Gender Roles & Sexuality

These flashcards cover key vocabulary and concepts related to gender roles and sexuality, helping to reinforce important terms and their definitions from the lecture material.

Biological sex

Physical characteristics that define male and female.

Gender

Features that society associates with or considers appropriate for men and women.

Estrogens

Sex hormones that influence female physical characteristics and help regulate the menstrual cycle.

Androgens

Sex hormones that promote the development of male genitals and secondary sex characteristics, primarily testosterone.

Gender-role norms

Society’s expectations or standards about what males and females should be like.

Gender stereotypes

Overgeneralized beliefs about the characteristics of all males and all females, often inaccurate.

Communal Traits

Traits that emphasize connectedness to others, including emotionality and sensitivity.

Agentic Traits

Traits that emphasize individual action and achievement, including dominance, independence, and assertiveness.

Cisgender

Individuals whose internal sense of gender matches their physiological sex.

Transgender

Individuals whose internal sense of gender does not match their physiological sex.

Gender Identity

Internal awareness of gender, which may be cisgender, transgender, or non-binary.

Gender schema theory

Theory that gender-typing emerges as children develop schemas of what is gender-appropriate.

Social role theory

Theory suggesting psychological gender differences result from the contrasting social roles of women and men.

Gender intensification hypothesis

The process where gender differences may be magnified by hormonal changes in puberty and increased pressure to conform to gender roles.

Differential looking time

A phenomenon in infants suggesting rudimentary recognition of gender-stereotypic information based on what toys they look at.