Theories of Gender

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Could anyone help me regarding events, past and present, that helped to shape theories regarding gender and psychology?

-- Louisa (lou_lou20@hotmail.com), February 19, 2005

Answers

Louisa - this is a vast topic, but you might look up Sandra Bem's work on androgyny, as well as her later responses to her own work. There is also a clinical literature on gender identity and gender identity disorder. There is some work theorizing gender by social psychologists like Jill Morawski and Betty Bayer. This should get you started.

-- Alexandra Rutherford (alexr@yorku.ca), February 22, 2005.

Hi Louisa, Early in history of psychology discipline, theories of gender often exaggerated the inherited differences between men and women, typically valuing male traits over female traits and seeing men as overall superior. Then about 30 years ago an important and necessary midcourse correction occurred. The correction deemphaszied the differences between males and females, pointed out the important role of culture in shaping our gender views, and valued men and women equally. Much good came from this correction, but unfortunately there was often an overcorrection, where inherited differences were unrealistically underestimated (according to one publication in the American Psychologist about 15 years ago, it even biased which articles were accepted for publication). Today, happily, there seems to be consensus for an intermediate view on the degree of gender differences and for the relative influence of hereditiy and environment on those differences. Since gender issues are such a highly emotional topic, the type psychology historically has had trouble with, I think we should all be especially careful designing, analyzing, and applying research on gender. I hope this helps. Paul

-- Paul Kleinginna (prk@frontiernet.net), February 25, 2005.

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