flexibility in gender stereotypes • Development of gender-typed behavior: • Sex appropriateness of play • Gender segregation • Preference for same sex playmates • Why does segregation occur?

9. Social Play and Gender

10. Theories of Gender TypingBiological and Psychoanalytic • Biological approach: • The role of genetic and hormonal differences • Sex-linked constitutional factors and the environment • Freud’s Psychoanalytic approach: • The process of identification • Evidence for and against Freudian theory

11. Theories of Gender TypingSocial Learning and Cognitive-Development • Social learning theory: • Direct tuition • Parents, teachers, etc., reinforce sex-appropriate responses • Do parents shape behavior? • Observational learning • Learning of sex-typed attitudes by observing same-sex models • Why might children preferentially attend to same-sex models • Reinforcement • Perception of similarity • Kohlberg’s Cognitive-Developmental theory: • Cognitive judgments about self precede selective attention or identification • Stages of understanding gender • Basic gender identity • Gender stability • Gender consistency • Problems with theory

12. Theories of Gender TypingGender Schema Theory • Martin & Halverson’s Gender Schema theory: • Information processing theory of sex-typing • Children motivated to acquire values consistent with judgments about self • Self-socialization begins when children get basic gender identity • Development of gender schemas • In group / Out group schema • Own sex schema • Gender schemas as organizers of social information