Gender Psychology Midterm 2 Flashcards
Ambivalent sexism
The theory that describes hostile sexism and benevolent sexism
Hostile sexism: overtly negative attitudes and beliefs toward women, veiwing them as manipulative and inferior
Benevolent sexism: seemingly positive attitudes that still reinforce gender inequality
Glick and Fiskes theory: chivalry towards women is benevolent sexism
Birkenhead drill code: 19th century — women and children should be saved first
Patriarchal societies
Controlled by men
Patrilineal: trace descent and pass inheritance through fathers
Patrilocal: Wives live near husbands family
Matriarchy
Women in control
No society is a matriarchy
Matrilineal: trace descent through mothers kinship line; pass inheritance down from mothers
Matrilocal: husbands live near wives families
Power (Dyadic Vs Structural)
Power: capacity to determine others and ones own outcomes
Dyadic Power: capacity to choose intimate partners and relationships, and to control interactions and decisions occurring within relationships
Structural Power: influence embedded within the structures and institutions of a society or organization
Sex Ratio Theory
Ratio of men to women in a given environment influences the levels of dyadic power that sexes hold
When men outnumber women
Women hold more dyadic power
Greater autonomy
Men show more relationship and family commitment
Increased value on women’s traditional work
When women outnumber men
Men hold more dyadic power
Male promiscuity and lower commitment
Three types of power
Force: capacity to inflict physical/ psychological harm
- Domestic abuse
Recourse control: controlling the creation and distribution of desirable goods
- Men on average have more resource control
- gives power to dominant group
Cultural ideologies: sets of beliefs and assumptions about groups that explain and justify unequal hierarchies
- Androcentrism: man as universal
- Eurocentrism: ones own culture as universal
- Heterocentrism: heterosexuality as universal
Exception for resource control
Post - divorce child custody
- main gain sole custody only 10% of the time
- may be driven by stereotypes about women being better at parenting
- an ignored systematic sex bias about men
Privilege
Automatic, unearned advantage associated with membership in a dominant group
- Removes the barriers and stressors encountered regularly by members of subordinate groups
Double Jeopardy Hypothesis
More discrimination faced by Individulas belonging to two or more subordinate groups than those belonging to one
Intersectional invisibility hypothesis
Ignoring of experiences leads to doubly subordinated individuals feeling socially invisible
Non prototypical group members receive less notice and attention from others
Debate on sexism
Feminist psychologists view sexism and sex-based discrimination as two separate constructs, with sexism involving structural power differences
Hostile and benevolent ideologies as compliments
Work jointly to maintain and perpetuate gender hierarchy: men wield more power but simultaneously depend on women
- Hostile — those who seek status
- Benevolent — embrace traditional gender roles
- women’s feelings of resentment are soothed by flattery and chivalrous treatment
Ambivalent attitudes towards men mirror those toward women
- hostile — toward men who are veiwed as arrogant , power hungry, juvenile and predatory
- Benevolent — towards protectors and providers
Social dominance orientation
Extent to which Individulas believe that social groups are and should be equal versus hierarchical
Low in SDO — reject status hierarchies
High in SDO — inequality is right and fair “some people are just more worthy than others”
Social dominance theory
Subordinate groups internalize ideologies unfair to themselves as long as social hierarchy is perceived as stable and unchanging
System justification theory
People have powerful motivation to justify the sociopolitical system in which their lives are embedded
Gender discrimination
Unjust treatment based solely on ones sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity
- does not involve structural power imbalances by definition
- can be directed toward members of any social group, including dominant ones
- can take many forms
Overt gender discrimination: obvious and east
to recognize
General patterns of gender discrimination
Education: 32.1 million girls vs. 28.9 million boys of primary age out of school; slightly more girls not attending.
Significant gender gaps in the Middle East, Oceania, and sub-Saharan Africa; minimal gaps in East and Southeast Asia.
Impoverished girls most affected in Somalia, Niger, and Liberia.
Political Representation:
Women are underrepresented globally; only 24% in legislative bodies and 23% in the U.S. House.
Only three countries (Rwanda, Cuba, Bolivia) achieved 50%+ female representation in 2019.
Global Gender Gap Index:
Highest gender equality in Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland; lowest in Chad, Syria, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen.
U.S. ranks 51st, comparable to Mozambique and Mexico.
Cognitive abilities
Mental skills such as paying attention, reasoning =, remembering, solving problems, speaking, interpreting speech
Lawrence summer
Discounted the role of discrimination at a 2005 Harvard conference on underrepresentation of women in sciences and engineering
Intelligence and the history
General capacity to understand ideas, think abstractly, solve problems and learn; not a specific type of knowledge or expertise
- Early 19th century: women were believed to be less intelligent
- End of 19th century: gender biases in brain measurement studies: women’s smaller brains used to explain their intellectual inferiority
Essentialism
Human differences arise from stable and integral qualities within Individulas
Intelligence quotient
Standardized score representing Individulas level of intelligence relative to same-age peers
- Early 1900s: first modern intelligence test developed by Binet and Simon in France
- American Lewis Terman demonstrated that boys and girls did not differ in intelligence scores
Eugenics
Control the genetic quality of the human population by preventing the reproduction those deemed genetically inferior
Misuse of the IQ test
- attempt at controlling genetic quality of human population
Limitation of binary comparisons
Overlooks Individuals who identify as neither female nor male (or both female and male)
Overlooks within sex differences in race, age, physical ability, sexual orientation, religion, and culture
General mental ability
Spearman: general mental ability
- Individulas performance on all cognitive tasks; identifiable though factor analysis
- someone with good reading comprehension skills, should also demonstrate good working memory and strong pattern recognition
Predicts important outcomes: such as academic performance, job performance, and health and longevity
Negligible sex differences
- do not consistently favour one particular sex
- most intelligence tests are gender neutral by design and thus nit reliable to examine sex differences in mental ability
Thunderstones + Maccoby and Jacklin
Thunderstones: Gave 60 different intelligence tests to a sample of eight graders
- factor analysis showed that the test items groups into 3 cultures of abilities
M and J: the sexes differed in verbal, quantitative and spatial abilities, soon became the dominant understanding in the feild
Verbal Performance
Small to moderate sex differences. If any; tend to favour girls and women
Vocabulary and verbal fluency
- girls learn to talk younger; vocabularies bloom earlier than boys do (small effect size)
- sex differences disappear by later childhood
- ability to generate words (verbal fluency): small sex difference favouring girls and women for verbal fluency
Reading
- girls outperform boys by the the widest margins in countries where girls have more educational and economic opportunities
Writing
- girls have a small advantage in most research
verbal reasoning:
- studies find either a small male advantage or no sex difference
- verbal reasoning tasks require mental transformation of verbal information
- men tend to outperform women in visual-spatial processing
Quantitative performance (math)
- No difference in overall math performance
- small sex differences in some specific math domains
Computational ability
- small female advantage for computation ability at ages 5-10 that disappeared by ages 15-18
Complex problems
- modest made advantage at ages 15-18 and 19-25
Quantitative performance
- overall analysis showed boys outperforming girls in most countries. This may be explained by gender equality of the culture: size of men’s advantage in math ability decreases as gender equality of a given nation increases
Visual Spatial Performance
Cognitive skills that help Individulas understand relationships between objects and navigate three-dimensional space
Size of the sex difference depends on the specific task used and age of target population
Male advantage in mental rotation ability
Spatial perception:
- ability to perceive, understand, and remember spatial relations between objects
- small male advantage in childhood that rises to moderate in adulthood
Spatial Visualization: ability to mentally manipulate spatial information
- small male advantage - not until teenage years
Spatial Location memory: remembering where objects are
- small sex differences favour women - inconsistent
Overall patterns of the 3 abilities
Most favour boys — this disappears in cultures that are more egalitarian
Greater male variability hypothesis
Men show greater variability in cognitive performance
Boys are more likely to receive diagnosis of learning disabilities and developmental disorders.
Biopsychosocial
Biological and environmental factors both mutually contribute to cognitive performance
Nature seems to play a stronger role in shaping verbal ability than shaping math ability
Education debt
Ongoing, cumulative lack of investment in education of low income and racial minority students
- substantially different educational experiences and outcomes for students based on race and income
Math Anxiety
Experienced by girls and women
Self reinforcing loop: anxiety produces lower math achievement and poor math performance produces anxiety; relates to lower achievement
Steryotype threat: anxiety die to risk of confirming a negative steryotype about ones group
Self Achievement motivation
Individulas need to meet goals and accomplish tasks
Some studies show that girls show higher intrinsic motivation while boys show greater work avoidance
Differences in response to evaluation
Women - more responsive to feedback, may approach situations as a way of gaining information about their abilities
Men - approach performance as opportunities to compete; self confident approach makes them relatively impervious to others’ evaluations of them
Can you identify male vs female wiring
Humans cant tell the difference but computers can
Cultural debates around word choice
Culture attitudes can change faster than language (creates a period of ambiguity)
Importance of word choice
- words have the power to shape social perceptions
- some think its unnecessary
- political correctness: the social norm, often viewed as taken to an extreme — avoid things that may offend, marginalize,or exclude members of subordinate
Whorfian linguistics relativity hypothesis
The structure of language determines the nature of the speakers thoughts and worldviews
