Course Title: Gender Issues in Psychology
Course Code: APSY-2204
Program: BS (hons.)
Teacher: Dr Shagufta Malik
Department of psychology, Riphah International
University, Faisalabad Campus
Gender issues in psychology: History
1894-1936: Sex Differences in Intelligence
1936-1954: M/F is a Global Personality Trait
1954-1982: Sex typing and Androgyny
1982-Present: Gender as Social Category
Gender issues in psychology: History
1894-1936: Sex Differences in Intelligence
The first period focused on the differences between men and
women and was marked by the publication of a book by Ellis
(1894) entitled Man and Woman.
The primary goal of this era was to examine if (really, to establish
that) men were intellectually superior to women.
To accomplish this goal, scientists turned to the anatomy of the
brain (Shields, 1975).
Gender Issues in Psychology: History
1894-1936: Sex Differences in Intelligence
First, scientists focused on the size of the human brain.
Because women’s heads and brains are smaller than those of
men, there seemed to be conclusive evidence that women
were intellectually inferior.
However, men were also taller and weighed more than
women; when body size was taken into account, the evidence
for sex differences in intelligence became less clear.
Gender Issues in Psychology: History
1894-1936: Sex Differences in Intelligence
Next, researchers turned to specific areas of the brain that
could be responsible for higher levels of intellectual
functioning.
The frontal cortex was first thought to control higher levels
of mental functioning, and men were observed to have
largefrontal lobes than women.
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Gender Issues in Psychology: History
1894-1936: Sex Differences in Intelligence
All this research came under sharp methodological criticism
because the scientists observing the anatomy of the brain were
not blind to the sex associated with the particular brain.
The period ended with the seminal work of “Sex and Personality”
published by Lewis Terman and Catherine Cox Miles in 1936. They
concluded there are no sex differences in intellect.
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Gender Issues in Psychology: History
1936-1954: M/F is a Global Personality Trait
During this next period, researchers shifted their focus from sex
differences in intelligence to consider the notion of gender roles.
The construct of masculinity–femininity, or M/F was introduced
during this period.
Terman concluded that the real mental differences between men
and women could be captured by measuring masculinity and
femininity.
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Gender Issues in Psychology: History
1936-1954: M/F is a Global Personality Trait
Researchers developed a 456-item instrument to measure
Masculinity/Femininity. It was called the Attitude Interest
Analysis Survey (AIAS; Terman & Miles, 1936).
The AIAS was the first published M/F scale.
The items chosen were based on statistical gender
differences observed in elementary, junior high, and high
school children.
Gender Issues in Psychology: Introduction
1936-1954: M/F is a Global Personality Trait
This meant that items on which the average female scored
higher than the average male were labeled feminine, and items
on which the average male scored higher than the average
female were labeled masculine.
The criticism was on this M/F differences is that Terman and
Miles (1936) left to explain the cause of the sex differences
biologically, psychologically, or cultural unspecified.
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Gender Issues in Psychology: History
1954-1982: Sex typing and Androgyny
This period was marked by Eleanor Maccoby’s (1966) publication of
“The Development of Sex Differences”.
Maccoby reviewed important theories of sex typing that is, how
boys and girls developed sex-appropriate preferences, personality
traits, and behaviors.
Instrumental Versus Expressive Distinction.
Gender Issues in Psychology: History
1954-1982: Sex typing and Androgyny
« Instrumental Versus Expressive Distinction »
In 1955, Parsons, a sociologist, and Bales, a social
psychologist, distinguished between instrumental or goal-
oriented behavior and expressive or emotional behavior in
their studies.
The instrumental leader focuses on getting the job done and
the expressive leader focuses on maintaining group harmony.
Gender Issues in Psychology: Introduction
1954-1982: Sex typing and Androgyny
« Instrumental Versus Expressive Distinction »
Parsons and Bales (1955) extended the instrumental/expressive
distinction to gender in both male and female.
They saw a relation between instrumentality and superior power and a
relation between expressivity between inferior power.
They believed the distinction between the husband role and the wife
role was both an instrumental/expressive distinction as well as a
superior/inferior power distinction
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Gender Issues in Psychology: History
1954-1982: Sex typing and Androgyny
« Instrumental Versus Expressive Distinction »
The instrumental orientation became linked to the male gender role and
the expressive orientation became linked to the female gender role.
Do sex differences still appear today?
women’s masculinity scores have increased over time Spence & Buckner,
2000).
People view masculine characteristics as more desirable in women today
than they did in 1972 (Auster & Ohm, 2000).
People’s views of what is desirable in men have not changed.
Gender Issues in Psychology: History
1954-1982: Sex typing and Androgyny
“Androgyny”
The androgynous person was someone who displayed both
masculine and feminine traits.
Androgyny was first measured with the BSRI scale by subtracting
the masculinity score from the femininity score.
Scores near zero reflected androgyny, signifying that people had
a relatively equal amount of both traits.
Gender Issues in Psychology: Introduction
1954-1982: Sex typing and Androgyny
“Androgyny”
A male who scored masculine and a female who scored
feminine were referred to as sex-typed.
A masculine female and a feminine male were referred to
as cross-sex-typed.
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Gender Issues in Psychology: Introduction
1954-1982: Sex typing and Androgyny
“Androgyny”
Androgyny was put forth by Bem (1974, 1975) as an ideal: The
androgynous person was one who embodied the socially
desirable features of both masculinity and femininity.
It was no longer believed the most psychologically healthy
people were masculine men and feminine women; instead, the
healthiest people were thought to be those who possessed both
attributes.
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Gender Issues in Psychology: History
1982-Present: Gender as a Social Category
The first emphasis of this era has been to view gender as a multifaceted
or multi-dimensional construct, meaning that the two-dimensional view
of masculinity and femininity is not sufficient to capture gender roles.
The second has been to emphasize the social context in which
gender occurs.
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Gender Issues in Psychology: History
1982-Present: Gender as a Social Category
“Gender Role as Multifaceted”
In 1985, Spence and Sawin argued that masculinity and femininity
are multidimensional constructs.
They do research to realize that lay conceptions of masculinity and
femininity included more diverse content, such as physical
characteristics and role behaviors, in addition to personality traits.
In 1994, Helgeson adopted a different approach to identify the
content of masculinity and femininity.
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Gender Issues in Psychology: History
1982-Present: Gender as a Social Category
“Gender Role as Multifaceted”
Then Helgeson explore the features of masculinity and
femininity that fell into one of three categories: personality
traits, interests, or physical appearance.
One limitation of most of this research is that conceptions
of masculinity and femininity are limited to the people who
have been studied: typically, White, middle-class American
men and women.
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Gender Issues in Psychology: History
1982-Present: Gender as a Social Category
“The Social Context Surrounding Gender”
By viewing gender as a social category, researchers paid
greater attention to the influence of society on the nature
of gender roles.
Social psychologists, Deaux and Brenda Major (1987),
emphasis during this period, and today is on how the social
context influences the nature of gender.
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Gender Issues in Psychology: History
1982-Present: Gender as a Social Category
“The Gender role strain”
Gender-role strain is likely to occur when gender-role
expectations conflict with naturally occurring tendencies or
personal desires.
For example a male who wants to pursue dance or a
woman who does not want to have children also may suffer
some gender-role strain.
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Gender Issues in Psychology: History
1982-Present: Gender as a Social Category
“The Gender role strain”
Joseph Pleck (1995) describes two theories of gender-role strain.
Self-role discrepancy theory suggests that strain arises when
you fail to live up to the gender role that society has
constructed.
This describes the man who is not athletic, the man who is
unemployed, the woman who is not attractive, and the woman
who does not have children.
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Gender Issues in Psychology: History
1982-Present: Gender as a Social Category
“The Gender role strain”
Socialized dysfunctional characteristic theory states that
strain arises because the gender roles that society instills
contain inherently dysfunctional personality characteristics.
For example, the male gender role includes the inhibition
of emotional expression, which is not healthy; similarly, the
female gender role includes dependency, which also may
not be adaptive.
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Gender Issues in Psychology: History
1982-Present: Gender as a Social Category
“The Gender role strain”
The concept of male gender-role strain has largely been
applied to men.
The ideas were inspired by popular books on men that
appeared in the 1970s and the 1980s, such as Goldberg’s
(1976) The Hazards of Being Male, Nichols’s (1975) Men’s
Liberation: A New Definition of Masculinity, and in 1990s by
Pollack’s (1998) Real boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the
Myths of Boyhood.
Gender Issues in Psychology: History
1982-Present: Gender as a Social Category
“The Gender role strain”
Pollack (1998, 2006) suggests that gender roles are much
more rigid for boys than girls in our society.
He describes a male code by which boys are not to express
any form of vulnerability for fear it will be perceived as
feminine, and femininity is equated with being gay, which is
strongly derogated by boys.
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Gender Issues in Psychology: History
1982-Present: Gender as a Social Category
“The Gender role strain”
Female Gender-Role Strain rarely has been studied in women. In 1992, Gillespie
and Eisler identified five areas of strain for women:
fear of unemotional relationships (e.g., feeling pressured to engage in sexual
activity).
fear of physical unattractiveness (e.g., being perceived by others as overweight)
fear of victimization (e.g., having your car break down on the road).
fear of behaving assertively (e.g., bargaining with a salesperson when buying a car).
fear of not being nurturant (e.g., a very close friend stops speaking to you).
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