Gender Differences

Gender Differences

Testing Gender Differences • Get a sheet of paper and ask yourself this question – What are some behaviors that the opposite gender gets away with that you yourself would not even attempt to try? Examples: • Females can get out of a speeding ticket by crying • Guys can make crude comments and not get hassled about it, it’s accepted

Switch • Now compare your list with someone of the opposite gender. • Compare your lists – are they similar or very different? Why? Do you think your lists are valid, meaning true?

Gender Quiz • Complete this true/false quiz before we start discussing. • Females have fewer genetic defects and have greater endurance than men. • The front part of the brain is more developed in males than in females. • Males have a natural ability to handle mathematics better than females. • Males are more oriented toward achievement than females. • Women seem to have a special, natural ability to take care of children – some might call it a “maternal instinct.” • Only females experience monthly hormonal changes. • When it comes to choosing a mate, men and women look for the same characteristics. • People with very strong gender identities are generally more psychologically healthy than people who engage in both masculine and feminine activities.

Gender Quiz: Answers 1. True 2. False – this is a claim that is more than 100 years old and no basis in fact. 3. False – males may do better on standard achievement tests, but latest research shows that females do better in math courses at the advanced level, there is no evidence for either gender having a “natural” ability to learn math. 4. False – this is simply a myth fostered by society 5. False – new mothers with no experience or role models are just as lost as new fathers 6. False – males also have monthly hormonal cycles, milder than females, yet related to moodiness 7. False – men look more at physical attractiveness, women at character and status according to research 8. False – androgynous people tend to be more psychologically healthy than people with overly strong gender identities

Male and Female – A Brief History of Myths • Genderrefers to the sex an individual, either male or female. • In the old days, the males’ desire for domination led to some bizarre “scientific attempts to show that the male is smarter than the female. • One of the claims by males 100 years or so ago concerned brain size. • Since women have smaller heads than men, their brains must be smaller, so the male scientists said that females were not as bright. • This idea was finally given up when it was discovered that physical brain size is not related to intelligence. Then the scientists decided that the front part of the brain was better developed in the male. • So that must be the area showing that men were smarter! But they found this, too, to be false since it was eventually shown that the female was as developed in this part of the brain as the male was. • These disputes became stranger when it was claimed that the male hormones kept men’s minds cool and “dry” leading them to a clever, “dry” wit. Then it was said that females should not be educated because this drained the vital fluids from their bodies. And so forth. • The point is that male/female relationships have been dominated even in science by mudslinging, rather than by research. Today the studies are much more scientific and accurate.

The Role of Hormones • Hormonesare chemical agents that cause physical changes in the body. • There are two types of sex hormones, androgen and estrogen. Males have more androgen, and females more estrogen. • Whether a person becomes male or female results from which hormone is present in the fetus in greater quantities. • Until the second month of development, male and female fetuses are exactly the same. • Basically, it is a matter of one hormone being dominant in each individual. Thus, which sex we become depends on genetics, which causes certain mechanisms to increase the amount of one hormone over the other. Effect on behavior • Hormones have some interesting effects on male/female behavior. • For instance, injection of androgen into a pregnant monkey can produce an offspring that by nature should be female, but that also has some physical male characteristics. • Androgen injected into a human adult female can increase her aggressiveness. • And male monkeys with too little androgen will show many patterns of behavior normally found in female monkeys.

Levels of sex hormones can be off slightly without producing serious abnormalities, yet they can result in slight changes in behavior. • For example, some years ago a number of pregnant women were given medication that had the side effect of making their bodies produce more androgen than normal. Their female offspring tended to be somewhat “tomboyish.” • On the other hand, males who before birth had their androgen production reduced were a bit less rough and aggressive. In both cases, though, it is important to remember that the children were not abnormal; they were behaving within the normal range for their sex. • When the levels of hormones are genuinely defective, children with characteristics of both sexes can be born. • For instance, some can have the internal equipment of males but the external parts of females, or vice versa. • Despite these findings, hormones play a lesser role in humans than they do in other animals. For the most part, we are able to limit their effect on our behavior and on how masculine or feminine we feel.

Male/Female Differences • Males are bulkier and stronger as a group compared to females, but females have fewer genetic defects, live longer, and have greater physical endurance. • The other obvious, major male/female difference is that the female bears the offspring and provides the nourishment for the infant, which creates a very strong bond between the two. • The only activities, then, that clearly and absolutely belong to one sex are those involved in reproduction. • All other differences are simply a matter of degree or frequency of occurrence. In other words, there are certain trends for one gender versus the other, but no rule holds hard and fast.

Aggression and Activity Level • We usually see aggression as primarily a masculine characteristic, and males do indeed generally show more aggression than females. • Does this mean, then, that females are not aggressive? Absolutely not. • Given the right circumstances, females may not only equal males in aggressive behavior but may also exceed them. • What it does mean is that more males than females are more likely to behave this way in more situations. • The sexes are far more alike than they are different. In other words, gender differences are the exception, gender similarities are commonplace.

Intelligence • In infancy, the basic intellectual processes of the male and female seem the same. • Over time, however, each sex develops more elaborate skills in a given area than the other sex does. • Despite this, scientists suspect that males and females are very close in overall intellectual abilities.

Spatial Skills • At about 11 years of age, boys begin to score better on tasks involving mathematics and spatial skills. • Spatial skills refer to the ability to imagine how something would look in space – for example, getting a three-dimensional image of the parking lot if the cars were parked at right angles to the curb and then mentally rotating them so that they are parked parallel to the curb. • Video games involve considerable spatial skills. • In general, boys are better at these games than girls, but there is a “trick” here in that girls don’t get involved with these machines very often. When they do, they learn the skills quite well. • There are also unexplained research findings such as this one: one study of 3,000 junior and senior high school students found that 13-year-old girls scored better on spatial skills than boys the same age. Whatever differences exist are best explained the moment as resulting from differences in social role, social class, ethnic background, and the type of test given, rather than from differences between the sexes. • Some people have suggested that there might be physical differences in the brains of males versus those of females. • Indeed, the brains do differ: certain areas in the brains of one sex will have more cells than the same areas in the brains of the other sex and vice versa, but to date, there has been no link between these facts and mental abilities.

Mathematical Ability • Study #1: A study of 40,000 seventh-grade students showed that by age 13 males did better than females on the part of the Scholastic Achievement Test that measures mathematical reasoning. • There were 13 boys to every one girl scoring over 700 (95%) on the math portion of the test. • Boys seem to have a wide lead in the area of mathematics. There are of course exceptions to every rule and there are certainly many boys who do not score well in math, and many girls who do score well. • Study #2: Other studies show no difference at all between girls and boys on tests of high-level math reasoning such as geometry proofs. • Possibly the answer lies in the fact that without even knowing it, many people have a bias against girls being involved in math, which has traditionally been part of the male domain. • For example, some studies show that a number of teachers give more attention to boys than girls in math classes.

Environmental Influences • There is no way to remove environmental influences from the development of all kinds of skills. • As already noted, teachers may call on boys more often, period. They give boys more of their attention and time and are more likely to ask boys than girls to expand on their answers and think things through. • With spatial or mathematical abilities, environmental influences reach far beyond the classroom. • For example, research has shown that more mathematical toys are given to boys. Also, boys play with toys such as footballs, which require spatial orientation in order to catch and throw them. • At junior high school age, females as a group take a sudden and dramatic drop in grades and in intelligence scores. • Does female intelligence suddenly plummet like a rock at this age so that they know hardly anything anymore? Naturally this is ridiculous. • Many females have been convinced by the “system” that they are supposed to be dumb to be appealing to males. • Interestingly, females who refuse to go along with this and assert themselves show no decline in intellectual ability. • Also, when females are past that “dumb” period, they really soar, especially in college where their grades are almost always better than those of males.

Social Skills • Social factors play an important part in how we view the sexes. As a result, much of what you hear about sex differences is a myth. Self-Confidence • Females are not more influenced by others’ suggestions than males; in fact, surprisingly, studies show males are more likely than females to go along with the group. • Females consistently rate themselves as high on self-confidence as males do, at least through childhood and adolescence. • Both have about an equal tendency to explore novel environments, engage in unusual activities, and refuse to be stepped on by others. Also, girls feel as important as boys – at least until the middle of high school. • In some studies, girls claim that in their daily lives, they are more anxious and fearful than boys. But they may be feigning this as part of a social role. • When faced with something frightening, boys sweat and swallow a lot and girls screech, but privately they admit to being equally terrified. • So what conclusion can be reached about self-confidence? No notable difference exists.

Drive for Success • Achievement is often described as a masculine goal. • But research indicates that females are, in fact, just as oriented toward achievement as males. • Large numbers of studies find no overall sex differences in this regard. Why then, do people have this image of men being more driven to achieve? The evidence points to a societal belief that suggest that there is something wrong with a woman who seeks success. • Girls are told not to be “too important” or they won’t appeal to boys. Stop and think for a minute: isn’t there at least a hint of this belief even in our own group? • The cases are all around us. • Watch the TV as carefully, sometime, and note how the women are almost always connected somehow with ads for soap or for food products that need cooking. • The men tend to be the focus in any ad involving something mechanical, such as a product that would be used with a car or lawnmower. In this way, then, both sexes are subtly indoctrinated. • Females who are presently in college, have been exposed to even more of this propaganda. • When they get higher grades than males, they still anticipate doing poorly in the future; the males, including those who have not done well in school, expect future success.

Communication Do men or women talk more? Are men or women more likely to touch someone they’re talking to? • In both cases, the answer is women, right? Wrong! • Men not only talk more than women, they also interrupt other people’s conversations more often. • And it is men who tend to touch people while they are talking, but women more often are the ones being touched. Do men or women reveal more about themselves in a conversation? • In this case, the answer is women. Many studies show that women engage in more self-disclosure than men, especially when they are talking with special friends or family members. • This situation has been of some concern to psychologists because it can sometimes create problems for men in a lot of areas. • For instance, self-disclosure is necessary in counseling and in close relationships. It is hard to express your feelings, find emotional support, or get your needs met if you cannot talk about what is going on inside. • Men and women seem to operate from very different overall views of the world. • Men tend to see the world in terms of a hierarchy, where keeping or improving your status and independence is critical. • Women, on the hand, tend to see it as a cooperative network, where being more closely connected to others is what matters most. These basic differences in approach can account for the vast majority of problems the sexes have in understanding each other. • For instance, when a woman checks with her husband before making plans, this supports her feelings of connectedness. • On the other hand, a husband’s checking with his wife may threaten his image of control and self-reliance, especially if other people are around.

Selecting a Mate • Psychologists have been studying the characteristics that people want and value in a potential mate for decades. Gender differences are clear-cut and consistent. • They hold true across generations and across cultures. • They have resulted in women complaining that men are superficial and only interested in a woman’s looks. • They have resulted in men complaining that women are materialistic and interested only in a man’s income. • So, who is right? It appears that both are, to some extent. What do you think are the most important qualities that the opposite sex person must possess? Brainstorm a list.

Essentials in a girlfriend/boyfriend” • Many studies have been done in this area. • The characteristics most often studied are • Social and economic status • physical attractiveness • Personality • Intelligence • Ambition • Character • Sense of humor. • Women give more weight to socioeconomic status, ambition, character and intelligence in mate selection. • Both sexes value physical attractiveness in a mate, but men give this characteristic more weight than women do. • The sexes are equal in the importance they attach to personality and sense of humor.

As to why these differences are so far-reaching, the answer probably has less to do with ego than with concern for the next generation – or in other words, the welfare of potential children. • For instance, general physical appearance to some extent reflects a person’s genetic makeup. This will be passed on to the offspring. • Thus, people look for physical characteristics that will benefit their children. In our society, children’s survival depends on having access to good housing, medical care, education, nutrition and so on. • The characteristics women emphasize are all related to the ability to survive with some degree of comfort. • In our society, the man’s status is also important for part of his family’s identity. • When a woman marries, she usually takes her husband’s name. Children are usually given their father’s last name. We tend to trace our ancestry more through our father’s family line than our mother’s. • It is tempting to believe that because our culture does things a certain way, everybody else does it that way, too. Usually though, this is not the case. It is not the case here, either. • Among the Sioux for instance, this tradition was reversed. • Wives kept their own names, and the children belonged to the mother’s clan, not the father’s. Family property was held by the mother, and a child’s lineage was traced through the mother’s ancestry.

Maternal Instincts • Do women really have a special empathy with, concern for, and ability to take care of children? Besides the ability to conceive and bear children, is there really something that makes women different in regard to kids? • The answer seems to be a qualified “no”. • Women generally show more empathy for and intimate involvement with others of all ages. But the cause remains unclear. • One way to determine whether females have an inborn “maternal instinct” that males do not have is to search the animal world, where creatures are not guided by social forces to the same extent we are. • There are exceptions to the rule regarding maternal roles and the male lion is one of them. He is a genuine slob. He demands that the female go get food for him. He won’t take care of his offspring; in fact, he will eat them when they are very small unless the mother lion keeps constant vigil. He doesn’t even bother with personal hygiene as much as he should. So, we can give up on him. • But in the animal world as a whole, the story is different if the male is forced to take care of the infants. • For instance, male rhesus monkeys typically respond to their babies with either hostility or indifference. The close bond is between mother and infant. Yet in a series of studies, researchers have taken away the mother, forcing the male in the family to be left alone with the infant. At first the father complains and objects violently, but within a short time, he begins to groom, care for, and show strong attachment toward his infant. And there are male rats who also act awful about being left alone with their offspring. But, within a day or so, they “suddenly” manage to find their own version of the maternal instinct and begin to care for the infants in the same way the mother did.

The human mother with her baby usually does not have the faintest idea what to do with this creature she suddenly faces. For one thing, the baby’s head looks like it is going to twirl and wobble off at any moment. The task of caretaking seems absolutely hopeless. • Mother must, of necessity, call on other women with experience or read baby-care books to find out what to do. So, taking care of the new baby is hardly “instinctive.” • The evidence, then, is that “maternal” behavior is a matter of convenience for nature. Since the female gives birth to the infant, she must be programmed to take care of it, which is what happens. This “instinct” however, must also exist in the male animal. There is no evidence that any difference in ability or knowledge exists. • Apparently, nature has made the female animal (in most species) more involved while allowing the male to hide from the task as ingeniously as he can – behavior we can see reflected among humans.

Gender Role Behavior • Many of our ideas about gender role behavior come from society, and we start picking up these ideas at a very young age. • For instance, the color blue is used for baby boys; this comes from an old superstition that evil spirits threatened boys in the nursery and that blue, borrowed from the “heavenly blue” of the sky, would ward off these spirits. • Later, legend suggest that baby boys were often found under cabbages (which are often blue in Europe). • Girls were supposedly born inside pink roses, so that is their color.

Identification and Gender Role • Gender role behavior involves acts that reflect society’s view of what is appropriate for males versus what is appropriate for females. • A simple example is society’s idea of who should play with dolls versus who should play with soldiers. • Gender role behavior is thought to arise from identification. Identification is the process of modeling one’s behavior after the behavior patterns of another person, usually of the same sex. • Even though the mother tends to have more influence than the father on children of both sexes, a child will most often actually imitate the parent (or another adult) of the same sex. • But it is a little more complicated than that. Fathers who are very warm and affectionate toward their daughters tend to produce a mild tomboyishness in them. • On the other hand, extreme strictness, control of the child, or unusual physical punishment tend to dispirit both male and female children. • These children become docile, at least externally, and they submit to others. This submissiveness can be deceptive though, because a time may come when such a child will “explode.”

Boys who fathers were not present during preschool years – that is, up to the age of five – tend to be less aggressive and not quite as active in sports. • This finding, even though it is only a statistic and does not apply to all males, deserves a little elaboration. The assumption that males should be football players and females powder puffs in order to be “normal” turns out to be just the opposite of what is actually the case. • The most normal people in terms of mental health are those how lean slightly away from excessive masculinity or femininity. This is an important finding because many single mothers are afraid that something is going to go wrong with their fatherless children. • Most boys in such a position tend to find a role model outside the home very quickly and imitate some older male, perhaps a teacher or an uncle. • In families where either the mother or the father is unusually dominant, the children tend to identify with that dominant parent, even across sex lines. If there is no striking dominance, some daughters identify with the father, some sons with the mothers, and some identify with both. • In addition, children can identify with brothers and sisters. Boys who have only brothers and girls who have only sisters tend to adopt more traditional gender roles than those in families with a mixture. • And girls who grow up with an older brother are more competitive than those who have one.

Psychologically Generated Gender Roles • It appears that animals of all kinds are very aware of gender. • Monkey mothers carefully examine their newborn babies’ genitals and threat babies differently depending on the offspring’s gender. • For instance, they do not allow as much fighting and bickering among females. • Among humans, parents strongly encourage activities that are social defined as appropriate for the child’s gender, especially when the children are quite young. • Fathers, though, are somewhat more determined about this than mothers are. As mentioned, playthings for boys contrast noticeably with those for girls. There is no reason at all why boys would not want to play with doll furniture, since they usually spend considerable time with miniature soldiers and tanks. • In fact, when families send their children to nontraditional nursery schools where fixed gender roles are not taught, the children do not show the usually tools-only-for-boys and teacups-only-for-girls interest. • So, gender role behavior is the result of social training.

Mixing Gender Roles • By strictly defining gender roles and emphasizing differences when they don’t exist, we tend to restrict the full range of possibilities for both men and women. • “Masculine” men, for instance, have difficulty enjoying and showing affection toward babies, playing with small animals, or even listening to someone’s personal problems. • “Feminine” females often can’t assert themselves or make independent judgments. • Thus, it would seem that a mixture of so-called feminine and masculine behaviors makes for the richest life, and we restrict this potential when we stress gender differences.

Multiple Choice 1. Injecting an animal with androgen would probably increase: • breast size • brain size • moodiness • aggressiveness 2. The female hormone is called: • estrogen • androgen • Androgyny 3. Which of the following characteristics apply to females? • greater endurance • live longer than men • fewer genetic defects • all of the above 4. Evidence indicates that males are naturally: • more physical than females • less physical than females • equally as physical as females 5. Which gender performs better on tests of spatial skills? • males • females • neither

True/False • The brains of males are different from the brains of females. • Evidence indicates that males are naturally better than females at math. • Surveys consistently show that males have higher self-confidence than females. • Females are as oriented toward achievement as males are. • Studying animal behavior helps us realize that the maternal “instinct” is present only in females. • Overly strict parents will tend to dispirit their children. • Children tend to identify with the dominant parent.

Male vs. Female For each of the following, answer M for males and F for females, as it applies to communication skills. • Interrupt conversations more often. • Self disclose more often. • Concerned about improving status • More likely to emphasize than to try to solve another’s problems.

Gender Differences