Culture and Gender

1
Culture and Gender

• Chapter 7

2
Culture and Gender

• In a review of gender differences from a
  cross-cultural perspective, there is a lot of
  consensus across cultures concerning the
  stereotypical traits associated with males and
  females.
• Males are perceived as being more dominant,
  having greater autonomy, being more aggressive,
  being more achievement oriented, and possessing
  greater strength and endurance.
• Common female traits include being more deferent,
  providing nurturance, and demonstrating more
  affiliation.
• Males are more likely to initiate sexual
  activity.
• Females are more likely to express conformity and
  compliance.
• Males engage in more attention-seeking behaviors.

3
Culture and Gender

• Males are more likely to initiate sexual
  activity.
• Females are more likely to express conformity and
  compliance.
• Males engage in more attention-seeking behaviors.
• Females have a more diverse self-concept. That
  is, females tend to be less stereotyped in the
  behaviors they associate with being female.

4
Culture and Gender

• Although some of these differences may be
  partially attributed to biological differences
  between the sexes (specifically, aggression,
  strength, and endurance), the majority of
  differences are attributed to socialization.
• One factor that is often cited as contributing to
  observed gender differences is the degree of food
  accumulation in a culture.
• Low-food-accumulating cultures, those based on
  hunting and gathering, tend to stress
  independence and less gender-role specialization.
  
• High-food-accumulating societies, those that are
  agriculturally based and more sedentary,
  emphasize greater gender-role differentiation.
• Researchers concluded that, although gender
  differences occur across cultures, the magnitude
  of the differences tends to be smaller in
  low-food-accumulating cultures.

5
Culture and Gender

• Some researchers report that the trend in more
  advanced cultures is toward an egalitarian view
  of the sexes due to the greater availability of
  labor-saving devices these devices have
  increased leisure time for males, allowing them
  to assist more in domestic responsibilities, and
  have reduced the amount of time females spend in
  their traditional domestic tasks.
• In addition, technology has diminished the
  importance of differences in physical strength
  thus contributing to a decline in the division of
  labor by sex.
• The emerging egalitarian view of the sexes seems
  to be more acceptable among females, whereas
  males still maintain a more conservative attitude
  toward gender roles.

6
Gender Similarities and Differences

• Cognitive abilities
• Although there are no gender differences in
  overall intelligence, there are subtle
  differences in specific cognitive abilities.
• Verbal abilities
• Girls start speaking sooner, have larger
  vocabularies and better reading scores.
• Boys fare better on verbal analogies, but are
  also more likely to stutter or suffer from
  dyslexia.

7
Gender Similarities and Differences

• Cognitive abilities (cont.)
• Mathematical abilities
• Males have a slight advantage in this area, but
  this is only true for European American males.
• In mathematical problem solving, males outperform
  females by high school and take more higher math
  courses.
• Spatial abilities
• The largest gender difference in cognitive
  abilities is in spatial abilities, or the ability
  to perceive and mentally manipulate shapes and
  figures.

8
Gender Similarities and Differences

• Personality traits and social behavior.
• Aggression is behavior that is intended to
  hurt someone, whether physically or verbally.
• Males are consistently more likely to engage in
  physical aggression and are more likely to be
  arrested for violent crimes.
• Females are more likely to use relational
  aggression, or behaviors that hurt anothers
  feelings (e.g., talking about someone behind
  their back).

9
Gender Similarities and Differences

• Personality traits and social behavior.
• Four key differences between males and females
  (both gay and straight), with regard to sex are
• Men have more interest in sex and more likely to
  masturbate.
• The connection between sex and intimacy is more
  important to women than to men.
• Aggression is more often linked to sexuality for
  men than for women.
• Womens sexuality is more easily shaped by
  cultural and situational factors.

10
Gender Similarities and Differences

• Personality traits and social behavior.
• Emotional expression.
• Women are more likely to express emotion, but
  women and men experience emotions equally.
• Communication.
• With regard to non-verbal cues, women read
  happy cues better, and men read anger more
  readily.

11
Gender Similarities and Differences

• Psychological disorders.
• Antisocial behavior, alcoholism, and substance
  abuse disorders are more common in men.
• Women are more likely to suffer from depression,
  anxiety and eating disorders.
• Females attempt suicide more often, but males
  have more completed suicides.

12
Processes in gender-role socialization

• Observational learning.
• Observation learning occurs when a childs
  behavior is influenced by observing others, who
  are called models.
• Rewards and punishment.
• Gender roles are shaped by consequences.
• Parents, teachers, peers, and others reinforce
  gender-appropriate behavior.
• Parents, and fathers in particular, are much less
  tolerant of gender-inappropriate behavior,
  especially in their sons.

13
Role expectations for males.

• Five key attributes comprise the male role
• Achievement.
• Aggression.
• Autonomy.
• Sexuality.
• Stoicism (not show emotion).

14
Role expectations for females.

• The Marriage Mandate.
• The Motherhood Mandate.
• The above two expectations focus on heterosexual
  success learning how to attract and interest
  males as prospective mates.
• Work outside the home (in addition to having a
  satisfying family life).

15
The clash of two cultures

• Males and females are socialized in different
  cultures.
• Men learn a language of status and independence
  and women learn a language of connection and
  intimacy.
• Men use conversations to achieve the upper hand
  while women try to preserve connections between
  people.