1.Sexual and gender identity. Sex differences. Androgyny

Sexual and gender identity: this is determined by the biological factors that have made us male or female; it can usually be assessed from the genital organs

Gender identity: this is child’s or adult’s awareness to be male or female; it is socially rather than biologically determined, and emerges during the early years of childhood

Eleanor Maccoby and Carol Jacklin. According to them, there are only four differences between boys and girls for which there is strong evidence:

1. Girls have greater verbal ability than boys; this difference has been found at most ages during childhood.

2. Boys have greater visual and spatial abilities than girls; these abilities include identifying the same figure from different angles and arranging blocks in specified patterns

3. Boys have greater arithmetical abilities than girls,but this difference only appears during adolescence

4. Boys are more aggressive than girls physically and verbally; this is found in nearly all cultures, and is usually present from about 2 years age

Shaffer pointed out, that:

1. Girls show more emotional sensitivity than boys in some ways

1. Girls have less developmental vulnerability than boys, so that more boys than girls show mental retardation, language disorders (e.g. speech effects), and hyperactivity.

1. At most ages from infancy onwards, boys have a higher level of physical activity than girls

1. Girls show greater timidity and caution than boys in unfamiliar situations

Androgyny: having a mixture of masculine and feminine characteristics

Masculine characteristics are those fitting an instrumental role. Masculine characteristics are those fitting an instrumental role, such as dominance, competitiveness, and assertiveness. Feminine characteristics are those involved in an expressive role, including sensitivity to others and co-operativeness. It allows people to handle situations in flexible ways, with either the masculine or the feminine side of their personalities as appropriate. Androgynous people are not suppressing part of themselves simply in order to fit in with sex-role stereotypes.

4 categories:

1. Androgynous: high on masculinity; high on femininity

1. Masculine sex-typed: high on masculinity; low on femininity

1. Feminine sex-types: low on masculinity; high on femininity

1. Undifferentiated: low on masculinity; low on femininity

2. Theories of gender development

Psychodinamic theory

Psychosexual development theory by Sigmund Freud. According to this theory, even infants possess a sex instinct and sexual energy (libido). Freud used the term "sex" to refer to a very wide range of motives and behaviour having little or nothing to do with sexual intercourse.

Phallic stage of development

Boys during this stage develop an Oedipus complex, which involves sexual desires for their mother combined with intense jealousy of their father, who is regarded as their rival. As boys are much weaker than their father, they are frightened of the possible reactions of their father to this rivalry. This leads to a castration complex, in which they fear they father will castrate them. The normal resolution of the problems of the Oedipus complex is identification, in which the boy starts to copy his father and tries to be like him.

Girls during this stage is rather different to that of boys. When girls reach the age of about 3, they realise that they don't have a penis. They blame their mother for this lack, and it's causes them to love their father more than their mother. According to Freud, this process goes so far that girls want to have their father's baby. He suggested that Electra complex may disappear when girls realise that it is unrealistic to have a child with their father. Girls developed sex typed behaviour because they are rewarded by their father, who is the central focus of their affection.

Where Freud was incorrect:

1. There is no real evidence that boys fear castration or that girls think they have been castrated.

2. Boys tend to identify much more with warm and supportive fathers than with overbearing and threatening ones

3. Psychodinamic theory should be regarded as an historical curiosity rather than as a useful theoretical contribution.

Social learning theory

Albert Bandura and Walter Mischel. According to this theory, two factors are of importance:

1. Observational learning: children learn sex typed behaviour by observing the actions of various models of the same sex, including other children, parents, and teachers.

1. Direct tuition: this is based on reinforcement or reward; sex-appropriate behaviour is rewarded, whereas sex-inappropriate behaviour is punished.

Advantages and Disadvantages of SLT

Advantages:

1. Much sex-typed behaviour in children occurs because it has been rewarded, whereas sex-inappropriate behaviour has been discouraged

2. Observational learning is of some importance, but probably mainly from the age of 6 upwards

Disadvantages:

1. Young children do not consistently imitate same-sex models

2. Social learning theory seems to regard young children as passive individuals who are taught how to behave by being rewarded and punished; in reality, children make an active contribution to their own development

Cognitive-developmental theory

Lawrence Kohlberg. According to CDT children attend to same-sex models because they have developed a consistent gender identity. The notion of gender identity is of great importance within CDT. According to Kohlberg, children go through 3 stages in the developmental of gender identity:

1. Basic gender identity (age 2 to 5 years): boys know they are boys, and girls know they are girls, but they believe that it would be possible to change sex (e.g. by wearing clothes appropriate to the opposite sex).

2. Gender stability (5 and 6 years): there is an awareness that sex is stable over time (e.g. boys will become men), but less awareness that sex remains stable across different situations, such as wearing clothes normally worn by members of the opposite sex.

3. Gender consistency (6 or 7 years upwards): children at this stage realize that sex remains the same over time and across situations.

Advantages and Disadvantages of CDT

Advantages:

1. Gender identity seems to develop through the 3 stages proposed by Kohlberg

1. Reaching full gender identity increases sex-typed behaviour

Disadvantages:

1. Sex-typed behavior is shown by most boys and girls by the time of their second birthday – several years before they have reached gender consistency.

1. The theory ignores the external factors (e.g. reward and punishment from parents) that determine much early sex-typed behavior.

Gender-schema theory

Martin and Halverson. They argued that children as young as 2 or 3 who have acquired basic gender identity start to form gender schemas. These schemas consist of organized beliefs about the sexes, and they help to determine what the child attends to and how he or she interprets the world. The first schema that is formed is an in-group/out-group schema; this consists of organized information about which toys and activities are suitable for girls. Another early schema is own-sex schema: this contains information about how to behave in sex-typed ways (e.g. how to dress dolls for a girl).

According to the theory, gender schemas are used by children to organise and make sense of their experiences. If they are exposed to information that doesn't fit one of their schemas (e.g. a boy combing the hair of his doll), then it is predicted that the information will tend to be distorted, make it fit the schema.

As Shaffer (1993) pointed out, another study that supports gender schema theory was reported by Bradbard et al. (1986). Boys and girls between the ages of 4 and 9 were presented with gender-neutral objects such as burglar alarms and pizza cutters. They were told that some of the objects were "boy" objects, whereas others were described as "girl" objects. There were two key findings. First, children spent much more time playing with objects that they had been told were appropriate to their sex than with sex-inappropriate objects. Second, even a week later the children remembered whether any given object was a 'boy" or a "girl" object.