Freud’s psychosexual development theory (alpha bias), represented women as being less morally mature than men, in that their superego were less developed and inferior because they do not have a penis (penis envy). By representing women in this way, Freud was changing the treatment of women as second-class citizens in Victorian society. Feminist critics (i.e. Horney – womb envy) claimed that Freud was simply reflecting sexism of his time and therefore building cultural sexism into his theory.
Another alpha biased theory is Kohlberg’s theory of moral development. He believed that men would reach at least stage 4 and women stages 2/3 making it alpha biased because of the difference between women and men. The difference between these stages is that one reflects social morality whereas the other reflects morality of personal relationships.
This view was criticised by Gillighan who claimed women were not morally inferior to men but spoke in a different moral voice based on care and responsibility. She suggested Kohlberg had obtained his results because of abstract dilemmas used. But using real life dilemmas (abortion), women showed more moral development than men. Critics of Gillighans theory (i.e. Urger and Crowford) have argued that Gillighans research was not comparable with the dilemmas used in Kohlberg’s. She was accused of showing a failure to explore the possibility that what appeared to be a gender difference in moral reasoning. This might also reflect women’s subordinate person with perhaps the ethic of “care and responsibility” being expressed by less powerful people, rather than just women.
Many other theories in psychological have ignored differences between men and women. For example, the life span theories by Levinson & Erikson. The concentration on male development (male perspective) is an example of andocentric bias; this means inappropriate assumptions will be made from a biased sample.
Questions about similarities and differences between genders are not just scientific questions but also political (role of women and men in today’s society). The discovery of premenstrual syndrome has led to great deal of experimental research. Some psychologists have argued that many of the performance and mood difference traditionally identified between premenstrual women and poor research design. Several other studies claimed no differences. (Zeedyk and Baitt, 1999).
