sex, gender & androgyny

define sex

the biological differences between males and females, including chromosomes, hormones and anatomy

define gender

the physiological and cultural differences between males and females including attitudes, behaviours and social roles

define androgyny

displaying a balance of masculine and feminine characteristics in personality

sex role sterotypes

a set of shared expectations that people within a society or culture hold about what is acceptable or unusual behaviour for males or females

eg. males - jobs in higher authority like doctors, powerful, fun, eat lots

females - jobs with less authority like nurses, submissive, caring, eat less

seavey et al

research into sex role sterotypes

• dressed baby in yellow jumpsuit, told adults it was a boy, girl or didnt reveal gender

• left them to play with either a doll, ball or ring (stereotypically gendered toys)

• found that adults gave the doll to the baby if baby was said to be female

• when unknown, females handled baby more

• adults tried to assess unknown gender on basis of percieved strength

suggests adults react and treat babies differently according to the gender they believe it to be

reliable same 3 toy options and outfit

what did Bem propose

that a person can be androgynous by having both masculine and feminine traits

androgyny positively correlates with having good mental health

BEM’s sex role inventory AO1

questionnaire devised by bem in 1974

devised by giving 100 American students a list of traits and asking them to select which are m/f/neutral

60 questions, 20 m eg. dominant, 20 f eg. gentle, 20 n eg. reliable

scored on a 7 point Likert scale 1 never 7 always

aimed to measure androgyny by giving a score for m and f and classifying them into either m, f or a

found of the initial sample, 34% m and 27% f were andrognous

BSRI AO3