Sex, gender identities and the BSRI

• Sex is biological — determined by chromosomes (XX or XY) and reflected in hormones and anatomy. It is innate.
• Gender is psychosocial — the attitudes, roles and behaviours a culture associates with being male or female. It is heavily influenced by social norms, and is far more fluid.
• Sex-role stereotypes — a set of shared expectations, within a society, about what is 'appropriate' behaviour for men and women. They are transmitted by parents, peers, school and the media, and can lead to sexist assumptions.
• Gender identities. The specification requires you to know that gender identity is not only binary (identifying as a man or a woman). A person may be non-binary — identifying with neither category, or with elements of both — or gender fluid, experiencing a gender identity that shifts over time rather than remaining fixed.
• Gender incongruence — the experience of a marked and persistent mismatch between the gender a person experiences and the sex they were assigned at birth. This is the term the current specification uses (older textbooks say 'gender dysphoria').

Androgyny and the BSRI. Bem (1974) argued that masculinity and femininity are not opposite ends of one scale but two independent dimensions. Androgyny is a balance of masculine and feminine characteristics in one person, and Bem argued it is associated with better psychological wellbeing, because androgynous people are more flexible in the way they respond to different situations.

The Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) was the first systematic attempt to measure it: 60 traits (20 stereotypically masculine, 20 stereotypically feminine, 20 neutral) rated on a 7-point scale. It produces scores on two dimensions — masculinity-femininity and androgynous-undifferentiated.

Evaluation: the BSRI was developed by asking 100 American judges to rate 200 traits for how 'desirable' they were for men and women, and it was piloted with over 1,000 students, whose results broadly matched their own gender identity — so it has reasonable validity and reliability. But the traits were selected by a panel in 1970s America, so the scale is culturally and historically specific and may lack temporal validity today. It also relies on self-report, which requires people to have insight into their own gender identity, and reduces a complex, qualitative concept to a single quantitative score — an over-simplification. Bem's claim that androgyny brings wellbeing is challenged too: Adams and Sherer argue that people with a high proportion of masculine traits are better adjusted, because masculine traits are more highly valued in Western society.

Chromosomes, hormones and diversity in sex development

Chromosomes. Of the 23 pairs, the 23rd determines sex: XX = female, XY = male. The Y chromosome carries the SRY gene, which causes testes to develop in the embryo, and these produce androgens (male hormones).

Hormones.

• Testosterone — an androgen, present in both sexes but far higher in males. Prenatally it causes the development of male sex organs and acts on the brain; it is linked to aggression and to competitiveness.
• Oestrogen — determines female sexual characteristics and regulates the menstrual cycle. It also has emotional effects, including heightened emotionality and irritability, sometimes termed premenstrual tension.
• Oxytocin — produced in much greater amounts in women, especially after childbirth. It stimulates lactation and facilitates bonding, and reduces the stress hormone cortisol. It is sometimes called 'the love hormone'.

Diversity in sex development

• Androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) — the individual has an XY karyotype and functioning testes producing androgens, but the body's androgen receptors do not respond to them. Because the tissues cannot 'read' the androgen signal, development follows a typically female external path: in complete AIS the person is born with female external genitalia and is usually raised as a girl, and the condition may not be discovered until puberty, when menstruation does not begin. AIS is powerful evidence that it is not the presence of the Y chromosome alone but the action of hormones on the tissues that shapes sex development.
• Klinefelter's syndrome (XXY) — about 1 in 600 males. Physical: reduced body hair, some breast development (gynaecomastia), underdeveloped genitals, a softening/rounding of body contours, and problems with coordination. Psychological: poorly developed language and reading ability, passivity, shyness and a lack of interest in sexual activity; difficulties with executive function such as problem-solving.
• Turner syndrome (XO) — about 1 in 5,000 females; the individual has only 45 chromosomes. Physical: no menstrual cycle, undeveloped ovaries and therefore sterility; no breast development; a distinctive 'webbed' neck; a broad 'shield' chest; low-set ears; a high waist-to-hip ratio. Psychological: higher-than-average reading ability, but lower-than-average performance on spatial, visual memory and mathematical tasks; socially immature, and often have difficulty 'fitting in'.

Evaluation: comparing people with these syndromes to typical chromosome patterns allows us to see which behaviours have a biological root — a powerful natural experiment supporting the nature side of the debate. But it is a causal fallacy to assume the psychological differences are a direct result of the chromosomes: they may be a social consequence of being treated differently because of the physical differences ('social immaturity' may result from being treated as immature by teachers and peers). There is also a sampling issue: only individuals with the most severe symptoms are typically identified, so the picture we have may be an unrepresentative and exaggerated one.

Which syndrome?

Kohlberg's theory and gender schema theory

Kohlberg's stage theory (1966) — a child's understanding of gender develops with their general cognitive maturity, in three stages:

• Gender identity (around 2) — the child can correctly label themselves and others as a boy or a girl, but does not see gender as fixed: a boy may say he will grow up to be a mummy.
• Gender stability (around 4) — the child realises gender is constant over time: they will remain the same gender when they grow up. But they cannot yet apply this across situations — they may believe that a man doing a 'woman's job' has become a woman, and are confused by external changes of appearance.
• Gender constancy (around 6) — the child understands gender is constant across time and situation, and is no longer fooled by superficial changes in appearance. Only now, Kohlberg claims, does the child begin actively to seek out gender-appropriate role models and imitate them.

Gender schema theory (Martin and Halverson, 1981) — agrees that understanding develops with cognitive maturity, but argues Kohlberg got the timing wrong: children begin acquiring gender schema (organised sets of beliefs about gender) as soon as they have basic gender identity, at around 2–3. They do not have to wait for constancy.

• Children first develop a detailed schema for their in-group (their own gender) and pay far less attention to the out-group. This enhances self-esteem and simplifies the world.
• Schema are used to fix and distort information: children misremember pictures that are inconsistent with their schema, or 'correct' them to fit. Martin and Halverson found that children under 6, shown pictures of gender-inconsistent activities (a male nurse), tended to recall the picture as gender-consistent a week later.
• By about 8, children develop elaborated schema for both genders.

Evaluation: the evidence favours gender schema theory on timing — very young children clearly hold rigid gender stereotypes long before constancy, and Kohlberg's theory cannot explain that. Both theories, however, may underplay the influence of social and cultural factors: the schema children build come from the society around them, and gender schema theory says relatively little about where the content of the schema comes from. Kohlberg's own evidence relied on interviewing very young children, whose limited vocabulary may cause researchers to underestimate what they actually understand.

Kohlberg or Martin & Halverson?

Social learning theory and gender

Social learning theory treats gender as learned from the social environment, not as an inevitable product of biology.

• Direct reinforcement (differential reinforcement) — children are reinforced for gender-appropriate behaviour and often discouraged from gender-inappropriate behaviour. Boys are praised for being active and assertive, girls for being gentle and cooperative. It is through this differential treatment that a child learns what is expected of their gender.
• Vicarious reinforcement — children observe models (parents, peers, teachers, media figures) being rewarded for particular behaviours, and imitate what they see rewarded. They do not need to be reinforced themselves.
• Identification and modelling — imitation is far more likely when the child identifies with the model: someone similar to them (usually of the same gender), attractive, and of high status.
• Mediational processes — attention, retention, motor reproduction and motivation intervene between observing a behaviour and performing it, which is why a child can learn a gender-typed behaviour long before they display it.

Evaluation: SLT's greatest strength is that it explains cultural change: gender roles in Britain have altered dramatically within a century, which is far too fast for genetic change but exactly what shifting models, reinforcement and social norms would predict. It also fits the evidence from Smith and Lloyd (1978), who dressed babies in gender-neutral clothes but labelled them as boys or girls: adults consistently offered a 'boy' a hammer-shaped rattle and encouraged physical activity, while a 'girl' was offered a doll and praised for being pretty — differential reinforcement in action, within minutes. But SLT under-plays biology (it cannot explain the effects of prenatal androgens, or of AIS) and treats the child as a passive recipient of social influence, whereas the cognitive theories show children actively construct their own gender understanding — and do so long before anyone has finished teaching them.

Spec check: the psychodynamic explanation of gender (Freud's Oedipus and Electra complexes) has been removed from 7182 v1.4. It appears in older textbooks; it is no longer examinable.

Culture, media and gender incongruence

Culture. Mead (1935) studied three tribal groups in Papua New Guinea: the Arapesh, where both sexes were gentle and responsive; the Mundugumor, where both were aggressive and hostile; and the Tchambuli, where women were dominant and organised village life while men were passive and decorative. Mead concluded that gender roles are culturally determined, not innate — though she later revised this to a more interactionist view, accepting that some behaviours (male aggression) were universal.

Media. Media provide role models with whom children identify and whom they may imitate. Media also give information about the likely consequences of gender-appropriate behaviour, which increases a child's self-efficacy — the belief that they can carry the behaviour out. Rigid stereotypes are common in advertising and children's television.

Gender incongruence: biological and social/cultural explanations.

• Biological explanations. The brain-sex theory holds that gender incongruence is associated with brain structures that are incompatible with biological sex. The most-cited evidence concerns the BSTc (bed nucleus of the stria terminalis), a region typically about twice as large in men as in women. Studies by Zhou et al. (1995) and Kruijver et al. (2000) found the BSTc in transgender women (assigned male at birth) was of a size typical of females. Twin studies (e.g. Coolidge et al.) also suggest a substantial genetic component.
• Social explanations. Social constructionism argues gender identity is an invention of society, not a biological fact — so gender incongruence is not a pathology but a consequence of a culture that insists on a rigid binary. Psychoanalytic explanations (Ovesey and Person) attribute incongruence in transgender women to separation anxiety before gender identity has formed, with the child fantasising a symbiotic fusion with the mother.

Evaluation: the BSTc evidence has a serious flaw — a study by Chung et al. noted that differences in BSTc volume between men and women do not develop until adulthood, whereas most transgender people report gender incongruence from early childhood. The BSTc difference may therefore be a consequence of the hormone therapy the individuals in the post-mortem studies had received, not a cause of their gender incongruence. Psychoanalytic explanations account only for transgender women, not transgender men. This is also socially sensitive research, and researchers must be alive to the harm that pathologising language can do.

Which explanation?

Bem's key insight

Klinefelter's

David Reimer

Kohlberg's evidence

SLT and cultural change

Evaluating brain-sex theory

Androgen insensitivity syndrome

Sex, gender and identity

Nature, cognition or nurture?

Tap a concept, then the type of explanation it belongs to. Gender is the classic nature-nurture battleground.

Term and meaning

Tap an item on the left, then its partner on the right.

The big ideas to know

You have covered the whole of AQA 4.3.3 Gender. Press Finish to see your score.