MODULE 1: INTRODUCTION TO GENDER PSYCHOLOGY

DEFINING SEX AND GENDER WITHIN PSYCHOLOGY

• The concept of gender, particularly as a demographic construct, actually embodies three separate
but overlapping, correlated, and distinct components.
• In other words, when political scientists refer to “gender” in a survey, they are referring to and
conflating several overlapping and meaningfully distinct underlying constructs.
• These elements remain linked, but they differ in critical ways.
• The first component encompasses biological sex, which, short of surgical and hormonal intervention,
remains constant for most individuals across their life span. While there are some individuals who
undergo sex changes and a not-trivial number who are born intersex, most people possess biological
organs of reproduction that distinguish them as male or female.
• The second aspect of categorization incorporates the notion of gender and relates to traits of
masculinity or femininity, including such characteristics as sex-typed interests and occupations,
appearance, mannerisms, and nonverbal behavior (Lippa 2005). The concept of gender is assumed to
correlate with various role definitions, personality traits, and components of identity.
• These constructions become infused with cultural values that differ across time and place and were
historically assumed to result from processes of socialization. However, modern examinations provide
much stronger support for biological foundations of gender (Garcia-Falgueras and Swaab 2010). These
constructs can influence a wide variety of behaviors that affect societal notions of relationships, work,
and parenting, among other factors.
• A third aspect of categorization regards sexual preference. Scholars typically do not link this aspect of
identity to sex and gender, but, these notions are often conflated in the public discourse, whether
intentionally or not. In addition, notions of gender nonconformity and homosexuality are often linked in
societal assumptions and political punditry, but they are not at all the same.
• IMP: For those who doubt this tendency, consider the recent discussion in Congress over the allowance
of gays in the military, in which concepts of sex, gender, and sexual preference were often conflated.
Masculine straight men represent the epitome of value in this community, despite the fact that over 10%
of the armed forces are women. Just like sex and gender, sexual orientation remains a distinct analytic
category; individual men and women can be attracted to either men or women. Masculine women can be
straight, just as masculine men can be gay.
• Sex refers to the biological categories of female and male, categories distinguished by genes,
chromosomes, and hormones. Culture has no influence on one’s sex. Sex is a relatively stable category
that is not easily changed, although recent technology has allowed people to change their biological sex.
Gender, by contrast, is a much more fluid category. It refers to the social categories of male and
female. These categories are distinguished from one another by a set of psychological features and role
attributes that society has assigned to the biological category of sex.
• Emotionality is a trait we ascribe to women, and competitiveness is a trait we ascribe to men. These
traits are features of gender rather than sex. Whereas sex is defined in the same way across cultures,
gender differs because each society has its own prescriptions for how women and men ought to behave.
A feature of the male sex category includes the Y chromosome; regardless of whether a male wears a
baseball cap or barrettes, or is competitive or empathetic, he is of the male sex because he possesses the
Y chromosome.
• Personality and appearance are related to the gender category. In the United States, a feature of the
female gender category is nurturance; a person who is nurturant is behaving in a way consistent with the
social category for women. Another feature of the female gender category in the United States is to wear
 a skirt; typically, if you encounter someone in this country wearing a skirt, you can assume the person is
psychologically female as well as biologically female.
• However, in other countries, such as Scotland, wearing a skirt or a kilt is quite normal for a person of the
biological male sex; thus we would not want to use wearing a skirt as a feature of the female or male
gender category in Scotland. It is American culture that views a kilt as a skirt; a person from Scotland
does not view a kilt as feminine attire. The content of gender categories—but not sex categories— is
influenced by society, culture, and time.

PSYCHOLOGIST PERSPECTIVE
• Robert Stoller, an American Psychoanalyst, is the first person who has distinguished between 'sex
and gender' in 1968, he used the word 'sex' to categories population into two categories i.e. male and
female according to their physical characteristics such as external genitalia, internal genitalia i.e. the
organ that produce the sex cells, hormonal states and secondary sex characteristics.
• In addition there are differences in physique between men and women which usually mean that men are
more muscular and stronger.
• On the contrary the word 'gender' is used to explain socio-psychological and cultural differences
between men and women.
• Stoller says if the proper term for 'sex' are 'male' and 'female' the corresponding terms for 'gender' are
'masculine' and 'feminine' these later might be independent of biological sex.
• Bella Abzg's says that the distinction between sex and gender has evolved to show the reality that
women and men roles and status are socially constructed and subject to change. Hence the word 'sex'
is used to show biological differences between men and women and consider them as primary source
from which social inequalities between men and women emanates , whereas the words gender express
asymmetrical status of men and women whose main source is not biology but values and institutions of
society (Haralambos, 1995; Giddens, 1998; Worell,2001).

Biology: Sex and Gender

• In nucleated human cells, we find 46 chromosomes arranged in pairs. Twenty-two of these pairs are
called autosomes. The 23d pair, the sex chromosome, features either two X chromosomes or one X and
one Y chromosome. If your sex chromosome is 'XX' you are female. If your 23d chromosome is 'XY'
you are a male. Of course, variation happens.
• There may be chromosomal aberrations. For example, some girls are born with an extra female
chromosome: XXX. Some boys have an extra Y chromosome: XYY. Both of these aberrations are
associated with learning difficulties. In other cases, intersex anomalies appear in which a child will have
both male and female sex characteristics. The term hermaphrodite refers to these cases. Intersex
anomalies may arise from chromosomal, environmental, or hormonal disorders, but often, the causes are
simply unknown. In any case, as you can imagine, people who are born part male and part female may
face difficult gender role difficulties.

PERSPECTIVES IN GENDER: POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, BIOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL

→ POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE
The feminist movement (also known as the women’s liberation movement, the women’s movement, or
simply feminism) refers to a series of political campaigns for reforms on issues such as reproductive rights,
domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, women’s suffrage, sexual harassment, and sexual violence,
all of which fall under the label of feminism and the feminist movement. The movement’s priorities vary
among nations and communities, and range from opposition to female genital mutilation in one country, to
 opposition to the glass ceiling in another. Feminism was oriented around the station of middle- or upper-
class white women and involved suffrage and political equality. Second-wave feminism attempted to further
combat social and cultural inequalities. Third-wave feminism is continuing to address the financial, social
and cultural inequalities and includes renewed campaigning for greater influence of women in politics and
media. In reaction to political activism, feminists have also had to maintain focus on women’s reproductive
rights, such as the right to abortion.
First-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity and thought that occurred within the time period of
the 19th and early 20th century throughout the world. It focused on legal issues, primarily on gaining
women’s suffrage (the right to vote).
During the First Wave, there was a notable connection between the slavery abolition movement and the
women’s rights movement. Frederick Douglass was heavily involved in both movements and believed that
it was essential for both to work together in order to attain true equality in regards to race and sex.
Second-wave feminism is a period of feminist activity and thought that first began in the early 1960s in the
United States, and eventually spread throughout the Western world and beyond. In the United States the
movement lasted through the early 1980s.
Whereas first-wave feminism focused mainly on suffrage and overturning legal obstacles to gender
equality (e.g., voting rights, property rights), second-wave feminism broadened the debate to a wide range
of issues: sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights, de facto inequalities, and official legal
inequalities. Second-wave feminism also drew attention to domestic violence and marital rape issues,
establishment of rape crisis and battered women’s shelters, and changes in custody and divorce law. Its
major effort was the attempted passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the United States
Constitution, in which they were defeated by anti-feminists.
Third-wave feminism refers to several diverse strains of feminist activity and study, whose exact
boundaries in the history of feminism are a subject of debate, but are generally marked as beginning in the
early 1990s and continuing to the present. The movement arose partially as a response to the perceived
failures of and backlash against initiatives and movements created by second-wave feminism during the
1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, and the perception that women are of “many colors, ethnicities, nationalities,
religions, and cultural backgrounds”. This wave of feminism expands the topic of feminism to include a
diverse group of women with a diverse set of identities.
• The history of feminism in India can be divided into three phases: the first phase, beginning in the
mid-19th century, initiated when reformists began to speak in favor of women rights by making reforms
in education, customs involving women; the second phase, from 1915 to Indian independence, when
Gandhi incorporated women's movements into the Quit India movement and independent women's
organisations began to emerge; and finally, the third phase, post-independence, which has focused on
fair treatment of women at home after marriage, in the work force, and right to political parity.
• Despite the progress made by Indian feminist movements, women living in modern India still face many
issues of discrimination. India's patriarchal culture has made the process of gaining land-ownership
rights and access to education challenging. In the past two decades, there has also emerged a trend
of sex-selective abortion. To Indian feminists, these are seen as injustices worth struggling against and
feminism is often misunderstood by Indians as female domination rather than equality.
• As in the West, there has been some criticism of feminist movements in India. They have especially
been criticized for focusing too much on privileged women, and neglecting the needs and representation
of poorer or lower caste women. This has led to the creation of caste-specific feminist organizations and
movements.
Men’s Movement
Since the women’s movement of the 1960s, several men’s movements have appeared. None of these
movements, to date, has had the cohesion or impact on society of the women’s movement. Some men’s
movements endorse the women’s movement and share some of the concerns the women’s movement raised
about the harmful aspects of the male gender role.
 • One such movement is the National Organization for Men Against Sexism. This movement
developed in the 1970s as the National Organization for Changing Men but changed its name to
NOMAS in 1983.
It supports changing the traditional male role to reduce competitiveness, homophobia, and emotional
inhibition. These men are feminists, are antiracists, support equal rights for women, want to end
patriarchy, and embrace heterosexual, homosexual, and transgendered individuals.
• Other men’s movements are a reaction against the women’s movement and seek to restore traditional
female and male roles. These have attracted more men than the pro feminist movements. Two such
movements are the mythopoetic movement and the Promise Keepers. Both of these movements view
men and women as fundamentally different. Both encourage men to rediscover their masculinity and to
reject what they have referred to as “the feminization of men.”
• The movements are referred to as pro-masculinist. The mythopoetic movement was organized by Robert
Bly (1990), who wrote the national best-selling nonfiction book Iron John: A Book about Men. The
concern of the mythopoetic movement is that the modernization of society has stripped men of the
rituals of tribal society that bound men together. The movement involves rituals, ceremonies, and
retreats, with the goal of reconnecting men with one another. To promote the movement, in 1992, Bly
started the Man Kind Project for men to get in touch with their emotions to live a more fulfilling life.
The Man Kind Project involves weekend retreats for men to connect with their feelings, bond with one
another, and embrace a more mature masculinity centered on leadership compassion, and
multiculturalism. Today, Bly’s movement is really more of an experience than a movement, which may
have contributed to the waning interest among men.
ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE
The literature on gender and economic rights focuses almost exclusively on the link between women’s
economic rights and women’s empowerment.
• It highlights women’s often invisible labor, emphasizing contributing factors including women’s time
use, social norms, lack of access to and control over resources and jobs, and gender inequitable laws.
Access to economic resources, and microfinance in particular, has come to be seen as an important tool
for women’s empowerment by providing economic resources that can improve their bargaining position
in the household.
• By strengthening their bargaining position and building women’s confidence, it is assumed that
women’s position in the community will be improved and their participation in community affairs and
decision-making will increase. Women’s participation in the labor market has increased significantly
over the last twenty years. It varies significantly across developing regions from a high of 64% in East
Asia and the Pacific to a low of 26% in the Middle East (WDR 2012). While gender patterns in labor
markets are changing, women’s labor is still often confined to the informal sector or low wage
industries.
• The increase in women’s employment in sectors previously dominated by men is in some cases referred
to as the ‘feminization of labor’. The term has also come to reflect the informalization of paid work and
the lower salaries, poor working conditions, and more ‘flexible’ working arrangements that can be
offered to women in order to contribute to more competitive pricing among companies.
• The informal sector is generally unregulated and thus without standards for minimum wage, working
conditions, insurance or social protection mechanisms to address illness or inability to continue work.
• Women also contribute to economies through their work in caring for families. However, this is often
not acknowledged or reflected in national economies, despite lobbying by women’s organizations. Both
push and pull factors have contributed to women increasingly taking up employment. In the Middle East
 for example, women’s employment has been actively encouraged by governments, in order to reduce
reliance on international labor migrants.
• Women’s employment has also contributed to job creation, especially in the domestic sphere, including
live-in domestic workers, nannies, and cleaners. The increased availability of (usually female) domestic
workers has further freed up other women to take up employment outside the household, although in
some cases this has led to migration away from their families.
Property rights and access to resources
• Women and girls in particular suffer from inequitable land rights and experience restricted access to
resources and inheritance.
• Boys and men can also be denied access, such as when the first son inherits more than the second or
third son. Rights to resources may also affect ability to access other resources or services.
• For example, a woman’s lack of land ownership or rights may inhibit her ability to access credit, as land
is often used as collateral. Achieving more equitable access to resources offers significant opportunities
both for economic growth and women’s empowerment.
Women and agriculture
• Women’s contribution to agriculture is often less visible than that of men.
• Men are more likely than women to own land, access credit and fertilizers to increase agricultural
output, and to sell high value agricultural produce. Women, on the other hand, tend to provide high
levels of unpaid labor and grow less profitable crops or crops for household use.
• Men’s more numerous options and more formal role in agriculture can be attributed to the social norms
dictating formal work as men’s domain, which facilitates their access to information, credit and
technologies. Because of these norms, female-headed households often face particular challenges in
rural settings. Despite these constraints, women contribute substantially to food production worldwide.
They often grow the majority of staple crops for domestic consumption and petty trading, and raise
chickens and other smaller animals.
• Ensuring women’s access to equal education and resources, such as agricultural extension, credit, and
technological inputs could therefore unlock a huge potential for agricultural growth and effectiveness.
Similarly, strengthening women’s opportunities and business skills to access agricultural markets is
important.
• Recent research has particularly emphasised the potential for educating and empowering adolescent girls
and the contribution that they make to agriculture and related domestic work (Bertini, 2011).
Labour market participation
Men’s higher participation in the formal labour market compared with that of women can be explained through
a combination of:
i) differences in time use between men and women;
ii) gendered differences in access to productive inputs;
iii) different levels of education;
iv) gender stereotyping in vocational and skills training and mismatches with labour market demand;
v) gendered outcomes of institutional and market failures.
• Domestic responsibilities also act as a barrier to women’s equal participation in the labour force. There
are also gendered differences in jobs taken up by men and women. While men are more likely to be
found in the construction industry and in managerial positions, women’s employment tends to be
confined to traditionally feminine jobs such as care, low skilled manufacturing, and lower administrative
 positions. Women’s income earning activities are also often confined to the informal sector, including
domestic work, petty trading and home-based work.
• Globally, there has been a shift towards the ‘feminisation’ of the labour market. This suggests both an
increase in women’s participation in paid employment, and the labour market becoming more ‘flexible’.
• This change has impacted on both men’s and women’s employment and employment conditions.
Workers now face decreased job securities with subcontracting, home-based work and part-time work
increasingly on offer. The global economy is characterised by high unemployment rates for both young
men and women. While the percentage of unemployment is higher among young women, more young
men are affected as their labour market participation is higher.
• The longer that young people are without employment, the more difficult it becomes to reintegrate into
the labour force, and discouraged youth are in danger of feeling useless and alienated from society. In
cultures where income earning is seen as a prerequisite for marriage, male unemployment can be
particularly frustrating for individuals. In severe cases, the presence of high numbers of unemployed
men can lead to political instability, conflict and the radicalisation of unemployed youth.
Gender and the care economy
Mainstream economics has traditionally centred on the monetised aspects of the economy, neglecting areas of
‘social reproduction’ or ‘unpaid work’, which includes subsistence production and unpaid care. Unpaid care
work includes ‘housework (meal preparation, cleaning) and care of persons (bathing a child, watching over a
frail elderly person) carried out in homes and communities’ (UNRISD, 2010, p. 1). Women carry out the vast
majority of unpaid care work across all societies. Despite the economic and social value of such work and its
contribution to well-being, it is not included in labour force surveys or in the calculation of GDP. It is estimated
that the care economy could amount to between 10 per cent and 39 per cent of GDP (Budlender, 2008, cited in
UNRISD, 2010). In some contexts, home-based care programmes have emerged where public health services
have been inadequate to meet demand. Policies need to acknowledge and address the care economy and provide
support to care providers (whether paid or unpaid) to ensure that they have access to social rights and economic
security. Given the predominance of women in this sector, such policies could help to improve gender equality
and women’s economic and social security. To develop policies, an empirical foundation is needed to capture
the extent of care work. Time use surveys, used increasingly in developing countries, can contribute to the
gathering of such data. Recent research (Chopra, Kelbert, & Iyer, 2013) shows that unpaid care is largely
invisible in social policy.
Women’s entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship is an area in which gender differences are substantial. Men dominate much of the investment
and entrepreneurial activities, but regional variations exist. Women’s ownership of firms in developing regions,
for example, range from a high of 24% in Eastern Europe and Central Asia to a low of 3% in South Asia
(Simavi et al 2010). Barriers faced by women include lower levels of education, social, cultural and religious
constraints and norms, lack of capital, unequal legal status and less political influence. Even where the law and
business procedures are gender neutral, in practice they may result in gender based outcomes to the detriment of
women. For example, while the law may dictate that both women and men can register a business, cultural
restrictions on women’s freedom of movement may restrict their ability to travel to the local government office
to do so. Women’s entrepreneurial activities are often confined to the informal sector, limiting expansion
opportunities through restrictions on available credit. This also has the effect of underestimating women’s
contributions to the economy, as these activities are not captured in formal statistics. While some argue that
women’s entrepreneurship is likely to be a reaction to poverty and lack of formal employment opportunities,
others argue that they offer great potential for poverty-reduction and national economic growth.
The gendered impact of financial and food crises
Financial and food crises often have different effects on women and men, boys and girls, and can exacerbate
existing inequalities even further. While different sections of society are impacted differently, the most
vulnerable individuals tend to be found in the informal sector and in net food purchasing households (typically
low-income urban households and resource-poor rural households). Because of women’s high representation in
households considered the poorest of the poor, they often spend a higher proportion of their income on food and
are therefore especially vulnerable to fluctuations in food prices. Women are also particularly vulnerable to
being laid off during times of hardship because of their concentration in low paid manufacturing and domestic
work – industries often affected severely in global downturns. The gendered effects of food price shocks on
children and men are less well understood, although in some countries such as India higher malnutrition rates
among girls have been recorded during crises. Men, as the breadwinners, are also less likely than women to lose
their jobs, as it is assumed that this will have a more devastating impact on household wellbeing.
Gender and migration
Both men and women have increasingly turned to internal and international migration to increase their
economic opportunities. Labour migration is mainly taken up by low skilled individuals in gender-specific jobs,
such as domestic work, nursing and construction. Overseas migration offers many low-skilled individuals
significant salary improvements for the same or lower-skilled jobs. Labour migration has the potential to offer
benefits in terms of women’s empowerment through the salaries female migrants receive and the improved
confidence they can acquire. Remittances sent by overseas migrants also have the potential to contribute to
improved economic opportunities for the household, for example children’s school fees, daily consumables and
petty entrepreneurial activities. Research to date indicates that women tend to remit a larger percentage of their
salaries than men and are more likely to spend this money on the wellbeing of the children. However, evidence
is weak on whether remittances lead to sustainable income generating activities and economic growth, or if it
simply fosters a dependence on foreign remittance flows. Labor migration can also have far reaching adverse
household and societal impacts, however, including the possibility of marriage breakdown and negative impact
on children left behind who may feel abandoned. In addition, girls and boys may migrate at young ages to
provide incomes for their families. Labor migration also poses significant risks for the individuals concerned,
including trafficking, labor exploitation, and different types of abuse. Many of the jobs taken up by labor
migrants offer limited workplace protection; live-in domestic workers have been identified as particularly
vulnerable.
Unequal access to assets, finance, and technology.
Labor is not the only economic resource linked to gender inequality. The ownership and control of productive
and financial assets are also unequally distributed between men and women, with women typically being less
wealthy than men. Financial markets – like labor markets – often exclude women or are segmented with women
having access to more marginal or small-scale sources of credit. The push to advance micro-credit institutions
targeted at women as a development strategy is often justified on the basis of women’s exclusion from financial
services and credit markets. Linked to the segmentation of labor markets, women are often concentrated in low-
productivity activities where there is limited scope for adopting technologies that would improve earnings and
working conditions. The unequal distribution of assets, finance, and technology represent another category of
structural constraint that contributes to gender inequalities.
→ BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
The biological approach suggests there is no distinction between sex & gender, thus biological sex creates
gendered behavior. Gender is determined by two biological factors: hormones and chromosomes.

Hormones
 • Hormones are chemical substances secreted by glands throughout the body and carried in the
bloodstream. The same sex hormones occur in both men and women, but differ in amounts and in the
effect that they have upon different parts of the body.
• Testosterone is a sex hormone, which is more present in males than females, and affects development
and behavior both before and after birth.
• Testosterone, when released in the womb, causes the development of male sex organs (at 7 weeks) and
acts upon the hypothalamus which results in the masculinization of the brain.
• Testosterone can cause typically male behaviors such as aggression, competitiveness, Visuospatial
abilities, higher sexual drive etc. An area of the hypothalamus at the base of the brain called the sexually
dimorphic nucleus is much larger in male than in females.
• At the same time testosterone acts on the developing brain. The brain is divided into two hemispheres,
left and right. In all humans the left side of the brain is more specialised for language skills and the right
for non-verbal and spatial skills.
• Shaywitz et al (1995) used MRI scans to examine brain whilst men and women carried out language
tasks and found that women used both hemispheres, left only used by men.
• It appears that in males brain hemispheres work more independently than in females, and testosterone
influences this lateralization.

Chromosomes

The normal human body contains 23 pairs of chromosomes. A chromosome is a long thin structure containing
thousands of genes, which are biochemical units of heredity and govern the development of every human being.

Each pair of chromosomes controls different aspects of development, and biological sex is determined by the
23rd chromosome pair. Chromosomes physically resemble the letters X and Y.

• Males = XY
• Females = XX
• Individuals with atypical chromosomes develop differently than individuals with typical chromosomes -
socially, physically and cognitively.
• Studying people with Turner's syndrome and Klinefelter's syndrome might help our understanding of
gender because by studying people with atypical sex chromosomes and comparing their development
with that of people with typical sex chromosomes, psychologists are able to establish which types of
behavior are genetic (e.g. determined by chromosomes).
• Turner's syndrome (XO) occurs when females develop with only one X chromosome on chromosome 23
(1 in 5000 chance).
• The absence of the second X chromosome results in a child with a female external appearance but
whose ovaries have failed to develop.
• The physical characteristics of individuals with Turner's syndrome include lack of maturation at puberty
and webbing of the neck.
• In addition to physical differences, there are differences in cognitive skills and behavior compared with
typical chromosome patterns.
• The affected individuals have higher than average verbal ability but lower than average spatial ability,
visual memory and mathematical skills. They also have difficulty in social adjustment at school and
generally have poor relationships with their peers.
• Klinefelter's syndrome (XXY) affects 1 in every 750 males. In addition to having a Y chromosome,
these men also have an additional X on the 23rd chromosome, leading to the arrangement XXY.
• Physically they appear male, though the effect of the additional X chromosome causes less body hair
and under-developed genitals. The syndrome becomes noticeable in childhood, as the boy has poor
language skills. At three years of age, the child may still not talk. At school, their poor language skills
affect reading ability.
 • When they are babies, their temperament is described as passive and co-operative. This calmness and
shyness remains with them throughout their lives.
• This suggests that level of aggression have a biological rather than environmental component.

The biosocial approach (Money & Ehrhardt, 1972) is an interactionist approach where by nature and
nurture both play a role in gender development. John Money’s (1972) theory was that once a biological male or
female is born, social labeling and differential treatment of boys and girls interact with biological factors to
steer development. This theory was an attempt to integrate the influences of nature and nurture.

Gender role preferences determined by a series of critical events:

Prenatal: exposure to hormones on the womb (determined by chromosomes). It states that biology caused by
genetics, XY for a boy and XX for a girl will give them a physical sex.

Postnatal: Parents and others label and react towards a child on the basis of his or her genitals.

• Parents and other people label and begin to react to the child based on his or her genitals. It is when their
sex has been labelled through external genitals, they gender development will begin.
• The social labeling of a baby as a boy or girl leads to different treatment which produce the child\s sense
of gender identity.
• Western Societies view gender as having two categories, masculine and feminine, and see man and
women as different species.

The way they are treated socially in combination with their biological sex will determine the child’s gender.The
approach assumes that gender identity is neutral before the age of 3, and can be changed, e.g. a biological boy
raised as a girl will develop the gender identity of a girl. This is known as the theory of neutrality.

→ SOCIAL PERSPECTIVE
The Family
Socialization into gender roles begins in infancy, as almost from the moment of birth parents begin to socialize
their children as boys or girls without even knowing it (Begley, 2009; Eliot, 2009). Many studies document this
process (Lindsey, 2011). Parents commonly describe their infant daughters as pretty, soft, and delicate and their
infant sons as strong, active, and alert, even though neutral observers find no such gender differences among
infants when they do not know the infants’ sex. From infancy on, parents play with and otherwise interact with
their daughters and sons differently. They play more roughly with their sons—for example, by throwing them
up in the air or by gently wrestling with them—and more quietly with their daughters. When their infant or
toddler daughters cry, they warmly comfort them, but they tend to let their sons cry longer and to comfort them
less. They give their girls dolls to play with and their boys “action figures” and toy guns. While these gender
differences in socialization are probably smaller now than a generation ago, they certainly continue to exist. Go
into a large toy store and you will see pink aisles of dolls and cooking sets and blue aisles of action figures, toy
guns, and related items.
Peers
Peer influences also encourage gender socialization. As they reach school age, children begin to play different
games based on their gender (see the “Sociology Making a Difference” box). Boys tend to play sports and other
competitive team games governed by inflexible rules and relatively large numbers of roles, while girls tend to
play smaller, cooperative games such as hopscotch and jumping rope with fewer and more flexible rules.
Although girls are much more involved in sports now than a generation ago, these gender differences in their
play as youngsters persist and continue to reinforce gender roles. For example, they encourage competitiveness
in boys and cooperation and trust among girls. Boys who are not competitive risk being called “sissy” or other
words by their peers. The patterns we see in adult males and females thus have their roots in their play as young
children (King, Miles, & Kniska, 1991).
Schools
School is yet another agent of gender socialization (Klein, 2007). First of all, school playgrounds provide a
location for the gender-linked play activities just described to occur. Second, and perhaps more important,
teachers at all levels treat their female and male students differently in subtle ways of which they are probably
not aware. They tend to call on boys more often to answer questions in class and to praise them more when they
give the right answer. They also give boys more feedback about their assignments and other school work
(Sadker & Sadker, 1994). At all grade levels, many textbooks and other books still portray people in gender-
stereotyped ways. It is true that the newer books do less of this than older ones, but the newer books still contain
some stereotypes, and the older books are still used in many schools, especially those that cannot afford to buy
newer volumes.
Mass Media
Gender socialization also occurs through the mass media (Dow & Wood, 2006). On children’s television shows,
the major characters are male. On Nickelodeon, for example, the very popular SpongeBob SquarePants is a
male, as are his pet snail, Gary; his best friend, Patrick Star; their neighbor, Squidward Tentacles; and
SpongeBob’s employer, Eugene Crabs. Of the major characters in Bikini Bottom, only Sandy Cheeks is a
female. For all its virtues, Sesame Street features Bert, Ernie, Cookie Monster, and other male characters. Most
of the Muppets are males, and the main female character, Miss Piggy, depicted as vain and jealous, is hardly an
admirable female role model. As for adults’ prime-time television, more men than women continue to fill more
major roles in weekly shows, despite notable women’s roles in shows such as The Good Wife and Grey’s
Anatomy. Women are also often portrayed as unintelligent or frivolous individuals who are there more for their
looks than for anything else. Television commercials reinforce this image (Yoder, Christopher, & Holmes,
2008). Cosmetics ads abound, suggesting not only that a major task for women is to look good but also that
their sense of self-worth stems from looking good. Other commercials show women becoming ecstatic over
achieving a clean floor or sparkling laundry. Judging from the world of television commercials, then, women’s
chief goals in life are to look good and to have a clean house. At the same time, men’s chief goals, judging from
many commercials, are to drink beer and drive cars. Women’s and men’s magazines reinforce these gender
images (Milillo, 2008). Most of the magazines intended for teenaged girls and adult women are filled with
pictures of thin, beautiful models, advice on dieting, cosmetics ads, and articles on how to win and please your
man. Conversely, the magazines intended for teenaged boys and men are filled with ads and articles on cars and
sports, advice on how to succeed in careers and other endeavors, and pictures of thin, beautiful (and sometimes
nude) women. These magazine images again suggest that women’s chief goals are to look good and to please
men and that men’s chief goals are to succeed, win over women, and live life in the fast lane.
Religion
Another agent of socialization, religion, also contributes to traditional gender stereotypes. Many traditional
interpretations of the Bible yield the message that women are subservient to men (Tanenbaum, 2009). This
message begins in Genesis, where the first human is Adam, and Eve was made from one of his ribs. The major
figures in the rest of the Bible are men, and women are for the most part depicted as wives, mothers,
temptresses, and prostitutes; they are praised for their roles as wives and mothers and condemned for their other
roles. More generally, women are constantly depicted as the property of men. The Ten Commandments includes
a neighbor’s wife with his house, ox, and other objects as things not to be coveted (Exodus 20:17), and many
biblical passages say explicitly that women belong to men, such as this one from the New Testament: Wives be
subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the
Church. As the Church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.
(Ephesians 5:22–24). Several passages in the Old Testament justify the rape and murder of women and girls.
The Koran, the sacred book of Islam, also contains passages asserting the subordinate role of women (Mayer,
2009). This discussion suggests that religious people should believe in traditional gender views more than less
religious people, and research confirms this relationship (Morgan, 1988). To illustrate this, Figure 11.3
“Frequency of Prayer and Acceptance of Traditional Gender Roles in the Family” shows the relationship in the
General Social Survey between frequency of prayer and the view (seen first in Figure 11.1 “Belief That Women
Should Stay at Home”) that “it is much better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home
and the woman takes care of the home and family.” People who pray more often are more likely to accept this
traditional view of gender roles.

GENDER IDENTITY: BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF GENDER

The information required for defining the characteristics of any organism is found in its genetic material known
as the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). The human cell contains about 3 billion units called nucleotides which
make up its total DNA. These units are organized into 46 larger units called chromosomes. Each cell of the
body contains the entire set of 46 chromosomes, except a type of cell known as the gamete or sex cell. Gametes
contain only 23 chromosomes in their nucleus. The gametes of females are known as the ovum or eggs and the
male gametes are known as sperms. They unite to form the zygote which is the beginning of the new organism
and possesses 23 chromosomes from the father and 23 from the mother which cross over in bits which get
jumbled up to form the complete set of 46 chromosomes. These provide the information from both parents,
required to direct the growth of the offspring from a single celled zygote to an adult human made up of about a
hundred trillion cells. The zygote develops into either male or female depending only on the sperm, whether it
possessed the X chromosome for female offspring or the Y chromosome for male offspring.
The ovum is the largest cell in the body with a diameter of about 150 μm while the sperm is threadlike with a
negligible width and about 50 μm long, and is the smallest cell in the body. The ovum, but not the sperm,
contains mitochondria which are organelles in the cell and function as powerhouses of the organism, mainly
responsible for providing the energy requirements of the organism. In addition to this, the mitochondria also
contain some DNA, known as mitochondrial DNA, which is thus transmitted to the offspring only from the
mother because the sperm is too tiny to have any mitochondria. Thus, higher investment of the female in her
offspring begins at conception itself. The developing embryo receives more nutrition from the large egg and
additional genetic information from maternal mitochondrial DNA.
The human female carries the zygote in her womb for nine months and delivers an offspring that is the most
helpless newborn among all species. This has been attributed to the fact that human babies are born with the
most underdeveloped brains compared to other animals, even the more closely related chimpanzee. If the brain
of the human newborn were to develop to match the cognitive and neurological development of the
chimpanzee, the human female would have to undergo a gestation of 18-21 months to allow birth of an
offspring with the defining characteristics of the human species such as upright locomotion and a large brain.
Due to the immaturity of the newborn, the mother must nurture the baby with lactation and other support
through the early postnatal years, resulting in even greater investment of her time and energy through
pregnancy, lactation and beyond.
The beginning of gender:
Death is a certainty and the only thing that survives after death are the genes passed on by a parent to the
progeny. Therefore, it makes sense for every parent to intuitively safeguard the offspring and ensure that their
genes survive after they die. This gene-centered view of evolution has been popularized by Richard Dawkins,
who has put forward the term Selfish Gene for the concept of viewing genes as if they were the primary drivers
and beneficiaries of the evolutionary process. It describes why the more two individuals are genetically related,
the more sense (at the level of the genes) it makes for them to behave selflessly with each other. From this point
of view, it follows that since the mother is most closely related genetically (a little more than the father due to
mitochondrial DNA) to the offspring, and because she has invested so much more of herself in their early life
due to her involvement in their conception and nurture, she will be the one to behave most selflessly with them.
The male, on the other hand, mainly invests to ensure that the offspring he is protecting actually contain his
genes. This marks the beginning of ‘Gender’ as a social construct.
Direct sex differences in humans and how it influenced origin of gender differences:
Genetic sex, as determined by the XY chromosome confers specific traits which are referred to as the sexually
dimorphic traits. These are the direct sex differences which make an individual either a male or a female.
Excluding genetic aberrations, the definite difference between the sexes is traceable to sexual dimorphism with
binary either/or expression with direct sex characteristics. These comprise the differences in internal and
external reproductive anatomy which is a result of distinct hormonal (endocrine) systems. These are responsible
for gonadal differentiation, internal and external genital and breast differentiation, and differentiation of muscle
mass, height, and hair distribution.
The consequences of these differences, which have been discussed earlier, lead to differences in the
reproductive inputs of males and females and have social repercussions which must form the basis for the origin
of gender issues.
Historically, in the harsh and unsafe environment of the prehistoric man, the need to protect women during
pregnancy and lactation, and to provide a safe environment for the offspring, must have been a primary
requirement, leading to their sequestered existence. However, it led to undesirable social conventions which
often resulted in discrimination against them and in their oppression. In the early ages of civilization, males, to
protect their genes in the offspring, had to undertake the more dangerous roles of foraging for food in jungles or
physically intensive agriculture or early industrial labor, while the females, of necessity, remained sequestered
in a protected environment. Men undertook tasks to gather economic resources to survive, and earned respect
for it. Life was hard and gradually, because their contribution was less visible outside the home, women became
the weaker gender. Economic dependence must have been the main contributor to their gradually worsening
status in society. That this is how gender differences must have originated is a conjecture, but it is interesting to
observe that it arose consistently all over the world, through history and across varied cultures.
Thus, the biological difference in reproductive functions of men and women, which is the most important
function of humans for their continuation on earth, became inadvertently responsible for evolution of gender
and the historical subservience of the female gender.