CHAPTER 12 GENDER ROLES AND SEXUALITY

1. CHAPTER 12GENDER ROLES AND SEXUALITY

2. Learning Objectives • What are gender norms and stereotypes? How do they play out in the behaviors of men and women? • What actual psychological differences exist between males and females? • How does Eagly’s social role hypothesis explain gender stereotypes?

3. Sex and Gender • Biological sex – physical characteristics that define male and female • Gender – the features that a society associates with or considers appropriate for men and women • Physical differences between males and females • Genetic males received a Y chromosome from the male parent and an X chromosome from the female parent • Genetic females received an X chromosome from each parent (XX) • Different prenatal hormone balances • Genitals • Reproductive capacity • Males typically grow to be taller, heavier, more muscular • Females typically live longer and are less susceptible to many physical disorders

4. Sex and Gender • Virtually all societies expect the two sexes to take on different gender roles • Patterns of behavior that females and males should adopt in a particular society • Each society’s norms generate gender stereotypes • Overgeneralized, largely inaccurate beliefs about what males and females are like • Example: “men never ask for directions”

5. Sex and Gender – Gender Roles and Stereotypes • In many societies, women’s role of nurturer and childbearer shape their gender-role norms • At the heart of the nurturer role is communality, or communion • Orientation that emphasizes connectedness to others and includes traits of emotionality and sensitivity to others • Girls who adopt communal traits will be prepared for the roles of wife and mother

6. Sex and Gender – Gender Roles and Stereotypes • The central aspect of the male gender role is agency • An orientation toward individual action and achievement • Emphasizes traits of dominance, independence, assertiveness, and competitiveness • Agentic traits are central to the traditional roles of husband and father – providing for the family and protecting it from harm

7. Sex and Gender – Gender Roles and Stereotypes • Communion and agency have long been viewed as two fundamental psychological dimensions of human nature • Stereotypes suggest that females possess communal traits and males possess agentic traits • Children, adolescents, and adults endorse many traditional stereotypes about women and men • However, boys are more likely than girls to endorse traditional stereotypes, perhaps because stereotypes about males (e.g., independent) tend to be more positive than the stereotypes about females (e.g., dependent)

8. Sex and Gender – Gender Differences or Similarities? • Early research on gender attempted to quantify differences between men and women • Hyde (2005) proposed that it was more accurate to focus on gender similarities • According to the gender similarities hypothesis, “men and women, as well as boys and girls, are more alike than they are different”

9. Sex and Gender – Gender Differences or Similarities? • Research measuring group differences or similarities showed • Females sometimes display greater verbal abilities than males, but on most verbal tasks, the difference is small • Females consistently outperform males in reading • Males outperform females on many tests of spatial ability • Females and males perform similarly on most standardized math tests, and females obtain slightly higher math grades in the classroom than males

10. Sex and Gender – Gender Differences or Similarities? • Girls display greater memory ability than boys • Beginning as early as 17 months of age, males engage in more physical and verbal aggression than females • Before birth and throughout childhood, boys are more physically active than girls • Boys are more developmentally vulnerable • Due to prenatal and perinatal stress and to diseases and disorders such as reading disabilities, speech defects, hyperactivity, emotional problems, and mental retardation

11. Sex and Gender – Gender Differences or Similarities? • Girls are more tactful and cooperative, as opposed to being forceful and demanding, and are more compliant with requests from adults • Females are reported to be more nurturant and empathic; sex differences in behaviors are small but show females empathizing more than males

12. Sex and Gender – Gender Differences or Similarities? • Females are more prone to develop anxiety disorders, depression, and phobias, and males are more likely to display antisocial behaviors and drug and alcohol abuse • Males use computers more than females and express greater confidence in their computer abilities

13. Caption:A spatial ability task. Are the two figures in each pair alike or different? The task assesses the ability to mentally rotate visual information and is a task in which average differences between males and females are quite large.

14. Sex and Gender – Gender Differences or Similarities? • Eagly’s (1987) social-role hypothesis suggests that differences in the typical social roles of women and men support gender stereotypes • We see characteristics of the social roles (nurturant or agentic) that cause men and women to behave differently, and begin to think that the behaviors are "by nature"

15. Sex and Gender – Gender Differences or Similarities? • Femaleness and maleness make a difference • Gender norms and stereotypes affect how we perceive ourselves and other people • Males and are steered toward different roles in society • Conform to gender roles by pursuing different vocations and lifestyles • Occupations are highly gender segregated • Much of family work is divided along traditional gender lines

16. Learning Objectives • How do gender-role stereotypes influence infants’ behavior and treatment? • How do children acquire gender-role stereotypes? In what ways do children exhibit gender-typed behavior? • What theoretical explanations account for gender-typed behaviors? • How well-supported are these theories?

17. The Infant – Differential Treatment • Differences between males and females at birth are small and inconsistent • Soon after birth, infants begin to receive differential treatment • Language • Describe boys in masculine terms and comment on their strength • Describe girls as soft, cuddly, adorable • Clothing, sex-appropriate hairstyles, toys, and room furnishings

18. The Infant – Early Learning • Infants learn the categories of female and male and then associate themselves with the social category to which they belong • By 18 months, most toddlers seem to have an emerging understanding that they are either like males or like females • Almost all children can give verbal proof that they have acquired a basic sense of gender identity by age 2½-3 • As they acquire gender identities, boys and girls begin to demonstrate preferences for gender-appropriate activities and toys

19. The Child • Through gender typing, children acquire • Awareness of their biological sex • Motives, values, and patterns of behavior that their culture considers appropriate for members of their biological sex • Gender differences should not be attributed to biological causes – could be caused by differences in the way females and males are perceived and raised

20. The Child – Acquiring Gender Stereotypes • Around the time children become aware of their basic gender identities, they begin to learn society’s gender stereotypes • In a research study, children as young as 3 knew that girls play with Barbie dolls and boys play with GI Joes • In a research study, 4- and 6-year-olds expressed positive emotions at the thought of holding gender stereotypic adult occupations and negative emotions regarding holding gender counter-stereotypic occupations • Rigidity about gender stereotypes is especially high during the preschool years (around ages 4 to 7), but decreases over the elementary school years

21. The Child – Acquiring Gender Stereotypes • Maccoby (1998) suggests that children may exaggerate gender roles in order to cognitively clarify the roles • Once gender identities are more firmly established, children can be more flexible in thinking about what is “for girls” and what is “for boys” • Other research suggests that children’s rigidity about gender-role violations depends on how essential a behavior is to children’s understanding of gender identity • For example, dresses are more strongly associated with the feminine gender role than are kitchen implements, so children would be more rigid regarding whether a boy could wear a dress than whether a boy could play with toy kitchen tools

22. The Child – Gender-Typed Behavior • Children begin to favor same-sex playmates as early as 30 to 36 months of age • This preference strengthens during the elementary-school years • Gender segregation – separate boys’ and girls’ peer groups and greater levels of same-sex interaction • Partly because of incompatibility between girls’ and boys’ play styles • Girls don’t like boys’ rowdy, domineering, unresponsive styles

23. The Child – Gender-Typed Behavior • Children who insist most strongly on clear boundaries between the sexes and avoid consorting with the opposite sex tend to be socially competent and popular • Children who violate gender segregation rules tend to be less well adjusted and run the risk of peer rejection • Boys face stronger pressures to adhere to gender-role expectations than girls do • In our society, boys are ridiculed and rejected if they do not conform to the agentic role

24. The Adolescent – Adhering to Gender Roles • Adolescents return to a level of intolerance and stereotypic thinking about gender roles and gender-role violations • Adolescents experience gender intensification • Associated with puberty and increased pressure for gender conformity in order to appeal to the other sex for dating • Boys begin to see themselves as more masculine and girls begin to emphasize their femininity

25. The Adolescent – Explaining Gender-Role Development • Theories about the development of gender roles • Biosocial theory proposed by Money and Ehrhardt (1972) highlights the ways biological events influence development and how early biological events and social reactions relate to gender roles • Once a biological male or female is born, social labeling and differential treatment of girls and boys interact with biological factors to steer development • Parents and other people label and begin to react to children on the basis of the appearance of their genitalia • If children’s genitals are abnormal and they are mislabeled as members of the other sex, this incorrect label will affect their future development

26. The Adolescent – Explaining Gender-Role Development • Money and Ehrhardt’s biosocial theory (continued) • At puberty, biological factors are again influential when large quantities of hormones are released, stimulating the growth of the reproductive system and the appearance of secondary sex characteristics • These events, with a person’s earlier self-concept as a male or female, provide the basis for adult gender identity and role behavior

27. The Adolescent – Explaining Gender-Role Development • Evidence supports the role of biological factors in the development of males and males in many species of animals • Evolutionary psychology points out that most societies socialize males to have agentic traits and females to have communal traits • Concluded that traditional gender roles may be a reflection of species heredity • Research suggests that individual differences in agency and communality may be partly genetic

28. The Adolescent – Explaining Gender-Role Development • Biological influences on development are evident in studies of children who had prenatal exposure to excess androgens • Androgenized females are masculinized as a consequence of their prenatal exposure • Masculine-like appearance of genitals, preferences for boys’ toys and activities, higher performances than other females on tests of spatial ability

29. The Adolescent – Explaining Gender-Role Development • How a child is labeled and treated affects gender development • Money and Ehrhardt (1972) concluded that there is a period between 18 months and 3 years for the establishment of gender identity when the label society attaches to the child is likely to stick

30. Caption:Critical events in Money and Ehrhardt’s biosocial theory of gender typing

31. The Adolescent – Explaining Gender-Role Development • According to social-learning theorists, children learn gender identities, preferences, and behaviors through two processes • Differential reinforcement – children are rewarded for sex-appropriate behaviors and are punished for behaviors considered more appropriate for members of the other sex • Observational learning – children adopt the attitudes and behaviors of same-sex models

32. The Adolescent – Explaining Gender-Role Development • Differential reinforcement (continued) • Mothers and fathers may discipline their sons and daughters differently, with fathers more likely to use physical forms of discipline (spanking) than mothers, and mothers more likely to use reasoning to explain rules and consequences • Parents who show the clearest patterns of differential reinforcement have children who are relatively quick to label themselves as girls or boys and to develop strongly sex-typed toy and activity preferences • Fathers are more likely than mothers to reward children’s gender-appropriate behavior and to discourage behavior considered more appropriate for the other sex

33. The Adolescent – Explaining Gender-Role Development • Differential reinforcement (continued) • According to Eccles and colleagues (1990), differential treatment may explain why girls are less likely to enroll in math and science courses and are underrepresented in math/science occupations • Parents expect their sons to be more interested and to do better in math in science than their daughters • Parents attribute their sons’ successes in math to ability but credit their daughters’ successes to hard work • Children internalize their parents’ views • Because they think they lack ability, girls become less interested in math, less likely to take math courses, and less likely to pursue math-related careers

34. The Adolescent – Explaining Gender-Role Development • Social-learning theorists emphasize the role of observational learning in gender typing • Children observe and imitate same-sex models • Children learn from the media – radio, television, movies, books, video games • Perhaps the strongest traditional stereotypes are found in video games

35. The Adolescent – Explaining Gender-Role Development • Kohlberg’s (1966) cognitive theory of gender typing includes two themes • Children must acquire certain understandings about gender before they will be influenced by their social experiences • Children engage in self-socialization; they actively socialize themselves rather than being the passive targets of social influence

36. The Adolescent – Explaining Gender-Role Development • Kohlberg suggested that children progress through three stages as they acquire gender constancy (an understanding of what it means to be a boy or girl, man or woman) • Basic gender identity is established by age 2 or 3, when children can recognize and label themselves as males or females • Usually by age 4, children acquire gender stability – the understanding that gender identity is stable over time • Boys invariably become men, and girls grow up to be women • The gender concept is complete between ages 5 and 7, when children achieve gender consistency and realize that their sex is also stable across situations • Sex cannot be altered by superficial changes such as dressing up as a member of the other sex or engaging in cross-sex activities

37. The Adolescent – Explaining Gender-Role Development • Factors that explain children’s grasp of gender constancy • As children enter Piaget’s concrete-operational stage of cognitive development and understand aspects of conservation, they also realize that gender is conserved – remains constant – despite changes in appearance • Children understand gender stability and consistency if they have sufficient knowledge of male and female anatomy to realize that genitals make one female or male

38. The Adolescent – Explaining Gender-Role Development • Martin and Halverson (1981, 1987) proposed an information-processing theory to explain children’s understanding of gender • Gender schema – organized sets of beliefs and expectations about males and females that influence the kinds of information children will attend to and remember • Children acquire a simple ingroup/outgroup schema that allows them to classify some objects, behaviors, and roles as appropriate for males and others as appropriate for females • Once gender schemata are in place, children will distort new information in memory so that it is consistent with their schemata

40. Caption: Gender schema theory in action

41. Learning Objectives • How do gender roles change throughout adulthood? • What is androgyny? • To what extent is androgyny useful?

42. The Adult – Changes in Gender Roles • Males and females fill their agentic or communal roles throughout their lives, and the specific content of those roles changes considerably over the lifespan • The roles of women and men become more distinct in marriage, especially in parenthood • Wives typically do more housework then husbands • 7-8 hours more per week • 400 hours more in a year • 10,000 hours more in 25 years

43. The Adult – Androgyny? • David Gutman (1987, 1997) proposed that gender roles and gender-related traits in adulthood are shaped by the parental imperative • The requirement that mothers and fathers adopt different roles to raise children successfully • “Masculine” qualities needed to feed and protect families • “Feminine” qualities needed to nurture the young and meet the emotional needs of families

44. The Adult – Androgyny? • At midlife, women and men are freed from the demands of the parental imperative • Men become less active and more passive, take less interest in community affairs, focus more on religious contemplation and family relationships, and become more sensitive and emotionally expressive • Women become more active, domineering, assertive, and become stronger forces in their communities

45. The Adult – Androgyny? • Androgyny shift is another explanation for changes in gender roles at midlife • Women and men retain their gender-typed qualities and add qualities traditionally associated with the other sex – thus, they become more androgynous

46. Learning Objectives • How are infants affected by their sex? What do we know about infant sexuality? • What do children know about sex and reproduction? How does sexual behavior change during childhood? • What factors contribute to the development of sexual orientation? • What are adolescents’ sexual attitudes today? • Which factors influence sexual behaviors and attitudes in adulthood?

47. Sexuality Over the Lifespan • Are infants sexual beings? • Freud said that infants are born with a reserve of sexual energy, that we are sexual beings from birth • Infants have been observed to touch and manipulate their genital areas, to experience physical arousal, and to undergo what appear to be orgasms • However, they are not aware that their behavior is “sexual”

48. Sexuality Over the Lifespan – Childhood Sexuality • When children learn that sexual anatomy is the key differentiator between males and females, they begin to acquire a vocabulary for discussing sexual organs • Children construct their understanding of sex and reproduction by assimilating and accommodating information into their existing cognitive structures • With cognitive maturity, their understandings become more accurate

49. Sexuality Over the Lifespan – Childhood Sexuality • According to Freud, • Preschoolers in the phallic stage of psychosexual development are interested in their genitals and masturbate for pleasure • School-age children in the latency stage repress their sexuality and focus on school and same-sex friendships • Research does not substantiate Freud’s view of the latency period • School-age children continue to be curious and to experiment sexually

50. Sexuality Over the Lifespan – Childhood Sexuality • The research of Herdt and McClintock (2000) provided evidence that • Age 10 is an important point in sexual development • A milestone that appears to be influenced by the maturation of the adrenal glands • A time when many boys and girls experience their first sexual attraction to a member of the other sex or to a member of their own sex