OUGD601 - Gender Theories, John Archer and Barbara Lloyd – Sex and Gender (second addition)

GENDER THEORIES:

John Archer and Barbara Lloyd – Sex and Gender (second addition).

Stereotypes and roles:

·      Stereotypes minimise individual differences.

·      William and Bennett (1975) experiment – asked students to indicate which adjectives from a list of 300 words were typically associated with either men or women.

Findings: 15 adjectives had a positive or negative evaluation: for women 5 positive and 10 negative, for men 10 positive and 5 negative. Suggests that the greater societal power of men is reflected in the affective meaning of the words used to describe the traits most associated with them.

·      ‘Gender roles and stereotypes held in society at any one point in time are rooted, not primarily in the society’s cultural tradition, but more importantly in the society’s contemporaneous division of labor between the sexes. Women are views as suited for the specific social roles that women typically occupy, and men are viewed as suited for the specific social roles that men typically occupy.’ (Eagly, 1987:21-2)

·      Social role theory.

·      Diekman and Eagly, 2000 – women are becoming increasing more masculine in their new roles where men haven’t changed.

Do Stereotypes reflect prejudice or reality?

·      Rationalisations, illogically derived from the social work and incorrect in content (Lippman, 1922).

·      Stereotypes are generalisations but not necessarily incorrect ones (Martin, 1978).

·      Social role theory – stereotypes are not based on detailed experience with the groups concerned but with their social roles.

·      Stereotypes are rationalisations of the gender roles of men and women rather than accurate descriptions of group characteristics (Hoffman and Hurst, 1990).

·      In many cultures and subcultures attitudes to gender issues are radically different than those held by college-educated Westerners.

·      Benson and Vincent (1980), Examples of items from the Sexist Attitude Towards Women Scale:

1.     Women should be handled gently by men because they are so delicate.

2.     Men will always be the dominant sex.

3.     Women shop more than men because they cant decide what to buy.

4.     A woman’s place is in the home.

5.     It would make me feel awkward to address a woman as ‘Ms’.

·      Swim and Cohen (1997) devised a rating scale that measured more subtle forms of sexism, terming it the Modern Sexism scale (MS). The study shows that covert sexist attitudes can be reliably measured and used to predict reactions to issue such as sexual harassment which are important in the modern mixed-sex workplace.

·      Deaux and Lewis (1984) suggested that people link the different components of gender stereotypes together in their mind. For example, if we know that someone likes cooking, we may think that they will also like sewing, as both of these are feminine activities.

·      Bem (1981), gender schema theory. The degree to which gender was a salient variable in their interactions.

Gender schema theory explains the development and consequences of sex typing or how children acquire sex-defined characteristics (i.e., preferences, skills, personality traits, behaviours, and self-concepts) that are aligned with gender. The theory aims to provide an understanding of how mental representations of gender develop in early childhood to influence attention, motivation, person perception, impression formation, and behaviour.

Gender Appropriate Behaviour:

·      Davies (1982, 1986), study with three groups of older British children (11, 13, and 16). Trying to tread a metal loop through a bent wire without touching it. Both sexes made fewer errors when the task label was gender-consistent than when it was inconsistent.

·      Barkley et al (1977), children imitated behaviour they viewed as gender-appropriate, irrespective of the sex of the person performing it.

·      Kohlberg, gender identity. Enabled children to select those parts of the social world that applied to their sex, and to ignore those that applied to the opposite sex. Thus, the process of identification with one’s own sex was seen as the beginning of a guiding force of socialisation.

·      Kohlberg (1966), sense of gender identity appeared between 2 and 3 years of age.

·      Leinbach and Fagot (1986), children as young as 19 months can use the labels ‘mummy’ and ‘daddy’ to discriminate the sex of adults.

·      Kuhn et al. (1978), gave children two paper dolls, one called Michael and the other called Lisa, and asked questions in the form of a game about the dolls likes and dislikes. It was apparent that children of 2 to 3 years of age have an extensive, if stereotyped, knowledge about gender-typed activities. E.g. girls would clean the house, boys would boss and mow the lawn.