Gender Roles and Sexuality

1
Gender Roles and Sexuality

• Gender learned, socialized differences
• Sex biological differences
• Gender role societal expectations about
  appropriate behavior for women and men
• Gender-role stereotypes overgeneralized (and
  often inaccurate) beliefs about what males and
  females are like.

2
Gender Differences

• Males
• more active
• more developmentally vulnerable
• better spatial skills
• more physically aggressive
• Females
• verbal skills develop earlier
• more compliant
• rate selves higher in nurturance/empathy
• Flexibility and fine motor skills
• More relational aggression

3
Mental Rotations
4
Gender Differences Parsons, 1955

• Expressive role kind, nurturant, cooperative
  and sensitive to needs of others.
• Instrumental role dominant, independent,
  assertive and competitive.

5
The Development of Sex-role Concepts and
Stereotypes

• By age 3, children typically begin to assign
  occupations, toys and activities to the
  stereotypical gender.
• By age 5, associate personality traits with males
  and females.
• By age 8/9 years this stereotypical knowledge is
  well developed.

6
The Development of Sex Role Behavior

• Behavior is sex-typed before development of ideas
  about sex roles and stereotypes.
• By 18 - 24 months, preference for sex-typed toys,
  some months before normally identifying own
  gender.
• By age 3, prefer own-sex playmates and more
  sociable with same sex children, but do not yet
  have gender stability.
• By age 6, gender divide in friendships is marked
  gender segregation.

7
Theories of Sex Role Development

• Psychoanalytic
• Social learning theory
• Cognitive Developmental
• Biological Influences

8
Psychoanalytic Theory

• Freud relied on the concept of identification,
  that occurs (in his theory) at around 4 or 5
  years. His theory not compatible with empirical
  findings.

9
Social Learning Theory

• Bandura and Mischel

10
Social Learning Theory

• Differential reinforcement encouraging
  sex-appropriate
  play and
  discouraging
  cross-sex play.
• Modeling
• Parental
  expectations -
  self-fulfilling prophecies

11
Empirical support for social learning theory

• Parents respond more positively when their
  children play with sex typed
• Such differential reinforcement is particularly
  pronounced in boys
• Strongly gender stereotyped parents lead to
  earlier development of gender stereotypes in
  children.
• Fathers are especially uncomfortable with
  girlish behavior in their sons

12
 Cognitive Developmental Theories
Kohlberg Cognitive developmental theory of
gender typing 3 phases 1) Child acquires
basic gender identity (2-3 years of age) 2)
Gender stability (4-5 years of age) gender does
not change 3) Gender constancy (6-7 years of
age) superficial changes in appearance dont
alter gender
13
Evaluation of Cognitive Theories

• Once the child realizes that s/he is a boy/girl
  forever, s/he is highly motivated to behave in
  the way that is expected for that gender.
• Thus, one would expect systematic same sex
  imitation only after full gender constancy has
  developed.
• But, children show clear differential sex role
  behavior, long before achievement of full
  understanding of the gender concept.

14
Biological Factors in Gender Differences

• Hormones
• testosterone-aggression
• Money high levels of androgens -
  masculinization of females more tomboyish
• Brain lateralization
• mens brains are more lateralized than womens

15
The Red Nails

• Devon is a 3-year-old boy who enjoys spending
  time at his grandmother's house. One Friday, he
  went to visit Grandma for the entire weekend. On
  Friday evening, he watched in fascination as
  Grandma painted her nails with red polish. He
  asked if she would paint his nails as well.
  Grandma saw no harm in it, so she painted Devon's
  nails. On Saturday, Grandma and Devon spent the
  day at the mall and enjoyed supper together at
  McDonald's. Devon especially enjoyed playing
  with the other children in the McDonald's play
  area. On Sunday, they went to church together.
  On Sunday evening, Devon's father came to pick
  him up. When he saw the red polish on Devon's
  nails, he became very upset and demanded an
  explanation. Grandma explained what had happened
  and explained that she saw no harm in painting
  the boy's nails. Dad disagreed and became
  angrier when he learned that Grandma had taken
  Devon out in public with the red polish on his
  nails. "If you're going to turn the boy into a
  sissy, he can't visit you any more," Dad said.
  He demanded that she remove the polish
  immediately and severely scolded Devon for asking
  to have his nails painted.

16
The Red Nails

• Why does the father react as he does?
• Do you relate more to the grandmother or the
  father?
• Would your opinion change if the child was 6
  years old?
• To what theory of gender role development does
  the grandmother subscribe?
• To what theory of gender role development does
  the father subscribe?