Deck 13: C: Gender and Development

Question 1

Your six-year-old niece does not like to play with boys. Your brother thinks that this is okay but his wife thinks that your niece should play with both boys and girls. What can you tell your sister-in-law about gender differences in styles of interaction and how that is related to the selection of same-sex playmates?

Answer 1

A good answer will be similar to the following:
In general, girls play with girls and boys play with boys. Children tend to choose same-sex playmates even in the absence of any adult pressure to do so. In fact, even when parents encourage boys and girls to play with each other most children will resist. Part of this resistance comes from the fact that boys and girls have very different styles of interacting with peers. Girls' remarks and behaviours tend to provide support for each other. Boys' behaviour tends to be rougher and boys try to dominate each other by using intimidation, threats, and exaggeration. When boys and girls interact, girls find that their enabling style is ineffective with boys. So, your niece is not unusual.

Question 2

You and a friend have an argument in which your friend insists that males and females are very different in many intellectual and social domains. What can you tell your friend about gender differences and their importance?

Answer 2

A good answer will be similar to the following:
First, gender differences have not been found in many domains. In the area of intellectual ability, gender differences have been found in three domains: verbal ability, mathematical ability, and some aspects of spatial ability. In the area of social behaviour, the most firmly established gender difference is greater aggression in males. Gender differences also seem to exist in greater emotional sensitivity and greater susceptibility to social influence in females. Even though these differences exist, the differences in group averages for males and females are very small, which means that there is considerable overlap in the distributions of males and females. Also, even though gender differences have been found in a few intellectual and behavioural domains, there are still many areas in which gender differences have not been found.

Question 3

Your friend insists that gender differences in behaviour are due totally to socialization-that if you treat males and females exactly the same, there will be no differences between them. You disagree, arguing that biology has some influence on gender differences. What research evidence would you cite to support your claim?

Answer 3

A good answer will include the following key points:
Females that are exposed to unusually large amounts of male hormones during prenatal development tend to prefer masculine activities and male playmates to a greater extent than girls not exposed to these amounts of male hormones. This suggests that male hormones, such as androgen, influence the development of masculine traits.

Question 4

You hear a teacher of eight-year-olds saying the girls in her class are far more likely to collaborate than the boys. She maintains that the boys were too busy overtly disagreeing with each other to collaborate over anything. Can you explain this difference in behaviour?

Question 5

Explain how (1) social cognitive theorists, (2) Kohlberg's cognitive theory, and (3) gender-schema theory propose that children develop their gender identities.

Question 6

Describe gender differences in mathematics during the elementary school years and during high school and college.

Question 7

Jeannie is eight months pregnant with her first child. She has little use for traditional gender roles and plans for her son or daughter not to view the world in gender-related terms. What can you tell Jeannie about some things that she can do to help achieve her goal and about the influence of other factors in the development of gender stereotypes?

Question 8

Define and give examples of instrumental and expressive traits. How do they fit with gender stereotypes?

Question 9

What are some of the explanations for gender differences in spatial ability?

Question 10

Compare and contrast the ways that parents treat boys and girls.

Question 11

Your friend Gretchen is an elementary school teacher. She told you that she has noticed that the boys in her class seem to have more language problems than the girls. She's also noticed that the girls seem to have better math skills than the boys but this doesn't seem consistent with the fact that few women are in jobs that require extensive mathematical skill. Gretchen wonders if gender differences in verbal and mathematical ability are substantiated by research or if she has unusual students. What can you tell Gretchen about gender differences in mathematical and verbal ability?