Gender identity and development of gender rules

1. Gender Identity and development of Gender Roles.
The aim of this essay is to explain how gender identity contributes for child’s
development. It will clarify the difference between sex and gender and briefly
look into how have gender identity and the development of gender roles remained
constant over time. Furthermore, the assignment will explore how important is
childhood experiences in gender development taken into accountthe environment
factors through Social Learning Theory (SLT) and Social Cognitive Theory
(SCT). In addition it will explore the gender development in terms on children’s
own cognition based on Cognitive Developmental Theory (CDT) and Gender
Schema Theory (GST).
At high level, gender stereotypes have been the same for centuries and they are
universal. Masculine are classified as dominant and competitive whereas
feminine would beseen as caring and compassionate. This idea would go back to
the ancient Greece. Studies have investigated biological and behavioural
differences between males and females, and found that there are more miths then
evidence. For instance, Maccoby and Jecklin (1974) examine prior research
extensively and found that there were more differences within sexes then between
then. Also, approaches to developmental psychology in this area have been used
on “social influences or cognitive processes”. However there is contemporary
work which tries to recognise the two.
It is important to know that the word “sex” is used to represent biological
differences on individuals, whereas “gender” represents the social characteristics
of the individual. Furthermore, gender can be understood in terms of identity,
which is the sense of one individual of being male or female; role, which means
the behaviour and attitudes that are associated with being male or female;
stereotype, that describe a commonly held belief about male and female
characteristics including skills, abilities and appearance e.g. Woman are caring
and men are competitive, and gender type, which is the extent to which someone
stick to their gender roles. All this factors would play a different role on how
children experience the world and develop their gender.
The childhood experiences in gender development is a important factor to be
considered. Early research worked on the assumption that masculine and
feminine was a bipolar dimension, therefore used scales to asses gender. For
example, Bem (1974) used the Sex Role Inventory (BSRI), where participants
rate themselves according to how high they think they match masculine and
feminine characteristics from the list. Results showed that a high score on both
classified as “androgynous”, high in dominant, ambitious and competitive
characteristics as “masculine”, and high in gently and compassionate as
“feminine”. However, for children the focus of methods of gender development

2. research has been onconcretepreferences fortoys, games and activities. Research
with observation and parental reporting, for instance, used Pre-school Activity
Inventory (PAI) to measure gender typing by children’s preferences for gender
associated toys and activities. Nevertheless, the main area of focus is the
environment looking through SLT and SCT, or child’s own cognition proposed
from CDT and GST.
The social environment in some extent does influence the child’s gender
development. Mischel, proposed that gender typed behaviour are those that lead
to different outcomes for one sex than the other. He argued that learning occurs
by conditioning, rewards, punishment and observation of other’s behaviour’s.
Boys and girls are treated differently from birth. For instance, a observational
study carried out with 48 children aged 3 to 5 years old, showed that mother
respond neutrally to boys playing with girls toys, whether father tend to respond
often with ridicule responsetowards it.
In addition, Bandura from a social cognitive perspective, suggested that it is a
“modelof causation” that links behaviour, personand environment. He proposed
that gender stereotypes are also modelled in the family. The history of
socialisation provides distinct information about gender from birth e.g. Clothes,
colours, toys. Cognitive processes would come into play as once children have
internalised the “appropriate” behaviour based on social experiences. A study
done with 3 and 4 years old children where the children were asked to evaluate
gender-typed behaviour of peers shown on video, shows that social approval are
evident in younger children, and self-regulation becomes more important with
age.
On the other hand, the children’s own cognition would also play a important role
in gender development. Children are actively involved in the constructionof their
gender role. The cognitive developmental theory suggests that children concepts
of themselves as male/female are crucial in them to identify and endorse gender
roles. For instance, Kohlberg argued that gender roles are not shaped through
biological or cultural norms, but shaped through the ability of children to
cognitively organise their social world along gender dimensions e.g. boys think
“I’m a boy, therefore I want to do boy things as this is rewarding”. Kohlberg
proposed that gender identity develops in three discrete stages: the “gender
labelling stage”, where 3 years old child can identify others as male/female, but
gender not seen as stable over time; “gender stability stage”, which 5 years old
child recognise that boys grow up to be daddies, but unchanging nature of gender
not appreciated and the “gender consistencystage”, where a 6 to 7 years old child
have a full appreciation of gender permanence.

3. Moreover, despite limited evidence from Kohlberg, recent research builds on his
basic point that cognitive processes play a major part in the development of
gender. Theorists from GST argued that it is the “early labelling stage” of
cognitive process which are the most important. GST suggests that early
cognitive activities concerned with children labelling themselves as male or
female are responsible for gender development. Martin and Halverson, claims
that children develop stereotypes and schemas to simplify and manage the huge
amounts of information they have to deal with. Therefore, they focus on two
particular schemas such as “in-group/out-group” schema, where the child have a
mental representation ofthe activities, objects, characteristics of someonein their
in-group (same sex) and of someone in their out-group (the other sex). The other
schema would be the “own sex” schema, which a child would detailed
information about what someone of own sex does, thinks, wears etc., therefore
this detailed information depends on the “in-group/out-group” schema. For
example, the child will try to find out more about things that fit with their in-
group, in the process to generate information for “own sex” schema. Martin and
Halverson (1983), carried out one experiment showing pictures to children and
they found that children remembered more pictures of men doing “masculine”
activities and even mis-remembered ones with gender-inappropriate behaviour.
In conclusion, this essay showed that gender development is complicated, it
involves many aspects of children such as their social life, their cognition, their
motivations and emotions. Developmental psychologists have been working hard
on the challenge to know how all of these elements fit together. Research over
the last fifty years has provided some valuable clues about where to look for
answers to the questions involving child’s development of gender. However, the
challenge for the future still to work out how the clues all fit together.
Luciano Souza
BSc Psychology Student
June, 2015.