Development of Gender identity Flashcards
Gender identity
Gender identity is the sense of oneself as girl/woman or boy/man and refers to the ways that people act, interact or feel about themselves.
Sex
is biological and refers to the functional differences between males and females. It ‘s determined by genes in chromosomes.
Gender
is psychological and refers to our awareness and reaction to biological sex. It is determined by biological, psychological and sociological factors.
Gender roles
The culture’s expectations for behaviour of a person who is perceived as either male or female, including attitudes, actions and personality traits associated with a particular gender within that culture.
Evolutionary theory
- Emphasises ancestral mating strategies as the basis for differences in gender roles, for eg. women bear children, men hunt for survival.
Weaknesses of the theory
- Does not account for modern factors (cultural, financial) that have changed how people live their lives
- Increasing number of women choose not to have children
Psychodynamic theory (Freud)
Gender identity is acquired during the third stage of psychosexual development, the phallic stage when children are 3-4 years old
- Focus on libido in the genitals which makes the development of girls and boys separate.
- Boys enter the Oedipus complex and girls the Elektra complex.
Weakness of the theory
- Ignores social factors and place all the emphasis on intra-individual factors
- Strongly criticised for the belief that females are underdeveloped compared with males
Oedipus complex:
the desire young boys have to get rid of their father and take his place in their mother’s affections. To resolve the aggression towards the father, they must mentally reorder their emotional attachments by differentiating (or distancing) themselves from their mothers and becoming close to their fathers and identifying with them, taking on their characteristics, beliefs and values. This process is driven by complex social emotions such as guilt and envy.
Elektra complex
The process by which young girls blame their mother for their “castrated” condition, transfer their love to their father and compete with their mother for their father’s affection.
Kohlberg’s stages of gender development (cognitive)
Kohlberg’s theory suggests that gender development is driven primarily by maturation.
- He believes that children do not actively start processing gender information until they reach gender constancy.
- Kohlberg proposed that a child’s gender development goes through in three stages.
1. Gender identity: 2-3 years old: children label themselves as well as others by sex. They do not understand that it is stable over time.
2. Gender stability: 3-4 years old: Children start to understand that their own gender is stable.
3. Gender constancy: 4-5 years old. Children understand that one’s sex is a constant aspect of oneself. - There are some children, around 2-5% of the population who develop a gender identity which does not match their biological gender.
Gender schema theory
- Suggests that children play a more active role in their own gender development from an earlier age.
- Definition of the schema: it is a mental representation that we use to organise and simplify our knowledge of the world around us.
- Gender-schema is therefore a cluster of concepts about male and female physical traits, behaviours and personality traits.
- The gender-schema theory states that the ways in which children learn is by observation and deciding which behaviours are appropriate for them. Children learn what is ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ by observing and imitating models of the same sex.
Social learning theory of gender development (cognitive)
- States that people develop gender by imitating role models.
- Observational learning takes place, and that this learning is reinforced vicariously. Vicarious reinforcement occurs when a person witnesses a model being rewarded for behaving in a gender-appropriate way. And so it is more likely that it will be imitated in the future.
Differential reinforcement (social learning theory:
the process by which girls and boys are rewarded for engaging in ways that are considered gender appropriate in their culture
Modelling (Social learning theory)
Modelling: the process by which children observe and imitate individuals of the same sex as themselves
Bandura (cognitive)
- 4 mediational processes must occur for imitation of behaviour to take place:
1) Attention – an individual must pay attention to the model’s behaviour (eg, boys must pay attention to male’s behaviour and girls must pay attention to female’s behaviour).
2) Retention – individuals must code and store the observed gender-appropriate behaviour in long-term memory
3) Reproduction – individuals must be capable of imitating the gender-appropriate behaviour
4) Motivation – individuals must have good reason for reproducing the gender-appropriate behaviour
Operant conditioning
- Parents reward gender-appropriate behaviour
- Negative response if the child plays with a different toy
