Origins of Gender Differences

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Origins of Gender Differences
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Gender Differences

• Besides the obvious physical differences, do you
  believe there are differences between genders?
• What are some of the behaviors that you see?
  Images of masculinity and femininity?
• Boy activities?
• Girl activities?

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What are the Origins of these Gender Differences?

• Biological?
• Learned?

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Biological Factors

• Hormonal
• Higher levels of male hormones, I.e.,
  testosterone predispose individuals to behave
  differently
• Direct (not sure whether cause effect or
  predispose)
• activity level
• assertiveness
• aggression
• emotional reactions

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Hormonal (cont..)

• Boys
• higher levels of testosterone result in higher
  activity levels
• higher activity levels predispose boys to select
  gross motor activities and to select toys such as
  blocks, vehicles and outdoor games that
  coincidentally provide more opportunity for them
  to practice visual-spatial skills.
• Time spent as preschoolers on these activities
  that develop visual-spatial results in higher
  scores on tests of visual-spatial relations.

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Hormonal (cont..)

• These less-structured activities foster
  independent creative skills in boys because they
  provide fewer guidelines for and restrictions on
  boys behavior
• VERSUS

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Hormonal (cont..)

• Girls
• lower levels of testosterone result in lower
  activity levels
• lower activity levels result in highly structured
  activities which affords them practice in
  cooperation and conforming skills, but little
  exposure to practicing independent skills

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Brain Lateralization/Socialization

• M/F differences due to difference in age at which
  the brains right/left hemisphere becomes
  specialized in certain areas
• All occur earlier in females than males but
  visual-spatial and mathematical reasoning develop
  later than verbal skills - females dont develop
  these to the fullest potential

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Brain Lateralization/Specialization (cont.)

• Conclusion
• Causal or predisposition?
• Know there are possible biological bases of
  gender difference but not cause and effect

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Differential Reinforcement

• Learn gender stereotypical roles in part because
  they are positively or negatively reinforced for
  behaving differently
• How were you reinforced to act/dress/behave a
  certain way?

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Constructivisim Cognitive Awareness Modeling

• Act certain ways without being rewarded
• Aware of, identify with, and then copy what they
  believe is appropriate.
• As their conceptual abilities develop, they
  develop their own schemas for appropriate
  behavior for their gender and then proceed to
  match their behavior to their constructs.

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Structured Reproduction

• Mission - perpetuate society values, ideas
• M/F are rarely exposed to cultural/social
  institutions i.e., (school, church, sport) that
  are structured in ways that foster equity
• The inequity serves their (those with power and
  privilege) interest to maintain ethnic, class,
  and gender divisions of labor.

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Equity Vs Equality

• Equality - provision for access regardless of
  social status
• Equity - ideological and lived condition of being
  equal in power and privilege
• Treated the symptoms but not the disease

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Summary

• All these factors can contribute to gender
  differences but do not make M/F behave
  differently
• Certain Physiological factors and learned
  behaviors only predispose or incline M/F to act
  in similar/different ways