Issues and debates

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Issues and debates

Gender issues in psychology:

  • Androcentrism - taking male thinking/behaviour as normal, regarding female thinking/behaviour as deviant, inferior or abnormal when it is different. 
  • Alpha bias - the dfferences between men and women are exaggerated.
  • Beta bias - the differences between men and women are minimised.
  • AO3 - positive consequences of gender bias - alpha bias has led to some theorists to assert the worth and valuation 'feminine qualitites' and has led to healthy criticism of cultural values that praise certain male qualities such as aggression and individualism as desirable, adaptive and universal. Beta bias makes people see men and women as the same, which has led to equal treatment in legal terms and equal access to education and employment.
  • AO3 - negative consequences of gender bias - alpha bias focuses on differences between genders which leads to the implication of similarity within genders, thus this ignores the many ways women differ from each other and it can sustain prejudices and stereotypes. Beta bias draws attention away from the differences in power between men and women and is considered as an egalitarian approach (based on the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities) but it results in major misrepresentations of both genders.
  • AO3 - consequences of gender bias - questions about sex differences aren't just scientific questions as they are also political. Gender differences are distorted to maintain teh status quo of male power. Womenwere kept out of male-dominant universities, were oppressed and were stereotyped. Feminists argue that although gender differences are minimal or non-existent, they are used against women to maintain male power.
  • AO3 - examples of gender bias in research - Freud and his psychosexual development are based on androcentrism especially his penis envy theory. His ideas had seerious consequences as they reinforced stereotypes. In women, mental illness such as depression is more likely to be explained in terms of neurochemicals and hormones rather than social or environmental reasons.
  • Gender bias in the research process - although female psychology students outnumber male, at a senior teaching and research level in universities, men dominate. Research agenda follows male concerns, female concerns may be marginalised or ignored. Most experimental methodologies are based around standardised treatment of participants. This assumes that men and women respond in the same ways to the experimental situation. Women and men might respond or be treated differently which could create or mask differences. Research that finds gender differences more likely to get published than that which doesn’t.
  • AO3 - reducing gender bias in psychology - equal opportunity legislation and feminist psychology have performed the valuable functions of reducing institutionalised gender bias and drawing attention to sources of bias and under-researched areas in psychology like childcare, sexual abuse, dual burden working and prostitution. The feminist perspective re-examines the facts about gender, view women as normal and not deficient men, skepticism towards biological determinism, research agenda focusing on women’s’ concerns, and is a psychology for women rather than psychology of…

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