Gender

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Gender Identity
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Gender Identity

• Gender sexuality
• Gender schema theory
• Readings how did they challenge or change their
  views?

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Gender Sexuality

• femininity masculinity
• binary opposition (way of ordering the world)
• Gender cultural differentiation of male from
  female

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Gender Sexuality

• MASCULINITY FEMININITY
• OUTDOORSINDOORS
• PUBLICPRIVATE
• SOCIALPERSONAL
• PRODUCTIONCONSUMPTION
• MENWOMEN

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Gender Sexuality

• binary oppositions are related to one another
  they provide a logic that can be used to
  structure stories and these stories are also hard
  to escape
• they produce ideological meanings there is
  nothing natural about them
• what does not fit into any of the opposites is
  anomalous (monster categories)

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Gender Sexuality

• Gender cultural differentiation of male from
  female
• Whenever sexual differences are taken as
  meaningful, we are in the presence not of sex but
  of gender

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Gender Sexuality

• Gender is all culture and no nature!
• the only natural aspect of gender is sexual
  differentiation - a bio/psysiological difference
  upon which is balanced an elaborate cultural
  structure of differences used to classify and
  make meaningful the social relations of the human
  species

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Gender Sexuality

• Gender is a human and a signifying division its
  source in nature is neither here nor there!
• What is essentially male or female, or
  masculine or feminine often justify gender
  differences as being only natural but this
  justification is only ideological

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Gender Sexuality

• sex / gender
• Distinction useful because culture can be
  transformed (unlike human physiology)

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Gender schema theory (sum.)

• Phenomenon of sex typing derives from
  gender-based schematic processing, on the basis
  of sex-linked associations that constitute the
  gender schema
• Sex typing results from the fact that the
  self-concept itself gets assimilated to the
  gender schema

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Gender schema theory (sum.)

• Sex-typed individuals have a greater readiness to
  process information in terms of the gender schema
• Gender-based schematic processing derives, in
  part, from the societys insistence on the
  functional importance of the gender dichotomy
• Political implications implications for the
  concept of androgyny

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Gender schema theory (sum.)

• Male and female distinction is basic organizing
  principle for every human culture
• Adult roles allocated on the basis of sex
  (anticipate this allocation in the socialization
  of children)

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Gender schema theory (sum.)

• Boys girls expected to acquire sex-specific
  self-concepts and personality attributes to the
  masculine or feminine as defined by that
  particular culture
• Male female transmuted to masculine and
  feminine is known as the process of sex typing

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Gender schema theory (sum.)

• Psychological theories of development elucidate
  how the developing child learns the appropriate
  repertoire
• Psychoanalytic theory identification with the
  same-sex parent
• Social learning theory rewards and punishments
  for behaving in sex-appropriate ways learning
  through observation and modeling

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Gender schema theory (sum.)

• Psychological theories of development elucidate
  how the developing child learns the appropriate
  repertoire
• Cognitive-developmental theory how children
  socialize themselves once they have labeled
  themselves as male or female

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Gender schema theory (sum.)

• Attributes to be linked with sex anatomy,
  reproductive function, division of labor,
  personality attributes, features metaphorically
  related to sex (angularity or roundedness of an
  abstract shape, periodicity of the moon)
• No other dichotomy in human experience as many
  entities assimilated to it as the distinction
  between male / female

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Gender schema theory (sum.)

• Heterogeneous network of sex-related associations
  used also to process information in terms of an
  evolving gender-schema

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Gender schema theory

• Schema is a cognitive structure, network of
  associations that organizes and guides an
  individuals perception (anticipatory structure,
  readiness to search for and assimilate incoming
  information in schema-relevant terms)
• Schematic processing is highly selective

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Gender schema theory

• Schema theory construes perception as a
  constructive process wherein what is perceived is
  a product of the interaction bw the incoming
  information and the perceivers preexisting
  schema

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Gender schema theory

• Schematic processing manifests itself by
• Readiness of individual to encode
  schema-consistent information quickly
• They organize information in schema-relevant
  categories
• They make highly differentiated judgments along
  schema-relevant dimensions
• When given a choice, they spontaneously choose to
  make discriminations along those same dimensions
• in individuals who have a generalized readiness
  to process information in terms of a particular
  schema

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Gender schema theory

• Overall, in schema processing, perceptions and
  actions of individuals reflect the kinds of
  biases that schema-directed selectivity would
  produce
• Phenomenon of sex-typing derives in part from
  gender-based schematic processing (readiness to
  process information on the basis of sex-linked
  associations that constitute the gender schema

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Gender schema theory

• Self-concept itself gets assimilated into the
  gender schema
• as children learn the contents of the societys
  gender schema, they learn which attributes are to
  be linked with their own sex and therefore with
  themselves

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Gender schema theory

• strong-weak dimension absent to the schema
  applied to girls, dimension of nurturance omitted
  from schema applied to boys
• adults rarely remark how strong a little girl
  is
• becoming, or how nurturant a little boy is
• becoming) but readiness to note precisely the
• attributes in the appropriate sex

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Gender schema theory

• The child learns to apply the same schematic
  selectivity to self, choosing among the many
  possible dimensions of human personality only
  that subset defined as applicable to his or her
  own sex and eligible for organizing the diverse
  contents of the self-concept
• self-concept becomes sex-typed

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Gender schema theory

• two sexes become not only different in degree
  but different in kind
• child learns to evaluate his or her adequacy as
  a person in terms of the gender schema, matching
  his or her preferences, attitudes, behaviors, and
  personal attributes against the prototypes stored
  within the schema
• gender schema becomes prescriptive standard or
  guide and self-esteem becomes its hostage

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Gender schema theory

• cultural myths become self-fulfilling
  prophecies
• serious political implications of gender schema
  effect and sex-typing

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Gender schema theory

• Sex-typed individuals vs. non-sex-typed
  individuals
• When non-sex-typed individuals describe
  themselves as dominant or nurturant without
  implicating the concepts of masculinity or
  femininity is different from when sex-typed
  individuals describe themselves like that (for
  them, gender connotations of attributes and
  behaviors are important)

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Gender schema theory

• The heterosexuality subschema
• In our society, exclusively heterosexual
  orientation is the sine qua non of adequate
  masculinity or femininity
• Violation of the prescription to be exclusively
  heterosexual is sufficient to call into question
  the individuals adequacy as man or woman

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Gender schema theory

• The heterosexuality subschema
• Sex-typed individuals more likely to invoke the
  heterosexuality subschema in their social
  interactions and in particular to respond
  differentially to the physical attractiveness of
  members of the opposite sex with whom they are
  interacting
• Cf. Study by Andersen and Bem (sex-typed and
  androgynous subjects of both sexes evaluated
  their partners in telephone interactions)

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Gender schema theory

• Concept of androgyny
• Androgynous individuals potentially have two
  sources of inadequacy around both masculinity and
  femininity
• Feminist theory prefers gender-schema based
  processing as explanation

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Gender schema theory

• Even if society is aware of negative images
  based on particular attributes of f / m, it
  continue to exaggerate sexual distinctions and
  the functional importance of the gender dichotomy
• Ideal
• to accept that we are male or female as
  unconsciously as the fact that we are human
• gender distinctions would be perceived but not
  functioning as imperialist schemata for
  organizing everything else

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Gender schema theory

• solutions
• To realize that gender has come to have cognitive
  primacy over many other social categories because
  culture has made it so
• gender schematic associative network is
  reinforced by toys, clothing, occupations,
  hobbies, domestic division of labor, all vary as
  a function of sex

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Gender schema theory

• solutions
• Children would be far less likely to become
  gender schematic and hence sex typed if the
  society were to limit the associative network
  linked to sex and to temper its insistence on the
  functional importance of the gender dichotomy

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Readings

• Female identity?
• Male identity?