Gender Development (A2)

Personality Development.

In order to understand this topic fully you should have an understanding of behaviourist and social learning theory, psychodynamic theory, and a basic appreciation of evolutionary ideas.

What is gender:


In society

A set of culturally defined expectations that describe how males and females should think, act, and feel

= Gender Role
There are beliefs about the behaviour and attitudes typical of and appropriate for males and females
= Gender Role Stereotyping
There are beliefs about differences between the sexes
= Gender / sex difference
Individuals are treated differently according to sex
= Sex typing / Gender typing

Individuals…

Are usually biologically of one sex or another
= Sexual Identity
Feel themselves to be either male or female
= Gender Identity
May understand and accept different roles for males and females
= Gender role identity
May behave in ways which are typical for a particular gender
= Gender Role Identity
Often have preferences about the gender of their sexual partners
= Sexual Orientation

Sex is the biological differences between males and females.
Gender is the psychological differences between them.

By the age of three, children have a good idea of their own and other peoples gender identities. Schemas of each child being gradually adapted over time to ensure understanding.


Gender Constancy
Jean Piaget states that children use appearance as the main feature in understanding objects properties. Since its appearance is so important to children it wouldn’t be at all surprising if they believed their gender could change whenever their appearance did.

Sometime after their third birthday children grasp that their own sex won’t change, but its not until age 5 that they realise that other peoples wont either. This is the stage of gender stability. The realisation that gender remains constant, even when external features change e.g. hair length.

Social Learning Theory:

Direct re-inforcement can shape appropriate or inappropriate gender behaviour.
Parental praise acts as a powerful re-inforcer, encouraging similar behaviour in future.

Direct reinforcement:

Influence of parents:
Children learn gender appropriate and gender inappropriate behaviour through the application of reward and punishment.
Much direct reinforcement is unconscious.
Smith and Lloyd (1978) videotaped women playing with a 4 month old baby. The baby was dressed either as a boy or a girl and was introduced with an appropriate name. There were seven toys present. They found that each woman’s choice of toy varied with the perceived gender of the infant. Women also responded differently with gross motor activity from boys and girls. In other words women were reinforcing gender stereotypes, probably with very little conscious thought.
It is possible however, that the women displayed demand characteristics of the experiment – they only had one clue to guide their behaviour which was the apparent gender of the infant.
In real life parents behaviour will be affected by many other factors and thus people might behave in a les stereotyped fashion.

Influence of peers:
Peers are also important in this process of direct gender behaviour reinforcement.
Lamb and Roopnarine (1979) observed a group of nursery schoolchildren that found the children generally reinforced peers for a gender appropriate play (By giving them more attention or imitating them) and were quick to criticise gender inappropriate play.



Indirect and Vicarious reinforcement

Social learning theorists stress the importance of observation as a means of social learning. The media contains countless such images. Thus if you are in some way rewarded for indirectly imitating behaviour of a set gender you may repeat this action, similarly should you be punished in some way you may refrain from this course of action in future.

Even if children do not acquire gender roles totally in this way its difficult to believe that they do not gain some impressions by being exposed to these sorts of stereotypes in the media.

Cultural attitudes are conveyed through stereotypes. Our society has many persistent gender stereotypes. E.g. a typical male is assertive, independent, and good at maths. A typical female is dependant, relatively passive and good at verbal tasks.

· Williams (1985) Notel / Multitel experiment shows the impact and effects of media on gender roles.
o Natural experiment;
o Residents of a small Canadian town received TV for the first time;
o Town is called ‘Notel’ nearby town with TV being named ‘Multitel’
o Used both subject and control to asses the impact of TV on local behaviour.
o Observed for period of 2 years.
o Findings were that Notel gender stereotypes became more traditional with gender role attitudes;
o Williams suggested that US TV portrays men and women in traditional roles and this influenced the gender role attitudes of children;
o He felt that the effects of TV were stronger in developing countries where children have relatively less information to influence their attitudes, whereas children in the developed world would be less influenced by TV stereotypes.


Leary et al. (1982) found that children who watched TV frequently were more likely to hold stereotypical ideas about gender and more likely to conform to gender-role preferences of a culturally appropriate nature. N.B. Correlation does not mean Causation.

Other studies have found gender stereotypes in children’s books. E.g. Crabb and Bielawski (1994) compared books from 1938 and 1989 in terms of how they represented the way men and women use equipment such as washing machines, lawn mowers and so on and found relatively little change

Social Cognitive Theory:
Portrays the child as a passive part of the process of gender identity development.
Individual motivation, self regulation, and cognitive processes play a crucial role in gender identity development.

Three influence sources are claimed to affect gender development. That is:
· Modelling; - They acquire knowledge of stereotypes
by observing others.
· Enactive experience; - As soon as the child begins to develop gender
related behaviours then this is selectively reinforced. This explains why opposite sex behaviour is not imitated, despite frequent exposure. This leads to ‘outcome expectancies’ for the individual. These form the cognitive part of the theory.
· Direct tuition. - Parents reinforce gender behaviours through direct
tuition. i.e. this is or is not apt. Fathers are even more likely to encourage apt behaviour and discourage inapt. behaviours (Lee and Fagot 1997)

Bussey and Bandura (1992) has a process of independent self evaluation of how children themselves feel when engaged in either gender apt. or cross gender play.
· By age 4 girls and boys showed opposite preferences for toys based on gender stereotypes. Bandura concluded that early in life there are sanctions against cross-gender behaviour and they start to regulate their own behaviour accordingly.
· N.B. In studies such as this we must take every effort to avoid the inclusion of demand characteristics within the experiment.

Evaluation of Social Learning Theory:

Social learning theory claims:
However:
Social factors do influence children’s knowledge and understanding
These are also influenced by biological differences such as hormone levels and maturational states
Parental gender-role behaviour will be socialised into their children
No link was found in one study between strength of gender behaviour between parents and their children. But different levels of enforcement of social rules.
The child is fairly passive absorber of external influences
Children are actively involved in their own socialisation, driven by emotional and motivational as well as cognitive states.




Strengths
Reducing gender-role stereotypes.
Explains cultural differences:
Whiting and Edwards (1988):
Examined 11 different cultures and concluded that “We are the company we keep.” However, the general principle is that any behaviour which increases an individual’s survival and reproduction is desirable and ‘adaptive’. Any gender behaviour that promotes survival is likely to be retained in an animal’s repertoire.
Limitations:
Alternative perspectives:
Research has demonstrated the importance of biological factors in gender role development, which means that social learning theory is not a sufficient explanation of gender-role development on its own.
Conflicting evidence:
Some evidence conflicts with the empirical data outlined above. E.g. Jacklin and Maccoby’s (1978) study found that boys and girls are not treated differently in terms of the kinds of gender reinforcements they receive.
Daglish (1977) found that parents who exhibited more gender-stereotypical behaviour did not necessarily have children who were equally gender-stereotyped, whereas social learning theory would predict such a link.
Artificial research:
Research is largely removed from natural situations (Katz 1987) and overlooks the fact that children may actually pay little attention to adult models of gender behaviour, especially when they are young.
Adevelopmental
This theory does not explain why children’s behaviour changes as they get older, yet there is much evidence to demonstrate that this is the case. As we will see when looking at cognitive-developmental theories.


Cognitive-developmental theories (e.g. Kohlberg’s Theory):
Childrens experience of gender begins with a label. This expands and eventually they are able to conserve gender in the same way that they learn how to conserve number

Lawrence J. Kohlberg also offered a theory of how children learn about their own gender. This is a development of Piaget’s ideas and comprises the three stages shown below:

Age
Stage of understanding of gender
Description
2-3 years
Gender Identity
Child recognises that she is a boy or a girl.
3-7 years
Gender Stability
Awareness that gender is fixed. The child accepts that males remain male and females remain female.
7-12 years
Gender Consistency
Children recognise that superficial changes in appearance or activities do not alter gender. Even when a girl wears jeans or plays football etc. a child’s gender remains constant.


These three stages can be observed in children both in the west and in other countries and may well be universal.

Empirical support for Kohlberg’s theory.

Slabley and Frey (1975) tested children from 2 years and found that they did not develop a sense of gender constancy until about seven years. This is required for a sense of gender appropriate behaviour. However, western research shows that younger children can acquire gender constancy about themselves sooner than they can about others.

Shortly after gender constancy has developed rigid rules are applied as to what is regarded as their appropriate own behaviour as a member of their own sex.

Evaluation of Kohlberg’s theory:

Kohlberg’s Explanation:
Evaluation:
Offers a stage theory about a child’s understanding about sex and gender roles.
Changes may be more subtle and gradual than is explained by stage theory
Understanding about sex and gender roles develop parallel to the child’s cognitive development.
Slabey and Freey’s (1975) research findings support this claim.
Kohlberg sees gender roles being the result, not the cause, of acquiring ones gender identity.
Behaviourists see gender roles emerging as a result of reinforcement and identification with other members of ones own sex.
Kohlberg says the child is active in socialising itself.
Behaviourists claim that other people socialise the child.

Disagreement exists between psychologists over ages and stages formation times.

Bem (1989) showed photographs of real children, first nude with full sexual anatomy visible, and then dressed in gender inappropriate clothing, almost half of the 3 to 5 year olds knew that the child’s gender had not changed.

Universal sequence of development appears to occur in this case. Munroe et al. (1984) observed the same sequence of identity, stability and constancy in children from many different cultures. This suggests that the sequence is biologically controlled because people in different cultures will have different social experiences.

However, Martin and Little (1990) suggest that Kohlberg was wrong in suggesting that children do not begin collecting information about appropriate gender behaviour before they achieve constancy. They measured gender concepts, sex typed preferences and stereotyped knowledge in children from 3 to 5 years. Gender concept measures included ability to identify and discriminate sexes, understanding gender group membership, temporal stability of gender and gender consistency over situational changes.

Gender Schema Theory:
A schema is an idea about what something is, what it is like, what it does, how it works, what it can be used for. Schemas (Or schemata) can be strategies that help us interpret information

Gender schema theory proposes that as soon as the child has discovered his or her own sex (Basic gender identity), he or she will actively seek out information to help enrich an apt. gender schema.
This departs from Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s view that children must have gender constancy or consistency in order to develop gender typing.
N.B. Gender consistency and constancy is the same thing…



Martin and Halverson’s (1983) alternative cognitive development approach differs from Kohlberg insofar as they suggested that children are motivated to begin to acquire knowledge about their gender at a much younger age.

The term Schema refers to concept clusters that a child acquires in relation to the world around them. Gender schemas are theories about how men and women should behave which help children both to organise and to interpret their experience. It is the readiness to categorise gender information that drives the development of gender.


Empirical Evidence for gender schema theory.

Support for the importance of in group schemas is related to how such schemas affect the processing of information.
Libden and Signorella (1993) showed young children pictures of adults engaged in stereotypical opposite-gender activity (Such as a male nurse).
They found that the children disregarded the information missed the point or forgot it completely, insisting that the nurse was a woman.
This supports the notion that children only notice information that is consistent with their existing stereotypes and underlines the importance of stereotypes in acquiring further knowledge.
This is again ‘confirmatory bias’.

Evaluation of Gender Schema Theory:

Theory:
Evaluation:
Gender socialisation begins with inflexible gender stereotypes.
This is true in the west. Other societies (For example the Arapesh, studied by Margaret Mead) may not have rigid gender stereotypes.
Schema Theory assumes that children need categorical rules to make sense of that world
This needs further cross cultural research to verify.
Children actively construct their own gender concepts
This is true where there are rigid stereotypes to adapt.
There is a relationship between awareness of ones own gender and behaving appropriately
There’s little actual evidence for any such relationship. Children’s state of awareness and what they do are often quite contradictory.
The progress of the acquisition of gender based






Also:

The persistence of stereotypes may be a problem in that people are more likely to remember information that is consistent with their schemas and to forget or distort gender inconsistent information.

Research support such as Fagot (1985) shows that teachers tend to reinforce ‘feminine’ behaviours in both boys and girls, however, as both display both behaviours its suggested that boys gender schema overrides the reinforcement.

Gender awareness and gender typed behaviour research fails to find anything but a weak connection between gender awareness and gender typed behaviour (Bee 1999).

In terms of resolving contradictions, Stangor and Ruble (1989) suggest a way to resolve contradictions between the two types of theories. Gender schemas and gender consistency may represent different and complementary processes that occur during development. They suggest that gender schemas have two separate aspects:
The schema contains knowledge about gender appropriate differences in such areas as activities, behaviours and attire. Such knowledge is acquired early and facilitates memory about gender schema.
The schema encompasses the degree to which the knowledge is used to guide behaviour i.e. how motivated a child is to repeat certain behaviours.

Biological theories:
Although the syllabus does not specify biological theories of gender development in order to assist in evaluating behaviourist and cognitive developmental theories you will find it useful to have some knowledge about this approach.

Psychodynamic theory:
According to Freud and his pupil C G Jung, the child driven to identify with its same-sex parent in order to resolve Electra and Oedipal conflicts caused by its feelings of attraction towards the other parent. As a result of the identification process, it acquires its gender identity, and gender roles follow as the child matures. Same sex parents become role models.

However, how do these complexes develop in single parent families?

Evolutionary views:

If gender-related behaviour promotes reproductive success and survival long enough to maximise it, then it may become naturally selected and stay as part of the human behavioural repertoire.




The influence of hormones:
Male hormones given to pregnant women (To prevent miscarriage) were found to cause female foetuses to develop some male sexual characteristics and subsequently behave in a more ‘Tomboyish’ manner.

Beach (1974) found that female dogs that were exposed pre-natal to male hormones were subsequently likely to urinate in the manner of males.
Similarly, Young et al. (1964) found that female monkeys exposed to male hormones during the critical pre-natal period were more likely to engage in rough and tumble play in their early years. There is also some evidence of the same effects on human behaviour.
This treatment was stopped when it became apparent that the mothers gave birth to genetic females with male genitals. The girls received corrective surgery, but appeared to behave in a more tomboyish fashion when assessed later in childhood. - Money and Ehrhardt (1972)




Evaluation of Gender Schema Theory:







References of note:


Smith and Lloyd (1978) - Videotaped women playing with a
4 month old baby. The baby was dressed either as a boy or a girl and was introduced with an appropriate name. There were seven toys present. They found that each woman’s choice of toy varied with the perceived gender of the infant. Women also responded differently with gross motor activity from boys and girls.

Lamb and Roopnarine (1979) - Observed a group of nursery
schoolchildren that found the children generally reinforced peers for a gender appropriate play (By giving them more attention or imitating them) and were quick to criticise gender inappropriate play.
Williams (1985) - Notel / Multitel experiment shows
the impact and effects of media on gender roles.
Leary et al. (1982) - Found that children who watched TV
frequently were more likely to hold stereotypical ideas about gender and more likely to conform to gender-role preferences of a culturally appropriate nature.
N.B. Correlation does not mean Causation.
Crabb and Bielawski (1994) - Found gender stereotypes in
children’s books. E.g. compared books from 1938 and 1989 in terms of how they represented the way men and women use equipment such as washing machines, lawn mowers and so on and found relatively little change
Lee and Fagot (1997) - Example case of how parents
reinforce gender behaviours through direct tuition. i.e. this is or is not apt. Fathers are even more likely to encourage apt. behaviour and discourage inapt. behaviours.

Bussey and Bandura (1992) - Has a process of independent self
evaluation of how children themselves feel when engaged in either gender apt. or cross gender play. By age 4 girls and boys showed opposite preferences for toys based on gender stereotypes. Bandura concluded that early in life there are sanctions against cross-gender behaviour and they start to regulate their own behaviour accordingly.
N.B. In studies such as this we must take every effort to avoid the inclusion of demand characteristics within the experiment.

Whiting and Edwards (1988): - Examined 11 different cultures and
concluded that “We are the company we keep.” However, the general principle is that any behaviour which increases an individual’s survival and reproduction is desirable and ‘adaptive’. Any gender behaviour that promotes survival is likely to be retained in an animal’s repertoire.
Slabley and Frey (1975) - Tested children from 2 years and
found that they did not develop a sense of gender constancy until about seven years. This is required for a sense of gender appropriate behaviour. However, western research shows that younger children can acquire gender constancy about themselves sooner than they can about others.
Bem (1989) - Showed photographs of real
children, first nude with full sexual anatomy visible, and then dressed in gender inappropriate clothing, almost half of the 3 to 5 year olds knew that the child’s gender had not changed.

Munroe et al. (1984) - Observed the same sequence of
identity, stability and constancy in children from many different cultures. This suggests that the sequence is biologically controlled because people in different cultures will have different social experiences.
Martin and Little (1990) - Suggest that Kohlberg was wrong in
suggesting that children do not begin collecting information about appropriate gender behaviour before they achieve constancy. They measured gender concepts, sex typed preferences and stereotyped knowledge in children from 3 to 5 years. Gender concept measures included ability to identify and discriminate sexes, understanding gender group membership, temporal stability of gender and gender consistency over situational changes.
Martin and Halverson’s (1983) - Alternative cognitive development
approach differs from Kohlberg insofar as they suggested that children are motivated to begin to acquire knowledge about their gender at a much younger age.
Libden and Signorella (1993) - Showed young children pictures of
adults engaged in stereotypical opposite-gender activity (Such as a male nurse). They found that the children disregarded the information missed the point or forgot it completely, insisting that the nurse was a woman.

Fagot (1985) - Shows that teachers tend to reinforce
‘feminine’ behaviours in both boys and girls, however, as both display both behaviours its suggested that boys gender schema overrides the reinforcement.



Stangor and Ruble (1989) - Suggest a way to resolve
contradictions between the two types of theories. Gender schemas and gender consistency may represent different and complementary processes that occur during development.
Beach (1974) - Found that female dogs that were
exposed pre-natal to male hormones were subsequently likely to urinate in the manner of males.

Young et al. (1964) - Found that female monkeys exposed
to male hormones during the critical pre-natal period were more likely to engage in rough and tumble play in their early years. There is also some evidence of the same effects on human behaviour.

Money and Ehrhardt (1972) - Practices cited in Young et al. (1964)
This treatment was stopped when it became apparent that the mothers gave birth to genetic females with male genitals. The girls received corrective surgery, but appeared to behave in a more tomboyish fashion when assessed later in childhood.











Concepts to note:

Define these terms:

· Basic Gender Identity;
· Cognitive-Developmental Theory;
· Counter-Stereotype;
· Electra and Oedipal conflicts;
· Gender Constancy;
· Gender Role;
· Gender Role Stereotype;
· Gender Schema Theory;
· Gender Stability;
· Gender Typing;
· Sex Typing;
· Vicarious Reinforcement;

· Social cognitive theory:
o Modelling
o Enactive Experience
§ Outcome expectancies
o Direct tuition



What do they say or do?

· Bern
· Kohlberg
· Liben and Signorella
· Martin and Little
· Paiget
· Slabey and Frey