Gender & Identity
Gender & Identity
• Gender & sexuality
• Gender schema theory
• Readings: how did they challenge or change
their views?
Gender & Sexuality
• femininity : masculinity
• binary opposition (way of ordering the
world)
• Gender = cultural differentiation of male
from female
Gender & Sexuality
MASCULINITY: FEMININITY
OUTDOORS:INDOORS
PUBLIC:PRIVATE
SOCIAL:PERSONAL
PRODUCTION:CONSUMPTION
MEN:WOMEN
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)
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
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
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’
Gender & Sexuality
sex / gender
• Distinction useful because culture can be
transformed (unlike human physiology)
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
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 society’s insistence on the
functional importance of the gender
dichotomy
• Political implications; implications for the
concept of androgyny
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)
Gender schema theory (sum.)
• Boys & girls expected to acquire sexspecific 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
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 sexappropriate ways ; learning through
observation and modeling
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
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
Gender schema theory (sum.)
• Heterogeneous network of sex-related
associations used also to process
information in terms of an evolving genderschema
Gender schema theory
• Schema is a cognitive structure, network of
associations that organizes and guides an
individual’s perception (anticipatory
structure, readiness to search for and
assimilate incoming information in schemarelevant terms)
• Schematic processing is highly selective
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
perceiver’s preexisting schema
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
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
Gender schema theory
• Self-concept itself gets assimilated into the
gender schema
• as children learn the contents of the
society’s gender schema, they learn which
attributes are to be linked with their own
sex and therefore with themselves
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
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
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
Gender schema theory
::cultural myths become self-fulfilling
prophecies
serious political implications of gender
schema effect and sex-typing
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)
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 individual’s adequacy as
man or woman
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
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
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
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
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
Readings
• Female identity?
• Male identity?