Psychology of Women (PSYC 300) Exam 1

Gender Roles

Cultural beliefs applied to individuals on the basis of their socially assigned sex

Gender

The meanings that societies and individuals give to female and male categories, social expectations of roles and behaviors for females and males, what we as a society consider "masculine" and "feminine". Gender is not the same all across cultures around the world, social construct, malleable

Sex

The classification of individuals as female or male based on their genetic makeup, anatomy, and reproductive functions, physical anatomy. Male is XY and female is XX generally all across the world (exception of intersex)

Beta Bias

Men and women are basically alike in their intellectual and social behaviors. Any differences that do occur are small and inconsistent, and produced by socialization, not biology (similarities approach)

Alpha Bias

Emphasizes the differences between women and men and that these differences are biologically based (differences approach/essentialist approach)

Essentialism

Essential qualities within the individual that are rooted in biology

Feminism

Liberal, cultural, socialist, radial, and women of color feminism all posit that women are disadvantaged relative to men. They differ in their assumptions about the sources of this inequality, value women as important and worthwhile human beings, recognize need for social change

Liberal Feminism

The belief that women and men should have the same political, legal, economic, and educational rights and opportunities, passing laws that guarantee equal rights for women

Cultural Feminism

The belief that women and men are different and that women's special qualities, such as nurturance, concern about others, and cooperativeness, should be valued, essential differences between men and women

Socialist Feminism

The attitude that gender inequality is rooted in economic inequality

Radical Feminism

The belief that gender inequality is based on male oppression of women, male control and domination of women throughout history

Patriarchy

Male control over and dominance of women

Women of Color Feminism

(also known as womanism) the belief that both racism and classism must be recognized as being as important as sexism, women of different cultures and social classes cannot be presumed to be the same

Racism

Bias against people because of their ethnicity

Classism

Bias based on social class

Sexism

Gender-based bias

Sample

The individuals who are investigated in order to reach conclusions about the entire group of interest to the researcher (i.e., the population)

The exclusion of certain groups of people from psychological examination...

Devalues their experiences and can lead to inaccurate conclusions about them based on faulty generalizations

Statistical Significance

The findings are not due to chance alone

Gender biased language...

Must be avoided

Narrative Approach

The traditional way of examining psychological gender differences by sifting though dozens or even hundreds of studies on a particular topic and to form an impression of the gender trends in their results

Who first attempted to synthesize the research on gender differences in the narrative fashion?

Elanor Maccoby and Carol Nagy Jacklin in 1974

Meta-Analysis

A statistical method of integrating the results of several studies on the same topic, provides a measure of the magnitude, or size, of a given gender difference rather than simply counting the number of studies finding a difference

Effect Size

Indicates not only the results but how large the difference between the two groups is

Three themes found in the text

1) The diversity of women's identities and experiences should be recognized and celebrated and psychology must examine the intersecting identities and experiences of them

2) Men hold more power than women, the greater organizational and interpersonal power of men compared to women negatively shapes and limits women's experiences.

3) Gender is socially constructed; it is shaped by social, cultural, and societal influences/values

Intersectionality

People exist in a framework of multiple identities that interact with each there to determine an individual's experiences and that cannot be understood separately from each other because they are integral parts of a whole

Race

A biological concept that refers to physical characteristics of people

Ethnicity

Variations in cultural background, nationality, history, religion, and/or language

Organizational Power

The ability to use valuable resources to dominate and control others

Interpersonal Power

The ability to influence one's partner within a specific relationship

Power-Over

A person's or group's control of another person or group

Power-To

The empowerment of self and others to accomplish tasks

Social Construction of Gender

The traits, behaviors, and roles that people associate with females and males are not inherent in one's sex; they are shaped by numerous interpersonal, cultural, and societal forces

Gender Stereotypes

Widely shared beliefs about the attributes of females and males

Communion

Personality characteristics associated with women, such as sympathy, kindness, and warmth, reflect a concern about other people

Agency

The group of instrumental traits associated with men, including achievement orientation and ambitiousness, reflects a concern about accomplishing tasks

Gender related beliefs serve as...

Lenses that guide one's expectations and interpretations of other people

Which of the three ethnic groups are least likely to adhere to rigid gender stereotypes for women and men?

Blacks

Ageism

A bias against older people

Ableism

The bias against people because of their disability

A woman's _____, __________, _______ _______, _______ __________, and ___________ influence how she is perceived

age, ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation, and ableness

The exploration of the origins of gender stereotypes focuses on two related issues:

1) The reasons why people stereotype on the basis of gender

2) The reasons why these stereotypes center on communal traits for females and agents attributes for males

Social Categorization

Sorting individuals into categories, focuses on the characteristics people share with other members of that category

Social role theory

Stereotypes of women and men stem from the association of women with the domestic role and men with the employee role

Specific definition of sexism

Stereotypes and/or discriminatory behaviors that serve to restrict women's roles and maintain male dominance

Backlash effect

Social and economic reprisals that occur due to violating gender stereotypes

Modern sexism

Based on the coexistence of conflicting attitudes, characterized by the belief that gender discrimination is no longer a problem in society and is manifested by harmful treatment of women in ways that appear to be socially acceptable

Ambivalent sexism encompasses which two types of sexism?

Hostile and Benevolent sexism

Hostile Sexism

Negative stereotypes of women

Benevolent Sexism

The seemingly positive view that idealizes women as pure objects of men's adoration and protection

Consistent patterns revealed in media:

Underrepresentation of females, underrepresentation of specific groups of females, the portrayal of gender-based social roles, the depiction of female communion and male agency, and the emphasis on female attractiveness and sexuality

Double Standard of aging

The stigma of aging for women is much greater than it is for men

Research shows that media not only reflect and transmit existing _______________ but also have a _________________ effect

Stereotypes, socializing

Sexist language

Language that unnecessarily differentiates between females and males or excludes and trivializes members of either sex

Male is normative

Male behaviors, roles, and experiences are the standards (i.e., norms) for society

Masculine generic langage

Language that uses male terms but purports to be inclusive of females and males (chairman, freshman, businessman, man-hours, forefathers)

Spotlighting

The practice of emphasizing an individual's gender

Romaine (1999) contends that the practice of making the female with a suffix added to the male root is...

One way the English language signifies that a woman is a "lesser man"

Parallel Terms

Pairs of words in the English language in which the objective meanings of the female and male terms are comparable, but the female word has a negative connotation (bachelor vs. spinster)

Childlike Terms

The terms might be perceived as signs of affection in an intimate relationship, but their use by non intimates reflects the childlike quality of many terms used to identify women

Sexist langage __________ and __________ gender stereotypes and _______ differences between women and men

Reinforces, perpetuates, status

Women in Colonial Times

Cooked, cleaned, no legal rights, could not own property, Bible teaching: "The head of the woman is the man", all "men" created equal by the new US government (white men who owned property)

Women in the 1800s

Spent life having children, birth control not discussed, spinster, "rule of thumb", education in early 1800s okay but later went down, pitifully low wages for women workers, slaves treated even worse

Women in the 1900s

Voluntary Motherhood (Margaret Higgins Sanger - access to birth control or preventing yourself from getting pregnant), right to vote in 1920 (Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony), Impact of the wars (gave women opportunities to work in many types of industry), birth control in 1961

Civil Rights Movement

1964 - Women added last minute as a protected group, didn't think it was going to pass because they added women, how it effected the airline industry and the flight attendants

Roe vs. Wade

1973 - Legalized abortion

Civil Rights Act

Protected Groups: gender/sex, race, religion, national origin, color

Groups protected by later Federal Laws: disability (1991) and age (1964/5)

Groups still not protected by federal laws: homosexuals, transgender, sexual orientation

Impactful women from many years ago

Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony (arrested for voting illegally), Helen Keller

Impactful women from "yesterday"

Anita Hill, Shannon Faulkner (Citadel), Lois Jensen

Impactful women of today

Hilary Clinton, Danica Patrick (race car driver), Lt. Gen. Ann E. Dunwoody (1st female four-star US Army General), Oprah

Afghanistan Women

Have limited rights, freedoms, often victims of violence

Nature vs. Nurture

Nature - we share a common origin that gives us an inborn human nature in common

Nurture - we have differences that are shaped by our environment

First wave Feminism

Early 1900s, centered around voting rights; ended after 1920, advocates for black rights and they added in women

Second wave Feminism

1960s-1989s (WWII time where women worked in jobs that were not previously available to them), The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, the problem with no name (other people were saying you get the choice to work or not, we do not so do not put us all in one group)

Third wave Feminism

1990s, arose from backlash to 2nd wave of feminism, focused on individual issues (date rape, sexual harassment, etc.)

Fear of Feminism

Backlash to feminism; (infertility epidemic, man shortage, career women with stress-induced disorders), negative stereotypes of feminists (femi-nazis, bra-burners), not all feminism is the same fight, women have many viewpoints

Dominates

Dominates are the ones in society that have access to resources and power that determine rules and morality and values, harder to see the privilege that they have, notice oppression but not always the benefits

Subordinates

Lesser power, access, less of a voice, not as much access to resources or choices

Privilege

When your group is the normative group (reflective of what is standard), a set of unearned benefits given to people who fit into a specific social group, other side of oppression (it may be a standard for you but you may not necessarily notice it)

Normative

We generally default to "he" when talking about things we do not know the sex of, the usage of "guys" for boys and girls

Self-hatred

Internalization of a dominant group's belief

Passing

Pressure to assimilate into dominant culture results in some "minorities" to try to pass as "majority"

Gender identity

One's self-definition as a female or male, usually develops between the ages of 2 or 3

Transgender individuals

Gender identity is inconsistent with their reproductive organs

Gender stereotypes reflect ________ about individuals; they do not tell what anyone is ________ like

Beliefs, actually

Gender attitudes

Beliefs about the appropriate traits, interests, behaviors, and roles of females and males

Sexual orientation

Preference for a same- or other-gender sexual partner, does not reflect the individual's gender related traits, behaviors, interests, or roles

Prenatal sex differentiation

The biological processes that influence the making of one's physical sex

Biological sex is...

Multidimensional; defined by one's chromosomes, hormones, reproductive organs, and brain organization

Which week of development shows anatomical differences in embryos?

6th week

Androgens

Male sex hormones

Estrogens

Female sex hormones

Mullerian ducts

The foundation for female structures

Wolffian ducts

The basis for male internal reproductive structures

Testosterone

An androgen

Mullerian-inhibiting substance

Necessary for the degeneration of the Mullerian ducts

Intersexuality

The intermingling of female and male sexual characteristics, occurs in 1.7% of births

Turner Syndrome

A condition in which the individual has a single X chromosome rather than a pair of sex chromosomes, the individual has neither ovaries nor testes, externally the genitalia are female and the individual is reared as a girl

Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia

An inherited disorder in which the adrenal glands of a genetic female malfunction and produce abnormally high levels of androgens, these individuals have a uterus, the disorder causes either a partial or complete masculinization of the external genitals, diagnosed at birth and baby is reared as a girl

Androgen-insensitivity syndrome

An inherited disorder in which the body of a genetic male cannot utilize androgen, feminizes the external genitals of a genetic male, baby looks female except has no internal reproductive organs