Is gender about what children are or about what they do?

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Cheryl Rackstraw A338386X

TMA02 Option 1

Is gender about what children ‘are’ or about what they ‘do’?

Upon looking into the argument as to how gender is ‘given’ to children or whether it is about what they pick up from society, it is firstly important to understand the difference between sex and gender.  I will firstly begin by addressing this question and then will be looking into it in more detail, looking into how a scientific approach interprets this question and how a social constructionist would approach it. 

It is important to understand gender as being different from sex. Gender comprises the differences between men and women.  Sex refers solely to the physical and biological differences that distinguish male from female. In biological terms the male gender is defined by the presence of XY- chromosomes, the female gender is made up of XX chromosomes.

The World Health Organisation interprets ‘Gender’ as “...the socially constructed roles, behaviour, activities and attributes that a particular society considers appropriate for men and women.   The distinct roles and behaviour may give rise to gender inequalities, i.e. differences between men and women that systematically favour one group. In turn, such inequalities can lead to inequities between men and women in both health status and access to health care”.  (http://www.who.int/topics/gender/en/)

Over recent times, within the last 30 years or so, there has become a difference in how we can interpret human males and females, this can now be done under the classification of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’.  The sex differences can be referred to as the feelings that as child is born with, this is often referred to as the child’s nature.  It is common nowadays to hear a parent saying “it’s in my child’s nature”, meaning that they were born a certain way.  The opposite of this therefore, is gender.  This is the experiences that a child goes through in their lives, such as their upbringing and is known as the child’s nurture.   It is possible to nurture a child, for example, with their self esteem.  

There can be a mixture of the two in a child’s life and the influences of both could still shape how the child grows.

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The scientific approach views a child’s sex as the foundation upon which the gender of a child is built, it suggests that nurture takes precedence over nature.  However, social constructionists take the opposite view to this, in that they believe that gender and sex is a product of humans making this meaning.  They are of the view that gender produces sex and not the other way around.  

If there were no gender then childhood would be very different, there would be no influences in how a person would be treated or how they should act.  If there were no ...

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