sex and gender

Question 1

sex definition

Answer 1

-biological status of a person as either male of female
-determined by different chromosomes, that then influence hormonal/anatomy differences eg reproductive organs

Question 2

gender definition

Answer 2

• psychological and cultural differences between males/females
• includes attitudes, roles and behaviours associated with being male/female and heavily influenced by the environment (norms and cultural expectations)
• is fluid (in part due to nature)

Question 3

What is gender dysphoria

Answer 3

-aka gender identity disorder, people have this when their biological sex doesn’t reflect how they feel inside and how they wish to identify themselves
-these people may have gender reassignment surgery to fix this internal struggle

Question 4

what was the case of the batista boys

Answer 4

• in 3 Dominican Republic villages, 37 children studied had inherited a mutant recessive gene from an 18th century ancestor
• having XY chromosomes, they strangely had apparently female genitals and were brought up as girls. reaching puberty, the testosterone surge led to the productions of dihydrotestosterone which they had lacked before birth
• the delayed masculinisation then kicked in as well as the sudden development of male genitals
  -the now girls reported no difficulty in adopting the male gender despite their rearing as girls

Question 5

what does the batista boys case tell us about gender and sex-roles

Answer 5

changing a sex role can occur naturally in extreme cases and gender is fluid, as seen in the case of adopting to gender changes during puberty

Question 6

what’re sex role stereotypes

Answer 6

-a set of shared expectations in a society about what is ‘acceptable’ behaviour for men and women.
-they can be communicated throughout society and may be reinforced by parents, peers, the media and schools

Question 7

what’re example of sex-role stereotypes

Answer 7

giving boys/girls toys/clothes such as blue and hammers/pink and barbies respectively

Question 8

what research did Ingalhalikar conduct that supported sex role stereotypes

Answer 8

scanned the brains of 949 young men and women in the biggest study of its kind to date, with advanced diffusion MRI imagine, mapping the brain connections

Question 9

what were the findings of Ingalhalikar’s research in support of sex-role stereotypes

Answer 9

• women’s brains have far better connections between the left/right sides of the brain
• men displayed more concentrated, intense activity, especially in the cerebellum
• concluded that the female brain is hard-wired to cope better with several tasks whereas males prefer to focus on a single complex task