The document discusses four major theories of gender typing: psychoanalytic theory, social learning theory, cognitive development theory, and gender schema theory. Psychoanalytic theory proposed by Freud suggests that gender typing results from the psychosexual stages of development. Social learning theory emphasizes that children learn gender roles through reinforcement and modeling of same-gender parents and peers. Cognitive development theory such as Kohlberg's suggests children actively work to understand gender concepts and construct their own gender identity. Gender schema theory proposes that children form mental frameworks for processing information based on their gender.

1. THEORIES OF
GENDER TYPING
Dr Rukhsana Hassan
Introduction to Gender

2. Theories of Gender Typing
 Several important theories have been constructed
that try to explain how children become gender-
typed.
 There are basically four gender-typing theories:
 Psychoanalytic theory
 Social-learning theory
 Cognitive-development theory
 Gender schema theory

3. Psychoanalytic theory
 It is an oldest of a theory and was developed out
of a clinical, or case study approach.
 It is a theory and method of treatment for
psychological disorders as it emphasizes that
people are not fully aware of their feelings.
 This theory was originally developed by Sigmund
Freud. He proposed that sexuality is supremely
important in explaining human behavior. As infants
mature the focus of their sexual energy shifts from
one region of the body to another.

4. Cont’d
 Freud characterized human development in four
different stages known as oral stage, anal stage,
phallic stage and latency stage.
 Females and males develop similarly during the
first two stages. In the first or oral stage, babies
focus upon the mouth region.
 In the second or anal stage children focus upon
the anal region; the control on bowel movements
is crucial. Both boys and girls are strongly
attached to their mothers during theses early
years of their lives.

5. Cont’d
 Girls and boys begin ton differ from each other
substantially at about the age of four. During third
stage, children focus upon their genitals. Boys in
phallic stage intensify their love for their mothers
and suffer from a castration complex, fear that
their genitals will be mutilated.
 Freud also suggested that girls also suffer from
castration complex. A little girl presumably sees
the male penis, notices the differences between
those genitals and her own, and feels inferior as
she develops penis envy.

6. Cont’d
 The fourth stage is relatively uneventful and
psychosexual development does not move
forward substantially. This stage lasts from
approximately age six until puberty.
 This brief description of Freud's theory of female
development provides an introduction to his
complex ideas.
 The concept “anatomy is destiny” clearly
dominates Freud's theory; a female’s anatomy
determines her further development.

7. Drawbacks of the Theory
 One of the draw back of the theory is that it dose
not stress influence from outside forces.
 The specific characteristic of parents are generally
irrelevant. Others adults, peers, the school
system, and additional important forces are not
emphasized.
 Furthermore, there is no way in which
development can be shaped by children’s own
ideas about what uis “feminine” and what is
“masculine”.

8. Social Learning Theory
Social learning theory focuses on the learning
that occurs within a social context.
 It considers that people learn from one another,
including such concepts as observational
learning, imitation, and modeling.
 Among others Albert Bandura is considered
the leading proponent of this theory.

9. Social Learning Theory
 Social learning theory is concerned with how
individuals learn the behavior patterns considered
appropriate for their sex.
 Children at young age dichotomies the world as
female versus male and have a strong desire to
match their own personal characteristics with the
gender role standards they learn from parents and
society.

10. Social-Learning Theory
 Social-learning theory proposes two major
mechanisms that explain how girls learn to act
“feminine” and boys learn to act “masculine”:
 Children are rewarded for “gender appropriate”
behavior and punished for “ gender in appropriate”
behavior.
 Children watch and imitate the behavior of other
people of their own gender. This process is known
as “modeling”.

11. General principles of social
learning theory
 1. People can learn by observing the behavior of others and the
outcomes of those behaviors.
 They believe that the process of acquisition of gender identity
is same as that of other behaviors, i.e., through
– Observation
– Imitation
– Differential Reinforcement
Children Observe, they try to imitate, & eventually their
actions are reinforced through gestures of social approval.
Theorists believe that development is context specific, i.e.,
expected behavior in school may be different from
behavior at home.

12. Cont’d
 Reinforcement of stereotypical gender roles
 Boys being reinforced for being loud,
aggressive & active and are not reinforced
for playing with dolls & wearing makeup.
 Children choose as role models those
individuals who seems to conform to typical
behavior.

13. Cont’d
 The extent to which they imitate a particular action
depends upon the gender of the person
performing the action, whether that person is
rewarded or punished.
 For example a little girl would more likely to imitate
mother than her father and more likely to imitate
someone who has been praised.
 Children might imitate models whom they have
read about or seen on television which is known
as “symbolic models”.

14. Effects of modeling on behavior:
 Modeling teaches new behaviors.
 Modeling influences the frequency of previously learned
behaviors.
 Modeling may encourage previously forbidden behaviors.
 Modeling increases the frequency of similar behaviors.
For example a student might see a friend excel in
basketball and he tries to excel in football because he is
not tall enough for basketball.

15. Cont’d
 Some examples of social learning theory are;
 Parents often treat their young daughters and
sons similarly for example by encouraging
independence and discouraging aggression both
in males and females. However, children still
acquire gender-stereotyped knowledge and
behavior.
 Children reared in strongly feminists homes can
produce some embarrassingly gender-stereotyped
roles and behaviors e.g. a woman who is
physician overhead her son saying to the child
next door, “No, ladies can’t be doctors; they gotta
be nurses.”

16. Cont’d
 Social-learning theory cannot completely explain
the acquisition of gender-typed behavior. It also
does not explain how children develop stereotypes
and attitude about gender.
 Modeling, the second mechanism also receives
little research support in explaining gender-
stereotyped behavior. The studies showed no
tendency for children to imitate adults who were
the same gender as themselves.

17. WEAKNESSES
 It does not explain individual differences with the
group of boys & girls
 It supports the idea that more-strongly gender type
parents would have more strongly gender typed
children & vice versa. In fact it may not be the
case.
 It fails to explain why children will do things that
they have not observed or been reinforced for.
Wearing of makeup against parental approval.

18. Cognitive Development
 These theories focus on how we think about
gender and how our thought processes influence
our behavior.
 Cognitive development is the construction of
thought processes, including remembering,
problem solving, and decision-making, from
childhood through adolescence to adulthood.
 There are two theories that are related with
cognitive development.
– Kohlberg’s cognitive development theory
– Gender Schema theory

19. Kohlberg’s cognitive development
theory
 This theory proposes that children are responsible
for shaping their on gender typing; they actively
work to understand gender related concepts.
 Gender Identity
It is first major step in gender typing. It is a girl’s
realization that she is a girl and a boys realization
that he is a boy.
 Children label themselves accurately by the time
they are 2 or 3 years old.

20. Cont’d
 According to this theory children’s
knowledge of gender is connected to their
general understanding of the world.
 Understanding of gender leads to the
gender typed behavior.
 Children construct their own understanding
of gender.

21. Kohlberg’s cognitive development
theory
 First step towards gender typing is
– Development of gender identity, or their ability to label
them as males or females.
– Then comes Gender Stability, i.e., the knowledge that
gender remains same across time.
– Gender Stability is followed by Gender Consistency,
i.e., it remains same across situations
– Final stage of Gender Constancy is achieved when
biology determines whether some one is male or
female. They would be able to understand that by
cutting the hairs & wearing jeans women would not
become men

22. Cognitive Development Theory
 .
 During development they acquire gender
constancy and preference for gender-consistent
objects.
 According to Piaget’s theory of cognitive
development as it proposes that children pass
through a fixed series of stages as they mature
into adulthood.

23. Cont’d
 The thinking of young children is qualitatively
different from the thinking of older children e.g.
young children believe that a row of M&M ‘s has
more candy if it is stretched out than if it is
compact.
 Younger children rely strongly on outward physical
appearances when making judgments.

24. Kohlberg’s cognitive development
theory
 According to Kohlberg, Girls prefer
stereotypically feminine activities because
these activities are consistent with their
female gender identity,.

25. Cont’d
 Most children are quite accurate in labeling
themselves by the time they are three.
 Children must learn how to classify people, just as
they must learn numerous others classification
systems during the course of their cognitive
development. However correct classification does
not mean that she understands gender constancy.
 Gender constancy means that a person’s gender
stays the same in spite of the changes in outward
physical appearance or behavior.

26. Cont’d
 Younger children do not appreciate gender
constancy but they believe that a person can
change genders readily. a woman can become a
man by cutting her hair short, and a man can
become a woman by holding a purse.
 Once children labeled themselves and have
learned how to classify males and females, they
usually begin to show systematic preferences and
dislikes. They like things that are consistent with
their own gender.

27. Cont’d
 Research has also demonstrated that by three
years of age children are likely to show
preferences for objects consistent with their own
gender identity; girls preferred “girls things” and
boys preferred “boys things” (S. K. Thompson,
1975).
 Cognitive development theory has some
compelling support but it has some difficulties e.g.
this theory depicts that a young girl must establish
a firm gender identity before she can show
preference for female activities. A girl must know
that she is a girl before she prefers dolls to trucks.

28. Cont’d
 Because gender identity is not acquired until about
the age of three, children should not reveal
gender-stereotyped behavior prior to that age.
However it is seen that girls acting stereotypically
feminine and boys acting stereotypically masculine
well before the age of three.
 Although this theory may explain some aspects of
gender-typing, it does not explain children’s early
preferences for gender-consistent activities and it
does not address why gender is so crucial to
children.

29. Gender Schema Theory by
Sandra Bem
This refers to the theory that children learn
about what it means to be male and female
from the culture in which they live.
According to this theory, children adjust their
behavior to fit in with the gender norms and
expectations of their culture.
This theory blends together two prominent
earlier approaches: (1) the cognitive
development approach and the (2) the social
learning approach.

30. Gender Schema Theory
 Gender schema theory according to Sandra Bem
(1981, 1983, 1985) proposes that children uses
gender as a cognitive organizing principle in order
to structure and guide their perceptions about
reality.
 In other words, they are likely to organize
information about themselves and about the rest
of the world according to the definitions of
maleness and femaleness in a particular society.
 The theory proposes that gender-typing is the
result of the child’s readiness to blend his or her
own self-concept into the gender schema.

31. Gender Schema Theory by Sandra
Bem
1. Cognitive component
Gender Schemas
 Cognitive structures that organize
information in memory and influence what
information is attended to and
remembered.

32. Gender Schema Theory by Sandra
Bem
 Gender schema include everything children
know about gender,
 and they encourage children to act in
gender stereotyped ways that are consistent
with the gender schemas.

33. Gender Schema Theory by Sandra
Bem
2. Social learning component
 Traditional learning principles play an important
role in gender typing
 Children are rewarded for “gender appropriate
behavior”, and they are punished for “gender
inappropriate behavior”
 Children watch and imitate the behavior of their
own gender.

34. Gender Schema Theory by Sandra
Bem
 A little girl is more likely to imitate her mother
especially if mother’s behavior is praised.
 Children frequently imitate characteristics from
books, films, and television, as well as real people.
 Current theorists favor gender schema theory
because it integrate both cognitive and learning
principles (e.g., Reid et al., 1995 & Martin 1998)

35. Cont’d
 As children grow up they learn about their own
society’s gender schema. They learn what
attributes are important for them to possess as
they learn boys are supposed to be strong and
girls are supposed to be weak. They also learn
that some attributes are highly relevant for one
gender and highly irrelevant for the other.
 Children learn to chose only those attributes that
are applicable to their own gender and as a result

36. Cont’d
 their self-concepts become gender-typed. They
learn that the two genders are not only different in
degree but in kind; men are strong and women are
nurturing.
 Children also learn to evaluate their own adequacy
as people in terms of gender schema. The gender
schema is a standard on comparison, and a child’s
self esteem is greater if she or he compares
favorably with the gender schema.
 Bem observes that a culture determines what kind
of schema is most important.

37. Cont’d
 Bem (1983, 1985) outlines some strategies for
child rearing. She stresses that parents must try to
“inoculate” their children against gender-schematic
processing so that they can “build up their
resistance” to the lessons they can receive fron
their culture.
 The first suggestion is that parents should
eliminate gender stereotyping from their own
behavior so that activities are not rigidly divided
into “female things” and “male things”. Children
should receive both dolls and trucks, and they
should be exposed to both women and men in
nontraditional occupations.

38. Cont’d
 Secondly, for young children parents can select
books and television programs that do not teach
gender stereotypes and they can alter some
materials, e.g. by drawing long hair on a story
book’s male truck drivers. Thus, parents should
censor materials for the early years.
 Thirdly parents should substitute other schema for
the gender schema e.g. “sexism schema” should
be explained so that children would realize that
“view of men and women conveyed by fairy tales,
mass media etc is not only true but wrong”.

39. Gender Schema Theory by Sandra
Bem
 However both cognitive and social learning
theories have been attacked in recent years.
 First, Children of the same sex develop very
similar gender- role identities.
 Second, theories were criticized for
assuming that early childhood is crucial
period for gender role development.

40. FINALLY LAST SLIDE