Discrimination is the unfair or prejudicial treatment of people and groups based on their race, gender, age or sexual orientation, Gender schema theory was introduced by psychologist Sandra Bem in 1981, Gender Categories, androgyny,“turn up the volume on sex differences.”, Bem really advocated gender aschematicity, not androgyny.

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Gender Discrimination:
Discrimination is the unfair or prejudicial treatment of people and groups
based on their race, gender, age or sexual orientation.
Gender discrimination is primarily defined as:
“Any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has
the effect or purpose of nullifying or impairing the recognition or enjoyment
exercised by certain sex especially females and transgender.”
Examples:
Discrimination faced by female employees in workplace environment, honor killing of females
(Qandeel Baloch, 2016), female genital mutilation is still practiced in many traditional
communities to ensure their fidelity before marriage, rape victims being held responsible, divorced
women held responsible while nobody talks about a divorcee male etc.
Gender Schema Theory:
Gender schema theory was introduced by psychologist Sandra
Bem in 1981 and asserted that children learn about male and
female roles from the culture in which they live. According to
the theory, children adjust their behavior according to the
society requirement of a specific gender. Bem proposed that a
child’s cognitive development along with the influence of
society largely influenced the patterns of thought i.e. schema
that dictate male and female traits. For example, a child who
lives in a traditional culture might believe that woman’s role is caring and raising children while
man’s role is work and industry. Through these observations, children form schemas about what
men and women can and cannot do.
We all have schemas for situations (e.g. parties, funerals), for people at school (e.g., the jocks, the
nerds), for objects (e.g. animals, vegetables), and for subjects in school (e.g., chemistry,
psychology). The content of a schema varies among people. The more information we have about

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specific topic, the more elaborate schemas we have. For example, we assume a physician to be
male and a nurse to be female if the gender is not specified.
Gender schema includes our knowledge about being a male or female in society. For example, a
girl raised in traditional society might believe her roles to get married at specific age and raise
children while a girl raised in a more progressive culture might focus on her career and education
more than marriage.
There are two types of people in a society:
1. Gender schematic who makes decisions about clothing, behavior, education, career,
interests, hobbies and emotional display based on gender.
2. Gender aschematic who does not care about gender while making these decisions as
mentioned above.
Gender Categories:
People fall into one of four gender categories:
1. Sex-typed individuals try to identify and process information based on gender schema.
2. Cross-typed individuals process information through the lens of opposite sex.
3. Androgynous individuals exhibit both masculine and feminine attributes.
4. Undifferentiated individuals do not show consistent use of sex-typed processing.
When Bem first introduced the gender aschematicity theory, she proposed that
someone who is not constrained by gender schema is likely to develop both
masculine and feminine traits. This category was later referred as androgyny.
Technically, cross-typed individuals’ i.e. feminine males and masculine females
are also gender schematic because they tend to follow some specific gender
specified traits. Bem (1984) advanced her gender schema theory by showing
that sex-typed people engage in gender schematic processing. For example, in one of her studies,
when college students were asked to decide whether the specific attribute described them. The
dependent variable in this experiment was how quickly the student made the judgment. It was
observed that sex-typed individuals were quick to decide their attributes compared to the
androgynous individuals. Feminine females were quick to attribute themselves as “caring” and

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“not loud”. Sex-typed respondents were also expected to take longer to reject a sex-appropriate
attribute and to accept a sex-inappropriate attribute compared to androgynous individuals. So that
same feminine female would take longer to admit that she cannot cook and that she is competitive.
The results confirmed the hypothesis. It was clearly observed that sex-typed individuals prefer to
engage in behavior consistent with their gender role and feel more uncomfortable performing
gender-role-inconsistent behavior.
One issue observed with gender schema theory is the relation with androgyny.
An androgynous person is assumed to be gender aschematic yet androgyny is
defined in terms of gender-related traits. Androgyny can be restrictive in the
sense that the person has two ideals to meet: a masculine one and a feminine one.
Bem’s ultimate aim was to get rid of gender-schema but androgyny was not able to get rid of that.
Bem really advocated gender aschematicity, not androgyny. Bem wanted to minimize the
discrimination in society based on the biological gender. She advocated for the society where there
is no use of terms as masculinity and femininity and androgyny would also become meaningless.
In fact, Bem encourages the raising of gender aschematic children.
Late, Bem realized that her ideals were not actually attainable so instead of
decreasing the gender differences, she suggested to “turn up the volume on sex
differences.” By this she means that instead of two categories with clear-cut
boundaries, we should have as many categories of gender as possible. Based on gender (male and
female), based on gender role (masculine, feminine and androgynous), and based on sexual
orientation (heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, polysexual etc.) and also transgender vs
cisgender. By having so many categories, it would be difficult to have clear-cut boundaries
between any two categories. The categories would become fluid and, ultimately, the differences
among them would become less important, if not meaningless.