Sex and Gender differences
- Created by: IrishEllie98
- Created on: 13-04-15 16:31
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- Sex and Gender
- Difference between sex and gender
- Sex - Whether a person is male or female
- Physical differences between men and women, boys and girls
- Gender - Whether an individual is masculine, feminine or androgynous
- Relates to differences in attitudes and behaviour
- Sex - Whether a person is male or female
- Androgyny
- A flexible gender role
- Displays similar levels of masculine and feminine behaviour. It is not associated with a particular sex
- Whether a person is androgynous, or just masculine or just feminine, can be assessed with inventories and/or questionnaire
- Bem study
- People cannot simply be categorised as either masculine, feminine or androgynous. There are different levels of behaviour
- It is not easy to measure gender precisely. Gender is more subjective than sex.
- An individuals sex can be objectively defined by their genes and physical appearance, their gender may be open to interpretation
- Sex vs Gender
- Decided at the moment of conception ( when sperm fertilises an egg)
- Newly formed foetus has the chromosomes to decide whether it will be born a boy or girl
- Genetic and so is fixed (cannot be changed)
- Sex-change operations therefore do not really change a persons sex
- an individual's sex is partly determined by their anatomy (EG: genitals) and this can be changes in gender re-assignment surgery
- A transsexual woman may have a penis surgically constructed and her breasts removed so she appears as a man.
- She may also be given hormones to stop her menstruating, to deepen her voice and to encourage body and facial hair growth
- Yet internally, both in terms of genetics and sexual organs she will always be a female. Arguably this is not a problem as long as she feels like a man.
- Why she would undergo gender re-assignment in the first place. In other words; her sex would be female but her gender identity would be masculine.
- Yet internally, both in terms of genetics and sexual organs she will always be a female. Arguably this is not a problem as long as she feels like a man.
- She may also be given hormones to stop her menstruating, to deepen her voice and to encourage body and facial hair growth
- Gender is fixed like sex. Since people who undergo gender re-assignment have not been able to simply adopt the gender role of the sex that they were born.
- Decided at the moment of conception ( when sperm fertilises an egg)
- Further evidence for the flexibility of gender:
- Rekers et al (1974)
- Replace feminine behaviour which masculine behaviour in an 8 year old boy using a 3 year treatment programme
- Boy was assessed at the age of 16. he was described as a normal gender-appropriate adolescent
- Achieved by reinforcing masculine traits in the boy, again showing that a person's gender can be changed
- Replace feminine behaviour which masculine behaviour in an 8 year old boy using a 3 year treatment programme
- Psychologists are more interested in the concept of gender because it relates to people's perception of themselves and to their behaviour
- Gender is a psychological concept, whereas sex is a biological concept. There is little dispute about the origins of an individual's sex, but what makes a person masculine, feminine or androgynous is much more debateable
- Rekers et al (1974)
- Difference between sex and gender
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