Gender Development

Judith E. Owen Blakemore, Sheri A. Berenbaum, Lynn S. Liben

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135079321
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This text offers a unique developmental focus on gender. Gender development is examined from infancy through adolescence, integrating biological, socialization, and cognitive perspectives. The book's current empirical focus is complemented by a lively and readable style that includes anecdotes about children's everyday experiences. The book's accessibility is further enhanced with the use of bold face to highlight key terms when first introduced along with a complete glossary of these terms. All three of the authors are respected researchers in divergent areas of children's gender role development and each of them teaches a course on the topic.

The book's primary focus is on gender role behaviors – how they develop and the roles biological and experiential factors play in their development. The first section of the text introduces the field and outlines its history. Part 2 focuses on the differences between the sexes, including the biology of sex and the latest research on behavioral sex differences, including motor and cognitive behaviors and personality and social behaviors. Contemporary theoretical perspectives on gender development – biological, social and environmental, and cognitive approaches – are explored in Part 3 along with the research supporting these models. The social agents of gender development, including children themselves, family, peers, the media, and schools are addressed in the final part.

Cutting-edge and comprehensive, this isthe perfect text for those who have been searching for an advanced undergraduate and/or graduate book for courses in gender development, the psychology of sex roles and/or gender and/or women or men, taught in departments of psychology, human development, and educational psychology. Although chapters have been designed to be read sequentially, a full author citation is included the first time a reference is used within an individual chapter rather than only the first time it is used in the book, making it easy to assign chapters in a variety of orders. This referencing system will also appeal to scholars interested in using the book as a resource to review a particular content area.

Introduction

1

Boys ran around in the yard with toy guns going kksshh-kksshh, fighting wars for made-up reasons and arguing about who was dead, while girls stayed inside and played with dolls, creating complex family groups and learning how to solve problems through negotiation and role playing. (Keillor, 1993, p. 12)

Gender is one of the fundamental ways in which the social life of human beings is organized. Indeed, one of the first questions people ask when they hear of a birth is whether the child is a boy or a girl. From infancy onwards, parents often think that boys and girls are very different. For example, a few years ago, a newspaper columnist wrote about his young son (Weasel, 2001). His son is messy, leaves grape juice stains on the counter, and has Oreo rings around his mouth. He doesn’t like to take afternoon naps, he plays with “boy stuff,” and is obsessed with monster trucks. Weasel noted that his daughters have very different interests and behaviors than his son. More than likely many readers found the column charming, and agreed that boys and girls really do seem like different kinds of beings.

However, we might wonder why parents, or people in general, are inclined to emphasize the differences between boys and girls, rather than the similarities. If you consider the entire context of behavior from the routine (e.g., eating) to the highly complex (e.g., using language and sophisticated cognitive processes), surely human female children are more similar to human male children than they are different. On the other hand, if there are differences between boys and girls, what are they, how large or important are they, and where do they come from? Are such differences inevitable? Do you find them in all situations and cultures, or do they come and go as the situation changes? Is it better to encourage children to adopt gender roles, or better to eliminate them as much as possible?

Worldwide there are few factors that influence the lives people lead from birth to death as much as the person’s sex or gender. Gender matters from the trivial to the most profound aspects of a human being’s life. Whether a child is born a boy or girl determines the name the child is given, the way the child is talked to, the color of the child’s clothing, and the toys and objects that are provided to the child. It influences who their playmates will be and how they will interact with those playmates. In some cultures it influences what or how much education children receive (Schulz & Schulz, 1999). Once children grow up, gender continues to play a major role. Male and female adults have different clothing and hairstyles, occupations, life roles, responsibilities for the upbringing of children, different household and other chores, and different interactions with others every day of their lives.

Yet, in many respects, perhaps gender is becoming less important. Compared to many periods in human history, boys and girls today have many similar experiences and are expected to do many of the same things, especially in modern industrialized societies. They often receive identical or at least similar educations, and many adopt the same occupations. In some instances, males and females care for the children and do domestic tasks equally. So, although there is a long history of gender being extremely significant in human lives, we can also ask whether that significance is now diminishing.

In this book we will examine the role that gender plays in the behavior and experiences of children. In part I we introduce you to the study of gender development and explore its early history. In part II we describe basic biological and behavioral differences between the sexes. In part III, we discuss the major theoretical approaches to the study of gender development. In part IV, we explore agents of gender development—how family, peers, the media, schools, and children themselves influence the process. Finally, we close the book with a short epilogue suggesting how these factors work together in the process of gender development.

As we begin, we urge you to consider gender development as representative of development in general, and not as a unique developmental process. The development of boys and girls is certainly affected by both biological and social processes, and is influenced by interactions with parents, peers, school, and the culture at large. However, the same is true of any aspect of children’s development. So, although our focus is gender development, it is important to recognize that the developmental processes that affect gender are by no means unique. The study of gender development therefore has the potential of helping us to understand many aspects of development. Finally, we note that, although gender is studied in many disciplines (e.g., anthropology, sociology), the examination of gender in this book is from the perspective of developmental psychology.

In this chapter we introduce the study of gender development. We begin with several different terms, issues, and controversies associated with the study of sex and gender in psychology in general, and in developmental psychology in particular. An examination of all of these issues at one time may seem a bit overwhelming, but we urge you not to panic. We will return to them throughout the book, and we do not expect you to fully understand them at this point. Rather, we want you to realize that there are many facets of gender development, including some that you may not have ever stopped to think about. Our goal here is to begin with an overview of the field, and we hope that a brief examination of these many terms and issues is a helpful part of that overview. As we reach the end of chapter 1, we move on to a brief introduction to children’s gender development and to the theoretical perspectives that organize the field.

The Many Components of Sex and Gender

Many people seem to think that all aspects of sex and gender are consistent. They may assume that a person is definitely biologically male or female, definitely heterosexual or homosexual, definitely masculine or feminine, and that all of these aspects of sex and gender are likely to be consistent. However, qualities like these are much more complex than they may seem on the surface. Although most children are born unambiguously biologically male or female, some are not. The biological aspects of being male or female (chromosomes, hormones, genital structures, etc.) are sometimes inconsistent within a single person, and they certainly vary from person to person. The cultural aspects vary even more. Not all girls are especially feminine, at least as typically defined by the culture in which they live, and they may be feminine in some ways but not in others. A teenage girl may love sports and may be a fiercely competitive basketball player. She may also love dressing up and wearing makeup and nail polish. When thinking about her future plans, she may waver between being a nursery school teacher or a computer programmer. She is very likely not to question or doubt that she is a girl, or even think about it much. She simply accepts that she is a girl. On the other hand she may certainly question certain aspects of feminine gender roles. Perhaps she is a lesbian, although she may not be sure of that until she is well into adulthood. Sexual orientation is not always easily tied to masculinity and femininity. Although many boys who have exceedingly feminine interests in childhood do grow up to be gay men (Bailey & Zucker, 1995), others do not, and the majority of tomboys are heterosexual as adult women. Issues of sex, gender, gender identity, gender role, and sexual orientation are not simple. To clarify some of these issues, we begin with definitions of some of the terms we will be using in this book.

“Sex” or “Gender”: What’s the Difference?

Until the 1970s, the term sex was the most commonly used term to refer to boys and girls and men and women, and sex roles was the most commonly used term to refer to adopting cultural definitions of masculinity and femininity. More recently the term gender has often been used to refer to these same things. We hear about sex differences in behavior, and about gender differences in behavior, about sex roles, and about gender roles (Pryzgoda & Chrisler, 2000). But are these terms appropriately used as synonyms? Do they have different meanings, and if so, what are they?

The use of the term “gender” rather than “sex” to refer to males and females began its modern usage with psychologist John Money’s adoption of the term gender roles (Money, 1973) to distinguish between “genital sex,” and all other aspects of being a male or female person. Money devoted his professional life to the study of sex, gender, and sexual orientation, especially in cases of people who had various anomalies of sex chromosomes and hormones. When he adopted the use of the term “gender,” he used it to refer to external components of gender (which later came to be called “gender roles”), and internal components (which are now called gender identity and sexual orientation).

How are the terms “sex” and “gender” used now? Actually, there is no convention for the use of these terms that is accepted by all scholars of sex and gender, even within a single discipline like psychology. Some scholars rarely use the word “sex” except to refer to sexuality, and others rarely or never use the word “gender.” Some call boys and girls the “two sexes,” and others call them the “two genders.” Some refer to “sex differences” in behavior, others to “sex-related differences,” and still others to “gender differences.” Some talk of “sex roles” and others talk of “gender roles.” It is possible to read a single issue of a journal and find all of these terms used by different authors.

One common scheme used by many psychologists is to use the term “sex” for the biological aspects (e.g., hormones, chromosomes, genitals) of being male or female, and “gender” for the social or cultural aspects (Unger, 1979; Winstead, Derlega, & Unger, 1999). However, it is not always easy to know what is biological and what is learned, and many behaviors may be influenced by several different factors. Another widely used scheme developed by social psychologist Kay Deaux (1984) is to use the term “sex” to refer to the categories of male and female, and “gender” to refer to any judgments about the nature of differences between males and females, about roles, and about masculinity and femininity. Using Deaux’s terminology, one would refer to boys and girls as the “two sexes,” not the “two genders,” whereas terms such as “gender identity,” “gender roles,” and gender stereotypes would be consistent with her scheme.

What terminology can you expect in this book? The use of the term “sex” to refer to sexual behavior and sexuality (e.g., sexual orientation) and clear biological phenomena (e.g., sex hormones, sex chromosomes) is essentially universal. In addition, the use of the terms “gender identity,” “gender stereotypes,” and “gender roles” has also been very consistent in recent years. We will most certainly use the term “sex” to refer to sexuality and to biological phenomena such as hormones, and we will use the terms “gender roles” and “gender stereotypes” rather than “sex roles” or “sex stereotypes.” Following Deaux’s convention, we will ordinarily call boys and girls “the sexes.” With respect to behavioral differences between boys and girls, we will usually refer to “sex differences,” but not necessarily always. Choosing the use of the term “sexes” to refer to boys and girls and talking about “sex differences” does not imply that we believe that social or cultural forces are unimportant. On the contrary, we will take the position that many factors influence gender development: biological, cognitive, social, and cultural. In short, be warned that in this book—as in the literature at large—there is no simple formula for interpreting the words “sex” and “gender,” and thus you will need to examine the full context (the sentence, paragraph, or even the entire chapter) to interpret meaning accurately.

The “Sexes” or the “Genders”: How Many Are There?

The majority of children are born unambiguously male or female, but a small number of children, probably less than 2% of live births (Fausto Sterling, 2000), are born with intersex conditions. This refers to a situation in which a child’s sex chromosomes and one or more of their genital structures are not completely consistent. These conditions include those who have both ovaries and testes (or one of each) and some portions of the internal and external genitals of both sexes, and those who have only one type of gonad (either ovaries or testes), but whose external and/or internal genital structures do not fully match their gonads. Biologist Anne Fausto Sterling (1993) once argued that if one considers people with such conditions, biological sex could be seen as a continuum, and depending on where one divides the continuum into categories, there could be five or more biological sexes. Although she may not have been entirely serious about there being five sexes, she continues to stress that the basic biology of sex can vary a great deal among individuals: “on close inspection, absolute dimorphism disintegrates even at the level of basic biology. Chromosomes, hormones, the internal sex structures, the gonads and the external genitalia all vary more than most people realize” (Fausto Sterling, 2000, p. 19).

Certain aspects of gender also vary along a continuum. Boys, for example, might range from very masculine to very feminine in their interests and personalities. But even if both the biological underpinnings of sex and the social and cultural aspects of gender vary, contemporary Western culture only allows for two categories. Socially and culturally, a child can only be a boy or a girl—there isn’t a third or fourth category. Fausto Sterling (1993) points out that since the Middle Ages, people with intersex conditions in Western cultures have been socially and legally required to choose to be either male or female. Children born with intersex conditions are usually assigned to one gender or another, and have often undergone genital surgery to match their genitals to their gender of rearing. For example, this may involve surgery to reduce the size of an enlarged clitoris that resembles a penis (Lightfoot-Klein, Chase, Hammond, & Goldman, 2000). In recent years, advocacy groups such as the Intersex Society of North American (see www.isna.org) have advocated the elimination of reconstructive surgery on infants and young children (unless medically necessary) until they have reached an age when they can decide for themselves, both about their gender category and genital reconstructive surgery. Not surprisingly, this has been a very controversial topic, with strong opinions on both sides of the issue.

Are there always only two gender categories in every culture? Although not usually related to having intersex characteristics, Native American cultures (Fulton & Anderson, 1992) have often been reported to have a third gender category of adult roles for both males and females, sometimes called a berdache. These were typically men or women who wore the clothing and lived the social roles of the other sex, including having a marriage partner of the same biological sex as they were. In Samoa (Mageo, Fulton, & Anderson, 1992), there is a third gender category consisting of males who dress in women’s clothing, and who have different social rules for their behavior than either males or females. In Albanian culture, still continuing today in rural northern Albania, are people called sworn virgins—women who live, dress, and work as celibate men (Young, 2000). Thus, it is not always the case that there are only two gender categories. Nonetheless, in most cultures, and certainly in most modern Western cultures, there are two social categories, male and female. When a child is born, (or with the growing use of prenatal testing, even before) we want to know if the child is a boy or a girl.

Having Gender and Doing Gender

Consider the following story told by sociologist Michael Messner (2000), who writes about his 5-year-old son’s first season of playing organized soccer. On the first day of soccer season in a middle class Los Angeles suburb, thousands of parents and their 4- to 17-year-old children congregated on the grounds of a high school awaiting the opening ceremonies. A group of 4- and 5-year-old boys, the Sea Monsters, waited to play their very first soccer game. They had chosen their name at a meeting some weeks before, after having been given their uniforms in the team colors of green and blue. As they waited for events to begin, parents were chatting and getting to know one another while watching their children. Beside the Sea Monsters was a team of similar-aged girls, the Barbie Girls. Both teams had banners, but the Barbie Girls had something better: a red wagon with a 3-foot-tall Barbie doll dressed in a cheerleader outfit in their team colors, green and white, rotating on a pedestal. Barbie’s hair was streaked with green and she had a green bow in it, as did many of the girls. A boom box played Barbie music and several girls sang along, holding hands, walking around the Barbie float. Soon the Sea Monsters noticed the girls:

At first, the boys are watching as individuals, seemingly unaware of each other’s shared interest.… I notice slight smiles on a couple of their faces, as though they are drawn to the Barbie Girls’ celebratory fun. Then, with side-glances, some of the boys begin to notice each other’s attention on the Barbie Girls. Their faces begin to show signs of distaste. One of them yells out, “NO BARBIE!” Suddenly, they all begin to move—jumping up and down, nudging and bumping one another—and joining a group chant: “NO BARBIE! NO BARBIE! NO BARBIE!” (Messner, 2000, p. 768)

In his discussion of these events Messner confronts the contrast between “doing gender” versus “having gender.” Having gender refers to gender as an inherent characteristic of individuals—children are boys or girls, and their gender affects their behavior—it makes them different. The parents he writes about seem to think that their children have gender. The parents argue that the children are so different; there seems to be something about the nature of being a boy or a girl that produces that difference. Doing gender, on the other hand, refers to choosing to match one’s behavior to a set of gender-related ideals. One does a gendered performance to match one’s own behavior to those cultural ideals. Messner notes that, although the soccer-playing behavior of the young boys and girls was indeed overwhelmingly similar, he never heard parents point out the similarities, only the differences. This emphasis on difference by the parents is an instance of doing gender.

But the children in this example also do gender. Messner tells of several instances of the children choosing gendered activities and being supported in these choices by their parents and the other adults involved in the league. For example, he classified the children’s choices of the names for their teams into four categories: sweet names (e.g., Blue Butterflies, Barbie Girls), neutral names (e.g., Team Flubber), paradoxical names in which there was a mix of power and vulnerability (e.g., Little Tigers), and power names (e.g., Raptor Attack, Sea Monsters). As might be expected, there were notable differences in the names that boys and girls chose for their teams, especially at the youngest ages, with boys b...