women's psych exam 1

Gloria Steinman

founder of Ms. Magazine talked about real issues 

impactful women

• many years ago:

  • Harriet Tubman

  • Susan b Anthony

  • Helen Keller

• yesterday:

  • Shannon Faulkner (first female candidate to enter the citadel in 1995 today women make up 10%)

  • Lois Jensen: first woman in iron mines led to case against sexual harassment 

gender equity index

Measures of gender equality or inequality are statistical tools employed to quantify the concept of gender equality.

• severe discrimination: Muslim extremist (Taliban), Afghanistan

• less discrimination: Scandinavian countries. Iceland is number 1

history of women

In Colonial Times

• cooked/cleaned, had no legal rights

• all white men created equal who own property

In the 1800s

• most of life spent having children, spinster (unmarried woman)

• education in early 1800s was okay but later not

• super low wages and slaves were treated worse

In the 1900s

• “Voluntary motherhood”- Margaret Sanger

• right to vote in 1920- Elizabeth Stanton & Susan B

• war gave women opportunity to work in many industries

• birth control in 1961

• civil rights in 1964 (women added last minute as a protected group)

• roe v wade 1973 but june 2022 overturned

civil rights act

protected groups: gender, race, religion. national origin, color

• groups protected by later federal laws:

  • disability

  • age

  • veteran status

  • pregnancy

• groups recently protected by federal laws(June 2020)

  • sexual orientation

  • gender identity

stereotypes based on identity labels

• long standing cultural norm that a woman is defined by her terms of her relationship to a man ex. Ms. Mrs. Miss.

• stereotypes of women who prefer nontraditional forms of address might be due to the belief that they are in nontraditional roles

sex vs gender

• sex: classification as female or male based on their genetic makeup, anatomy, and reproductive functions

  • DSD- disorders of sexual development/intersex

• gender: meanings that societies and individuals give to female and male categories

  • what we as society consider “masc” and “fem”

nature vs nurture

• we share a common origin that gives is an inborn human nature in common

• we have differences that are shaped by environment 

gender difference explanations

• essential differences: differences are produced by biological explanations

• social constructionist approach: differences are produced by socialization, not biology

gender differences

• women smile more

• less likely to graduate in STEM majors

• suffer depression 2x more than men

• make up 50% of middle managers but about 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs

• report less sexual desire & engage less frequently in sexual behavior

what is feminism?

Two general themes

1. Value women as important and worthwhile human beings

2. Recognize need for social change 

history of feminism

• 1st wave (early 1900s) centered around voting rights 

• 2nd wave 60s-89s feminine mystique by Betty Friedan came out after WWII, came out in 1963 credited for sparking the second wave, challenged the belief that fulfillment as a woman had only one definition for American women after 1949—the housewife-mother

• 3rd wave 1990s arose from backlash to the 2nd wave of feminism, focusing on individual issues like date rape and sexual harassment 

women in psychology

• Mary Walton Caulkins, first APA female president 

• Most new graduates in psychology are women

• bias in psych research

feminist research methods

• quantitative

  • emphasizes objectivity and control

  • compares partcipants’ repsonses to standrad situation 

• qualitative

  • emphasizes subjective procedures 

  • focuses on women’s accounts of their own experience and attempts to capture unique perspectives 

stereotyping

• Prescriptive - what society says men and women should be like

  • Intensified prescriptives - positive qualities considered desirable for both men and women

  • Relaxed prescriptives - desirable but not expected if absent (e.g., intelligence in women is good but not judged harshly if absent) 

• Proscriptive - what society says men and women should not be like

  • Intensified proscriptives - qualities considered undesirable for both men and women

  • Relaxed proscriptives - undesirable qualities that are more harshly judged in one gender but the other (e.g.,sexual promiscuous is judge more harshly for women than men) 

privilege

• We can define privilege as a set of unearned benefits given to people who fit into a specific social group.

• Society grants privilege to people because of certain aspects of their identity.

• Privilege is the other side of oppression.

power differentials

• Gender inequality is fundamentally a difference in power

  • Patriarchy - a system of society or government in which the father or eldest male is head of the family and descent is traced through the male line (Oxford dictionary)

    • A system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it.

impact of patriarchy

• women are excluded from decision making

• women earn 80 cents to a man’s dollar 

bases for gender stereotypes

• social categorization: simplifies social perceptions, based on easily identifiable characteristics

• social role theory: based on observed behaviors in typical social roles

children’s perceptions

• 6-Year-Old Girls Already Have Gendered Beliefs About Intelligence

  • They’re more likely to avoid games meant for “really, really smart” children.

  • Age 5: boys and girls both think they are equally smart

  • Ages 6 or 7 = only the boys still held to that view.

• In academic fields (like math and physics) people believe success depends on raw talent not learned

Bechdel Test

• The Bechdel Test — created by Alison Bechdel in her 1985 comic, “Dykes to Watch Out For” — is a well-known measurement of gender bias in movies.

• The comic strip that popularized the test was titled “The Rule,” and it says that to pass the test the movie must have three things.

  • Two female characters (preferably named),

  • Who talk to each other,

  • About something other than a man.

neuroplasticity of the brain

The brain changes in response to its own experience 

• Boys and girls have different environments, which may lead to changes in brain processing 

gender development components

• gender identity

  • how individuals think about themselves

  • develops around 2-3 years old

  • children can identify their own gender and begin categorizing gender-associated traits

• gender expression

  • how individuals express themselves through clothes, behavior, activities

  • can be traditional or non

• gender roles

  • societal expectations of how males and females should act 

  • varies across cultures, time periods, and families

traditional gender roles

• Traditional gender attitude:  the belief that females should engage in communal behaviors and roles and males should engage in agentic behaviors and roles

children’s knowledge/belief about gender

• by age 2 can identify boys and girls through hair and clothing & start associating specific activities/objects with females and males

• by age 3: almost all can identify whether they are a boy or a girl and have gender stereotypes for toys, clothing, activities, and jobs

• after 3: knowledge of gender stereotypes grow rapidly and becomes rigid between 5 and 7

• 7-12 years theres more flexibility in gender streortypes

• adolescents and older it become less flexible 

peers influence on gender development

• boys usually receive stronger rejection than girls for nontraditional behavior

• gender segregation by 3 or 4

• gender prejudice, girls like girls, boys like boys

toys and what they teach

Some research suggests that toy preference may be a result of both biology and socialization - monkey studies

puberty

• age of onset 9-16, average=12 (2 years before boys)

• girls become more aware of sexism during adolescence 

gender intensification

increasing divergence in gender related behaviors and attitudes of girls and boys that emerges in adolescence decreases later

• the phenomenon where adolescents face increased pressure to conform to culturally defined gender roles

biological sex

• Sex refers to biological categories of male and female

  • Features such as genes, chromosomes, hormones, genitalia, etc.

  • Relatively stable, not easily changed

  • Most common chromosomal patterns

    • XX (women)

    • XY (men)

  • Atypical sex development

    • Intersex or disorders of sexual development

typical prenatal development

• Stages of prenatal sex differentiation 

  • Chromosomes (women – XX; men – XY)

  • Gonadal development (women – ovaries; men – testes) directed by the X or Y chromosome

    • Androgens – male sex hormones (testosterone, MIS, and DIH)

    • Estrogens – female sex hormones

  • Development of internal reproductive organs – directed by hormones 

  • External genitalia – directed by hormones

  • Brain differentiation - hypothalamus 

atypical prenatal development

• Intersexuality:  the intermingling of female and male sexual characteristics

  • Prevalence: estimates range from .5% to 1% (Lips, 2019) but seems to be highly variable depending on source

• Can be differences in hormones, chromosomes, external or internal genitalia from “typical” male or female

• Transgender vs. Intersex (identified often by medical personnel who notice something unusual)

Androgen-Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS)

• XY chromosome

• unresponsive to the androgens that testes produce

• appear female externally; no uterus

• raised as female; may not know XY until trying to have kids

Gender: Nature or Nurture

• The story of David Reimer, a sexologist, felt that “nurture”, not nature, determines gender identity, “As Nature Made Him” 

• Reiner & Gaerheart- study of boys born without penis; had early reassignment surgery to be raised as girls; half developed male identity by adolescence 

traditional masculinity

• toughness- strong, aggressive

• anti-femininity, so reject help and emotions

• power and statusP

APA guidelines for psychological practice with boys and men

• 40 years of research shows traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful and socializing boys to suppress emotions causes damage inside and outside

• inward: 3.5 times more likely to die by suicide than women and die 5 years earlier

• outward: commit 90% of homicides in US, men are 77% of homicide victims

violence agaisnt women

• About 30% of ever-partnered women throughout the world have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner at some point in their lives

  • For women, homicide is often at the hands of partners

• One in five girls has been sexually abused during childhood, with estimates from some countries placing that proportion closer to one in three

• Women, children and elderly people bear the burden of the non-fatal consequences of physical, sexual and psychological abuse

the 3 lies/myths of what makes a man

1. ball field- athletic ability, size, strength, skill set

2. bedroom- sexual conquest

3. economic- breadwinner

• many have alexithymia- inability to put feelings into words

changing the culture

• recognize biases

• understand power and privilege

• encourage prosocial; masculinity

• see men as complex beings

• avoid stereotyping

harvard happiness study

Loneliness kills, close ties protect people

jackson katz

founded Mentors in Violence Prevention

• one of the original gender violence, sexual harassment, and bullying prevention programs

• tough guise: violence, manhood, and american culture

healthy masculinity 

• vulnerable and can ask for help

• express wide range of emotions

• relationship skills

• comfort in nurturing roles

According to the text, by what age can infants typically distinguish between women's and men's voices?

6 months

What percentage of intersex individuals make up the population, according to the chapter?

between 1-4%

early feminist scholars

Naomi Weisstein argued that psychologists wrongly assumed sex differences were natural

• pushed study of social environments instead

Sheila Rowbotham found women oppressed by patriarchy and capitalism 

social learning theory

• gender learned via reinforcement and punishment

• imitate role models, behavior shaped by external feedback

cognitive developmental theory (kohlberg)

• children actively construct understanding of gender (active learners)

• by age 2-3 know own gender

• 5-7 rigid categories ex)girls can’t be firefighters

• after 7 more flexible

gender schema theory (Sandra Bem)

children build mental maps about gender

• schemas filter info- notice/remember things that “fit” stereotypes

• ex) remembering nurse=woman

social role theory (Alice Eagly)

division of labor shapes stereotypes

• women are caregivers and men leaders

• reinforces cycle 

social dominance theory 

societies with hierarchies

• men are socialized into hierarchy- enhancing values like power/dominance

• women are socialized into hierarchy- attenuating values like equality & support

feminist theories

• gender reform: seek equality within current structures ex) equal rights

• gender resistance againce: emphasize men’s power over women and call for resistance against patriarchy

• gender rebellion: challenge binary categories