Gender Flashcards
What is Sex?
The biological differences between males and females including chromosomes, hormones and anatomy.
What is Gender?
The psychological, social and cultural differences between boys/men and girls/women including attitudes, behaviours and social roles.
What is a Sex-role stereotype?
A set of beliefs and preconceived ideas about what is expected or appropriate for men and women in a given society or social group.
What is androgyny?
Displaying a balance of masculine and feminine characteristics in one’s personality.
What is the Bem Sex Role Inventory?
The first systematic attempt to measure androgyny using a rating scale of 60 traits (20 masculine, 20 feminine and 20 neutral) to produce scores across two dimensions: masculinity-femininity and androgynous-undifferentiated.
What are chromosomes?
Chromosomes are found in the nucleus of living cells and carry information in the form of genes.
What determines biological sex?
The 23rd pair of chromosomes determines biological sex.
What is a hormone?
A hormone is a biochemical substance that circulates in the blood but only affects target organs.
How are hormones produced and their effects?
Hormones are produced in large quantities but disappear quickly, and their effects are very powerful.
What is testosterone?
Testosterone is a hormone from the androgen group produced mainly in the male testes and in smaller amounts in the female ovaries.
What is the role of testosterone?
Testosterone is associated with aggressiveness.
What is estrogen?
Estrogen is the primary female hormone, playing an important role in the menstrual cycle and reproductive system.
What is oxytocin?
Oxytocin is a hormone that causes contraction of the uterus during labor and stimulates lactation.
What are atypical sex chromosome patterns?
Any sex chromosome pattern that deviates from the usual XX / XY formation and which tends to be associated with a distinct pattern of physical and psychological symptoms.
What is Klinefelter’s syndrome?
A syndrome affecting males in which an individual’s genotype has an extra X chromosome (in addition to the normal XY).
Characterised by a tall thin physique, small infertile testes, and enlarged breasts.
What is Turner’s syndrome?
A chromosomal disorder in which affected women have only one X chromosome (denoted as XO), causing developmental abnormalities and infertility.
What is gender identity?
A child recognises that they are a boy or a girl and possesses the ability to label others as such. In Kohlberg’s theory, gender identity is acquired around age 2 years.
What is gender stability?
Happens around age 4 years. A child understands that their own gender is fixed and they will be a man or a woman when they are older.
What is gender constancy?
Usually reached by age 6 or 7 years. A child realises that gender remains the same over time and situations. They begin to identify with people of their own gender and start to behave in stereotypically gender-appropriate ways.
What is a gender schema?
An organised set of beliefs and expectations related to gender that are derived from experience.
What do gender schemas guide?
They guide a person’s understanding of their own gender and stereotypically gender-appropriate behaviour.
What is the Oedipus complex?
Freud’s explanation of how a boy resolves his love for his mother and feelings of rivalry towards his father by identifying with his father.
What is the Electra complex?
A term proposed by the neo-Freudian Carl Jung which refers to a process similar to the Oedipus complex. In girls, an attraction to and envy of their father is resolved through identification with their mother.
What does identification mean?
A desire to be associated with a particular person or group often because the person/group possesses certain desirable characteristics.
