Revision Sex and Gender

Sex Identity: This refers to whether you are biologically male of

female. Males have the chromosomes XY and females have

XX The male hormone is testosterone The female hormone is oestrogen

Gender Identity: This is a psychological term Gender refers to whether a person feels masculine

or feminine Gender can be identified through a persons feelings,

attitudes and behavior Girls may show feminine gender behavior by playing with dolls for

example

For most people there is a match between their sex and gender identities but this is not always the case

Gender identity can be affected by culture – in Britain we have two genders – masculine and feminine, but the Mohave Indians recognize 4 identities, traditional males and females and males who live as women and women who live as males

Explanations for Gender Development

The Psychodynamic explanation of Gender Development:

According to Freud, boys and girls develop in the same way until they reach the third stage of development known as the phallic stage which is between the ages of 3 and 5. At this stage their gender identification takes place. In boys it is known as the Oedipus Complex and in girls it is the Electra Complex

The Oedipus ComplexThe Oedipus Complex comes from the boy's natural love for his mother. The libido focuses on the genital area, and so this natural love becomes sexual. Freud held that the father then stands in the way of the boy's feelings, because of the father's relationship with the mother, so the boy feels aggression towards the father, and love for the mother. All this is at an unconscious level.Freud also felt that, as parents tell a son off for masturbating, this causes anxiety and fear. A boy at this age will notice that women don't have a penis, and the fear is focused on castration fear, as the boy fears his father will castrate him. Castration fear is stronger than the desire to possess the mother, so the desire is repressed.

Freud thought that unconsciously the boy wishes to kill his father in order to possess and marry his mother. This conflict has to be resolved by the ego to satisfy the demands of the id, and the love and fear can be reconciled if the boy identifies with his father, as if 'becoming' the father. In this way, the castration fear is removed, and the boy can in some way possess the mother as he wishes to. The boy, therefore, does what his father does, and in absorbing his father's morals and values, the boy develops the superego. The boy learns to be male by identifying with his father and 'becoming' him.

The Electra ComplexIn a similar way, girls learn their gender behaviour by identifying with their mothers, but Freud was more vague about the conflict for girls, which is called the Electra Complex. Freud thought that, at around the same age, girls find out that women have no penis. This is penis envy, which is similar to the castration fear experienced by boys. The girl identifies with her mother, takes on her morals and values and learns her gender role in that way, because she can then possess her father. However, Freud thought that this process is never complete, and is not resolved as the Oedipus Complex is resolved for boys. Freud believed that a girl always remains a little fixated in the phallic stage, though she does pass into the latency period once she has identified with her mother, and she develops the superego in the phallic stage, as a boy does.

Key Study:

NAME: Freud, Little Hans (1909)AIM: To investigate Little Han’s phobia of horsesMETHOD: Han’s father and Freud communicated by letter about Hans’ phobia. Han’s father asked Hans about the phobia and reported back to Freud about the conversations they had.RESULTS: Freud claimed that Hans was scared of horses because he was going through the Oedipus Complex. He had displaced his fear of his father on horses. The white horse with a black muzzle that he was most scared of was like his father (who was white with a moustache). His fear of being bitten by a horse represented his fear of his father castrating him if he found out about his desire towards his mother.CONCLUSION: This study supports Freud’s idea about the Oedipus ComplexEVALUATION:

The study cannot be generalized. It is possible that Little Hans was going through the Oedipus Complex, but this does not mean that all boys go through this

Hans’ father was a supporter of Freud and it is possible that he twisted the information to support Freud’s ideas and please him

The study gathered qualitative data which is more valid as the information is detailed and in depth

Gender Development in a lone-parent household

According to Freud, if a child is brought up in a lone-parent household they will not go through the Oedipus Complex and will therefore have a poorly developed gender identity. Freud claimed that boys who did not have their fathers would not be masculine and would be homosexual.

Rekers (1974) mentioned the case of Carl who was 8 years old and had no father figure. He had a feminine voice and liked to wear dresses and play with girls.

Rekers and Moray (1990) found that there was a relationship between gender disturbance in boys and a lack of a stable father figure

Other psychologists such as Golombok found there was no relationship between lack of a father figure and gender development

Evaluation of the Psychodynamic Explanation of Gender Development

Freud’s ideas are difficult to test as they are based on the unconscious mind which we cannot gain access to

The rise in the number of children has not seen a similar rise in the homosexual population or in people who are gender disturbed as Freud suggested would happen

There is little evidence to support the idea of the Oedipus or Electra complex. Case studies like Little Hans cannot be generalized.

The Social Learning theory of Gender Development:

We learn our gendered behavior by observing role models – this is known as vicarious learning

Role models are likely to be people who are o The same sexo High status – e.g. parents or celebritieso If we see them being rewarded for their behavior – e.g. a girl

watches her mother put on makeup and her father compliments the mother – this is known as vicarious reinforcement

The child will then imitate the behavior that they see the role model perform

Key Study:

NAME: Perry and Bussey (1979)AIM: To see if children imitate the behavior of same sex role modelsMETHOD: Children were shown films of role models that were carrying out activities unfamiliar to the children. In one condition all of the male role models did one activity and the females did the other. In the other condition half of the males and half of the females did one activity whereas the other half did the other activity.RESULTS: In the first condition the children imitated what the same-sex role model had done. In the second condition there was no difference in the activities that the girls and boys chose.

CONCLUSION: When children are in an unfamiliar situation they will observe the behavior of a same-sex role model as this gives them information about what is appropriate for their sex.EVALUATION:

The study is reliable as all extraneous variables are controlled so the researchers could be confident that it was the gender of the role model that effected the choice of activity for the child

As the study was an independent groups design, the difference in the two conditions could have been because of participant variables and not because of the manipulation of the independent variable

Media and Gender Development:

Macklin and Kolbe (1984) claimed that children want to imitate characters on TV because they are often physically attractive

Television often shows males and females in stereotyped ways – e.g. women as housewives and secretaries and men as mechanics and police officers

Williams (1986) showed in their study that children in Canada shown TV for the first time became more sex stereotyped in their attitudes and behavior than they had been previously

Evaluation of the social learning theory of gender development: The theory is well supported by research – lots of studies show that

children copy the behavior of same sex role models It does not explain why children brought up in lone parent families

without a same sex role model do not have difficulty in their gender development

It does not explain how there can be differences within one family – for example how one brother can behave more masculine than the other

The approach ignores biological differences between males and females

The Gender Schema Theory of Gender Development:

A schema is a mental building block of knowledge – it is strengthened or changed as we learn information from the world around you

A gender schema is a block of knowledge that contains information about each gender – it contains information about behaviours, clothes and roles for males and females

Gender schemas are often made up of gender stereotypes – believing that all males and females are similar, for example that all secretaries are women

Martin and Halverson (1981) believed that gender schemas develop with age. When we are about two years old we recognize that we are male or female and identify if others around us are male or female

Children then take in information about the sexes from the world around them

When they are young their ideas are quite rigid and stereotyped but as they get older they gain more knowledge about the world and their ideas become less stereotyped

Key Study:

NAME: Martin (1989)AIM: To show that children’s understanding of gender less stereotyped as they get olderMETHOD: Children heard stories about the toys that male and female characters enjoyed playing with. Some of the characters were described as liking gender stereotyped activities and others were described as liking non-gender stereotyped activities. The children were then asked to predict what other toys the characters would like to play withRESULTS: The younger children only used the sex of the character to choose what toy they would like whereas the older children relied on information from the story – e.g. if a girl liked playing with more masculine toys they would choose a more masculine toy from them CONCLUSION: Older children have a more flexible view of children than younger children doEVALUATION:

The younger children may have had more difficulty understanding the story and this may have been why they used the information about the sex of the person to determine toy choice

Lots of studies support the idea that as children become older they usually become less sex stereotyped

Individual Differences in Gender Development:

Some children as they get older are still very gender stereotyped in their thinking. They ignore information that does not fit in with their schemas and concentrate on information that does

Levy and Carter showed children pictures of two toys to play with, sometimes the two toys were masculine and sometimes they were feminine. Other times they were shown one masculine and one feminine toy. The highly gender schematicised children chose quickly when there was one masculine and one feminine toy but took longer when both toys were masculine or feminine whereas the less gender schematicised children took the same amount of time on both sets of toys as their choice was based on personal preference and not whether the toy was stereotypically male or female

Evaluation of the Gender Schema Theory of Gender Development

It is well supported with evidence from research and is the most highly regarded explanation of gender development

It does not explain why some children are more gender schematicised than others

It does not explain why gender development happens at age two