Gender Development

Integration-2
Activities and Interests
• Mechanisms driving children’s behavior-gender related activities and
interests and their self-perceptions, preferences and behaviors.
• Processes governing conscious choices may be quite different from
those governing behavior. For instance, self reports may involve
demand characteristics more than behavioral measures.
Concepts or Beliefs:
• Children are aware of some stereotypes even before 2.5 years.
• nonverbal looking-time
• preferential looking-time
• 18- and 24-month-old girls (but not boys) were able to match gender-
typed toys (e.g., doll /car) with the face of a boy or a girl.
• Other studies have examined infants’ responses to mismatches,
which purportedly lead to longer looking times because they involve
surprise or novelty.
• For example, 24-month-old boys and girls paid significantly more
attention to gender-inconsistent pictures than consistent pictures, but
only when they involved female-typical behavior (e.g., man putting
on make-up; Serbin, Poulin-Dubois, & Eichstedt, 2002).
• Some children understand concrete gender stereotypes by 2 years of
age, but that the level of such understanding found depends on the
measure, the stereotype, and the child’s sex.
• Stereotype knowledge of child and adult activities and occupations
increases rapidly between ages 3 and 5.
• Most stereotype measures assess knowledge at a relatively simple
level, identifying which gender category is associated with particular
objects, so it is not surprising to find high levels of stereotyping in
very young children.
• Studies assessing stereotype knowledge in different ways, however,
suggest continued development throughout childhood.
• Horizontal stereotypic associations (attribute to attribute) develop
later than vertical associations (male/female label to attribute).
What kinds of stereotypes do children learn first?
• Very young children (around 26 months) appear to be most aware of
gender differences associated with adult possessions (e.g., shirt and
tie), roles, physical appearance, and abstract characteristics
associated with gender (e.g., softness), and 5 to 6 months later show
evidence of awareness of stereotypes about children’s toys.
Do stereotypes become more flexible with age?
• flexibility means many things but here
“any non rigid application of stereotypic items, whether because of
knowledge or because of personal attitudes”.
After about 7 years of age, children’s knowledge of stereotypes continues to increase but
that their acceptance of stereotypes as inflexible or being morally right begins to decline.
WHO CAN VS WHO SHOULD
• analyses of individual differences in stereotyping showed that neither the level nor
timing of peak rigidity affected this developmental trajectory, suggesting that all
children follow the same basic developmental path of stereotype rigidity and
flexibility across development, despite variations in when it begins and what level it
reaches.
• Taken together, children entering elementary school have extensive knowledge about
which activities are linked to being male or female.
• Until approximately 7 to 8 years of age, when horizontal associations emerge,
stereotypes are held quite rigidly, perhaps because younger children do not seem to
recognize that there can be individual variation in masculinity and femininity within the
male and female categories.
• Beyond flexibility and rigidity, certain developmental trends often vary for girls and
boys.
• Girls are both more knowledgeable and, after the preschool years, more
flexible in their personal acceptance of gender stereotypes, whereas boys
hold stereotypic views more rigidly and are held to them more by others.
• Stereotyped knowledge, rigidity/flexibility, and inferences have also been
found to vary across ethnicity/cultures by some researchers.
• Gender related beliefs and behaviors may become intensified, as an
adolescent’s newly emerging identity as a sexual being may lead to
heightened concerns about gender role expectations and increased
polarization of attitudes.
• In contrast, continuing cognitive maturation should facilitate a more
flexible and relativistic view of gender norms (Eccles, 1987).
• Most indexes of stereotype flexibility show an increase through early
adolescence (Liben & Bigler, 2002).
Identity or Self-Perception
• Developmental changes in gender identity influence gender differentiation.
• In gender identity, two components closely connected to activities and interests.
• Gender typicality is thought to reflect children’s idiosyncratic weighting and
integration of diverse information about their gender-related interests and activities
(Perry, 2004), so that different children feel gender typical for different reasons
(e.g., athletic prowess versus competence in math and science).
• Felt pressure refers to pressure felt from parents, peers, and the self to conform to
gender stereotypes. In terms of developmental trends, Perry (2004) suggested that
felt pressure may develop in preschool but that perceived typicality may not
emerge until later when children engage in social comparison.
Children who feel gender typical and who experience little pressure for gender
conformity are less distressed than other children (Carver, Yunger, & Perry, 2003).
Self-concept and academic interests
+ abilities
• Even first grade children show some effects of gendered self-beliefs:
math is relevant for boys’ self-concepts but not for girls’.
• Such relations are important because children may avoid courses or
future occupations that are believed to be unimportant or irrelevant
for their academic self-concept.
• Students’ views of future selves also appear to involve stereotypic
activities and interests.
Preferences
• Increasing flexibility would be shown for girls, for example,
by decreasing interest in female-typical activities and
increasing interest in male-typical and neutral activities.
Relative interest in activities may be determined by a
number of factors other than gender typicality.
• For example, girls’ liking of tea sets and household chores
may decline with age but imply nothing about
developmental trends in interest in other female-typical
activities. They may have switched to jump ropes or pajama
parties.
• Such interpretational difficulties also apply to behavioral
engagement in gender-typical activities
Gender typed preferences
• Infancy: Children would look longer at gender-typical than atypical
activities and toys. Boys but not girls showed gender typed
preferences at 9 and 18 months. At 18 and 23 months, however, clear
preferences were observed, with boys looking more at trucks and girls
looking more at dolls.
• Preschool: Trends for toy and activity preferences are similar to those
for stereotypes. Preferences vary tremendously by activity. The size of
the sex difference varies by activity. Many studies still suggest that
girls are less likely to prefer same-gender activities than are boys
Middle Childhood: Boys’ and girls’ preferences follow different
developmental paths after age 5, with boys showing increasingly
stereotyped preferences and girls remaining stable or declining. When
gender-typed preferences increase with age, it is likely to reflect
avoidance of other-sex activities and interests; and when a sex difference
is observed, it is likely to show that boys are more rigidly gender-typed
during the middle grades.
Adolescence: Sex differences in adolescents’ interests in academic
subjects. An increase in flexibility during adolescence occurs only or
primarily for girls.
The reduction in some gender-typed preferences by adolescent girls may
indicate both increasing tolerance for females to engage in male-typical
roles and recognition that male-typical activities and roles have higher
status.
Behavioral Enactment
• Children’s engagement in gender-stereotypical activities has been
examined in a wide range of settings, including free-play in home,
school, and laboratory observations, as well as household chores,
television preferences, and school courses selected.
• Girls played more with dolls and offered toys to parents more than did
boys but it depends on showing more play with same-sex compared to
other sex play versus showing sex differences in play with specific toys.
• Both boys and girls play more with gender-typical toys are seen at 36
months.
• During preschool, the two sexes engage in such different activities,
they are almost like two separate cultures: girls play more frequently
with dolls, tea and kitchen sets, dress-up, and engage in fantasy play
involving household roles, glamour, and romance, whereas boys play
with transportation and construction toys, and engage in fantasy play
involving action heroes, aggression, and themes of danger.
• Most girls’ stories involved themes of family relationships with
virtually no aggression or violence; the reverse was true for boys.
• Gender-typing across a variety of domains: sports, household jobs,
toys owned, and interests/hobbies.
• Boys and girls differ in the themes that draw their interest.
Some aspects of gender atypical behavior are uncommon in early and
middle childhood, such as playing more with other-sex children than
same-sex children. Such behaviors are related to later homosexuality
and are associated with difficulties in psychological adjustment.
 Attribute: Quality or characteristics of a
Personal-Social Attributes person, place or thing.

Personal Attributes are the characteristics, attributes or personality traits of an individual.

Social Attributes are the characteristics of a society, community and situation.
Attribution: Internal Vs External

• Traits that children ascribe to themselves show parallel trends to gender-typed beliefs
about the traits that girls and boys should have or do they occur independently of
belief systems???
• Many studies of the development of stereotypes about personal-social attributes have
used a measure based on the Sex Stereotype Questionnaire, in which children are told
stories about masculine and feminine traits and are asked to select whether the stories
fit better with a male or female figure (Best et al., 1977).
• Gender stereotype knowledge of personal-social attributes emerges at approximately 5
years of age and increases steadily throughout childhood.
• Gender stereotype knowledge of personal-social attributes emerges
at approximately 5 years of age and increases steadily throughout
childhood.
• This pattern occurs across cultures even if the level and actual content
of the stereotypes differ.
• Adults and children apply trait stereotypes more strongly to child
than to adult targets.
• Preschool children tend to attribute positive characteristics to their
own sex and negative characteristics to the other. This bias may peak
at age 5, though it continues at least into middle elementary school.
• 2-to 4-year-old children distinguish between boys and girls on
particular traits (e.g., cruel), emotions (e.g., fearful), or trait-related
behaviors (e.g., hits; can’t fix things).
• Apply high power adjectives to boys (e.g., strong, fast, hit) and
adjectives related to fear and helplessness to girls (e.g., can’t fix bike,
need help, cry a lot, fearful).
• Children also use a general evaluative dimension in which males are
labeled negatively (e.g., aggressive, cruel) and females are labeled
positively (e.g., affectionate, nice).
• Stereotypes about traits show fluctuating flexibility throughout the
adolescent years in response to two opposing influences—increasing
cognitive flexibility and increasing pressures to conform to gender
stereotypes in preparation for sexual roles and adult status
• Flexibility increases through early adolescence and is often higher for
girls. Research directly comparing younger and older adolescents
suggests that trait flexibility may stabilize or decline during high
school.
Identity or Self-Perception: Sex differences in gender role orientation
using “masculine” and “feminine” characteristics, now conceptualized
as instrumental and expressive traits.
i. At age 8 to 9 years, boys and girls rate themselves in terms of
gender-typed patterns of traits and this continues into adolescence.
ii. show a general pattern of stability over time, or that both
masculinity/ instrumentality and femininity/expressiveness
increase with age
• Instrumentality and expressivity in adolescence were
influenced by children’s earlier activities and experiences
with same-sex and other-sex peers and family members.
• Gender socialization occurring through children’s activities
and social partners for instrumental traits but not for
expressive traits.
• 6- to 11-year-old children with instrumental traits reported
higher levels of motivation when competing with other
children.
• In adolescents, there are positive associations between
expressivity and positive outcomes such as perspective
taking, sympathy, and having an ethic of caring… BUT
Association between depression and other internalization:
Expressivity is positively linked
Instrumentality is negatively linked.
Importantly, in adolescents, instrumentality partially mediated the
relationship between sex and internalizing symptoms, and expressivity
fully mediated the relation between sex and externalizing symptoms
Gender trends: Personality
Attributes
• Over the ages of 12 to 18, girls scored higher than boys on Neuroticism,
Extraversion, Openness, and Agreeableness and did not differ in
Conscientiousness.
• Girls increased in Neuroticism and both sexes increased in Openness as
they grew older. The increase in Neuroticism may reflect hormonal
changes and/or transitions in schooling and is consistent with increases in
depression for girls during adolescence.
• Boys’ self-concepts tend to be higher in math, sports, and physical
appearance and girls’ self-concepts tend to be higher in music, and verbal
/reading ability, and sometimes social competence. Sex differences develop
early and remain relatively consistent over time with a few exceptions
• Children’s achievement in specific domains closely matched their
competence-related beliefs, suggesting that they have realistic self-
assessments. However, in contexts where girls achieved better than
boys, their self-assessments were equal to boys, not higher.
• Girls did not credit themselves with being talented even when they
performed better than boys.
Preferences:
Do children prefer certain kinds of gender-linked
personality traits for themselves?
*Preferred characteristics may influence children’s future behavior.
With age, the importance of expressive
characteristics increased and instrumental traits
decreased.
Behavioral Enactment
• Physical and Motor Skills: Sex differences in physical and motor skills
generally relate to girls’ earlier neurological development and better
fine motor skills and boys’ greater muscle strength. Boys are slightly
stronger than girls in early childhood, becoming more so through
childhood and after puberty. boys do
• Boys are better on tasks requiring rapid movement.
• Sex differences in many (but not all) physical and motor abilities
increase with age, and much of boys’ increasing superiority appears to
reflect their greater practice of these skills, in part from involvement in
sports, although biological factors likely also play a role.
• Cognitive skills: There are no sex differences in overall intellectual
ability, but the sexes differ in the pattern of cognitive abilities.
• The biggest cognitive sex difference is in spatial ability. There are also
differences in spatial perception, which requires recognition of the
vertical or horizontal, targeting (i.e., hitting a target with a ball), and
abilities related to navigating in the real world. cognitive sex
differences have declined across time.
• Subjective Well-Being and Self-Evaluation: Females experience
lower levels of well-being than males. Females are more
likely than males to be clinically depressed and to
exhibit more depressive symptoms, beginning in
adolescence, with likely contributors being hormonal
changes at puberty.
• The prevalence of some mental disorders varies by sex.
For example, in childhood and adolescence, there is male dominance of
speech and language disorders, Autism, Attention-Deficit /Hyperactivity
Disorder (ADHD), Oppositional and Conduct Disorder, and female
preponderance of Separation Anxiety Disorder; in adulthood, males
predominate in substance abuse, females in Dysthymic Disorder,
Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and certain phobias.
In general, personal-social behaviors show negligible to moderate
differences but no large differences. Overall, sex-difference patterns
vary considerably by content area, developmental level, and context.
Social Relationships
• Children’s gendered social relationships include peer relationships and
friendships and sexual relationships.
• Young children understand that certain relationships are more
acceptable than others (i.e., same-sex play and friendships are more
acceptable than other-sex play and friendships).
• Knowledge about sex differences in relationships increases with age.
• Preschoolers recognized that boys prefer to play in groups but not that they have more
shared friendships than girls.
• By grade 2, children believe that boys have more shared friendships, and by grade 6,
they recognize that friends have access to more information about each other than non
friends. Older children (9 to 11 years) believe that, for competitive but not for
cooperative games (i.e., those games that boys may be more likely to play), playing in
larger groups is more enjoyable than playing in dyads.
• Children’s conceptions of friendship differ by sex.
• By middle to late childhood, girls regard friendships as higher in
positive qualities (i.e., intimacy and closeness) than do boys, but the
sexes have similar levels of conflict in these relationships.
• In conflict situations, girls place greater priority on relationship goals
(such as wanting to maintain a friendship) and boys are more likely to
try to seek control over friends.
• In early and middle adolescence, girls’ friendships focus on issues of
intimacy, love, and communion, whereas boys’ friendships tend to
focus on agency, power, and excitement. Because of the greater
intimacy of girls’ relationships, they are more fragile and prone to
disruption through exposing confidential information during conflict.
• Identity or Self-Perception:
How children perceive themselves in terms of their social
relationships?
Some evidence has been obtained from gender-atypical children. For instance,
tomboys report liking boys as playmates more than other girls do, and
children with GIDC report preferences for other-sex playmates. However,
identity is not consistently linked to relationship preferences: Girls with early
androgen exposure but with female gender identity show some tendency to
prefer boys as playmates.
Sexual identity is often but not always related to sexual behavior.
Sexual identity is a person’s identity in relation to preferred sexual partners
and it may not correspond with sexual behavior. For instance, a person may
engage in sex with same-sex others without identifying as gay or lesbian.
Sexual identity is presumed to be later developing and more dependent on
social, historical, and cultural factors than is sexual orientation.
• Preferences: Preschool, kindergarten, and middle school children
consistently like same-sex (known or unknown) peers and prefer them
as friends more than other-sex peers, and this tendency increases
with age until adolescence when other-sex interests become apparent
and strong same-sex preferences decreases.
• Young children maintain same-sex preferences even when unknown
children have nontraditional interests, although the extent of gender-
non normative behavior may moderate these preferences, especially
for boys.
• In adolescence, boys with cross-sex interests are not liked but girls’
interests do not appear to matter as much to ratings of liking
• Behavioral Enactment
Play Qualities of Girls and Boys. Interactions among boys are marked by
rough-and-tumble play, attempts to attain dominance, and constrictive
interaction styles, whereas interactions among girls are more often
cooperative and enabling of others.
• Boys often play further away from adults than do girls.
• Rough-and-tumble play may exacerbate sex segregation because boys
initiate this type of play and girls withdraw from it.
• Boys engage in more active play with other boys than with girls. The
reverse pattern is found for girls: They are more active with boys.
• Both sexes adjust their behavior somewhat to fit their play partners’
styles, but other-sex group encounters are relatively rare, so likely have
little overall impact on children.
Development of Sex Segregation.
One of the most persistent sex differences involves whom children
choose as play partners.
• Although the extent of sex segregation, depends on the number of
children available, their ages, and the setting (highest when children
have more playmate choices and in less structured settings.
• Sex segregation is evident early in the school term and is influenced
by activity involvement: Boys were more likely to segregate when
involved in a competitive game than during a less competitive game.
• Sex segregation is evident in social networks and in friendship
choices.
• Other-sex friendships decline from 1 to 6 years of age
• By middle adolescence, although same-sex preferences are still
obvious, heterosexual dating couples also become apparent and
various types of other-sex relationships emerge.
• In middle adolescence, about 40% to 50% of young people have
romantic relationships; by later adolescence, most have experienced a
romantic relationship.
• Even with the increase in other-sex relationships, girls (but not boys)
report feeling more comfortable with same-sex peers.
• Sibling interactions influence adolescent friendships, especially for
girls. For example, girls who had a brother were more likely to report
using control strategies with friends than girls who had a sister
• Girls with early androgen exposure, tomboys, and children with GIDC
are somewhat more likely than typical girls to prefer other-sex
playmates.
• Friendships differ by sex, with males reporting more other-sex friends
than same-sex friends and females reporting more same-sex friends
than other-sex friends.
Causes of Sex Segregation
1. Evolutionary theorists-prepare children for adult roles.
2. Physiological and temperament differences between the sexes.
3. Gender theories or cognitions.
Development of Sexual Behavior
and Orientation
On average, sexual attraction begins at age 10, but varies by sex,
culture, and sexual orientation.
Social factors relate to homosexuality or bisexuality,
Biological component: genetic, hormonal, and brain structural
• Biological contributors to sexual orientation also may work indirectly
through an influence on temperament, which in turn may influence
feelings of gender a typicality.
• Homosexual individuals are more likely than heterosexual individuals
to report retrospectively cross-gender interests in childhood.