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• Gender develops through a combination of biological and social factors, emerging around age 2 or 3 and reinforced at puberty

Freudian Theory

• Sigmund Freud offered an explanation for gender development
• He believed life is built around tension and pleasure
• Tension comes from the build-up of libido(sexual energy)
• Pleasure comes from the discharge of tension
• The first five years are crucial for forming adult personality
• In the first 5 years, the id must be controlled to satisfy social demands
• A conflict arises between frustrated wishes and social norms
• The ego and superego help control and direct gratification needs into socially acceptable channels
• Gratification centers in different body areas at different growth stages, making each stage psychosexual
• There are 5 stages of development: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital
• Each stage involves a specific conflict that must be resolved to advance
• Resolving conflicts requires sexual energy and the energy expended influences an individual psychologically

Oral Stage

• Happens from birth to 1 year
• Libido focuses on the baby's mouth
• The first psychosexual attachment will be to the mother
• A child identifies with the father once they recognize him
• Sexual wishes intensify, the child becomes possessive of the mother and wants the father out of the picture

Anal Stage

• Happens from 1 to 3 years
• Fully aware that they are their own person, and their wishes conflict with what others expect from them
• Conflict comes to a head during potty training, with adults setting restrictions on when and where the child can defecate
• A child's future relationship with authority depends on the outcome of this first conflict

Phallic Stage

• Happens from 3 to 6 years
• The child becomes aware of anatomical sex differences
• This leads to the conflict of erotic attraction, resentment, rivalry, jealousy and fear
• Freud calls this the Oedipus complex (in boys) and the Electra complex (in girls)
• Resolved through identification
• The child adopts characteristics, like values, attitudes, and behaviors, of the same-sex parent

Oedipus Complex

• It arises when a boy develops sexual desires for his mother
• He wants exclusive possession of his mother, so he needs to get rid of his father
• The boy irrationally thinks that the father will take away his penis, leading to castration anxiety
• The boy resolves this issue by imitating his father, thus resolving his Oedipus complex
• Boys then take on the male gender role and adopts an ego ideal and values that become the superego

Electra Complex

• The girl desires her father, but understands she does not have a penis
• Leads to penis envy and the wish to be a boy
• The girl resolves this by supressing her desire for the father and instead, substitutes the wish for a penis with the wish for a baby
• Girls blame their mother for their "castrated state," which creates great tension
• Girls repress their feelings to remove the tension and will identify with their mother to take on the female gender role
• Freud argued that young girls followed mostly the same psychosexual development path as boys
• Feminist critics argue that Freud based his theories on the assumption that "anatomy is destiny"

Social Learning Theory

• Based on outward motivational factors
  • Children are motivated to continue with a behavior if doing so results in positive reinforcement
  • Negative indicators lead to a changed behavior
• Children receive praise for culturally appropriate displays of gender
• Punishment results from gender displays deemed inappropriate
• Boys continue to be aggressive while girls end up dropping aggression from their repertoire
• Aggression in boys is met with acceptance
• Aggression in girls earns them more attention
• Gender behaviors are learned through observational learning
• Children observe and encode behaviors from the people around them and will later imitate that behavior
• Children reproduce the behavior that society deems appropriate for their sex

Biological Theories

• Sex refers to biological differences
  • Chromosomes (female XX, male XY)
  • Reproductive organs (ovaries, testes)
  • Hormones (oestrogen, testosterone)
• Gender refers to cultural differences
  • Expected behaviors according to sex by society/culture
  • Biological sex is fixed at birth, but gender is not
• It was once thought that what was appropriate to each sex was very clear
• Deviant behaviors were not accepted
• Vary clear ideas as to what was appropriate to
• More diversity is accepted today, and gender is seen as a continuum (i.e. scale) rather than just 2 categories
• With a biological approach there is no distinction between sex & gender
• Biological sex creates gendered behavior
• Gender is determined by hormones and chromosomes

Hormones

• Chemical substances secreted by glands throughout the body and carried in the bloodstream
• Sex hormones are found in both men and women, but differ in amounts and have different effects

Testosterone

• A sex hormone present more in males than females

• Development and behavior are affected both before and after birth

• When released in the womb, it causes development of male sex organs by 7 weeks

• Masculinization of the brain via the hypothalamus

• Testosterone affects aggression, visuospatial abilities, and sex drive

• In all humans the left brain is specialized for language

• The right brain is specialized for non-verbal and spatial skills

• There are differences in the size and structure of male and female human brains

• Female brain's verbal centers are in both hemispheres

• More connections between words, memories, and feelings

• Women tend to talk more and easier time discussing emotions

• The hippocampus forms memories and safely navigates

• Female brains tend to have more connections

• Means women tend to engage all five senses and remember events of the day more clearly

SRY Gene

• Stands for Sex-determining Region Y gene
• At 6 weeks, the SRY gene on the Y chromosome causes the embryo's gonads (sex organs) to develop as testes
• If the embryo has no Y chromosome or the SRY gene, the gonads will develop as ovaries
• The foetus grows, is born, and lives as a little girl if the SRY gene is missing from its Y chromosome
• In the above scenario, the woman's chromosomes are XY

Turner's Syndrome (XO)

• Happens when females develop with only one X chromosome on chromosome 23
• There a 1 in 5000 chance of this happening
• Lacking a second X chromosome results in an external female appearance
• Ovaries will fail to develop
• Affected individuals have:
• Differences in cognitive skills and behavior
• Higher verbal ability
• Lower average spatial ability
• Struggle with visual memory and mathematical skills
• Lack of maturation at puberty
• Webbing of the neck
• Difficulty in social adjustment at school and poor relationships with their peers

Klinefelter's Syndrome (XXY)

• Occurs in 1 of every 750 males when men have an additional X on the 23rd chromosome
• The additional X chromosome results in less body hair and underdeveloped genitals
• These are a few symptoms of the syndrome
• It is apparent once the boy has poor language skills in childhood
• Affects reading abilities
• They are passive and cooperative, that remains with them throughout their lives
• The level of aggression someone has because of this syndrome comes from biological means

Evolutionary Explanations of Gender

• Aspects of human behavior were coded by genes because they were or are adaptive
• The brain/mind evolved to solve problems encountered by ancestors during the upper Pleistocene period
• There is an idea that the division of gender roles is an adaptation to challenges when facing our human ancestors
• A deterministic approach implies that men/women have little control or choice over their behaviours
  • Women are seen as “nurturers”, and men as aggressive and competitive
• Policies meant to help create equal opportunities are doomed to fail
• Men are seen as "naturally" more competitive, risk-taking, and more likely to progress up the career ladder

Biosocial Approach to Gender

• Pioneered by Money & Ehrhardt in 1972
• Nature and nurture are both impactful to development
• After someone is born social factors like labeling interact with factors that drive steering in development
• They labeled pre-natal (exposure in the womb, physical sex based on XY or XX genetics) and post-natal approaches

Empirical Evidence

• Rubin et al. did a study where they interviewed 30 parents.
• Found there was the labeling of babies based on gender, despite them not having physical differences.
• Boy babies were described as coordinated, stronger, and more alert than daughters.
• Effects of testosterone
• Animal studies confirmed that females were more rough and tumble from being exposed in the womb
• People use both hemispheres of the brain for different reasons
• Shaywitz et al. found that women used both hemispheres
• Men only used the left for tasks

Chromosomes

• There are 23 pairs of human chromosomes.
• A chromosome is a long, thin structure composed of genes, which are the units of heredity.
• Each pair controls development, and biological sex is determined by the 23rd.
• Chromosomes physically resemble the letters X and Y.
• Males = XY, and Females = XX
• Atypical chromosomes develop differently socially, physically and cognitively.
• Comparing and studying atypical to typical are able to establish types of behaviours for behaviour in society
• Sandra Bem introduced the Gender Schema Theory in 1981
• Individuals become gendered in society and how sex-linked traits transmit to others

Gender Schema Theory

• Gender-associated information transmutes through society via schemata
• Networks of information allow some information to assimilate more easily than others.
• Gender is a product of cultural schemas
• Children then create their own schemas based on this information
• The theory centres on people processing information concerning masculinity and femininity
• There are four categories people fall into:
  • Sex-typed
  • Cross-sex typed
  • Androgynous
  • Undifferentiated
• Sex-typed identify with their physical sex
• Cross-sex typed information that does not match with their sex
• Androgynous has schemas that cross over to both, so they can integrate information on both
• Undifferentiated has difficulty processing information