In Females oestrogen is released which is responsible for the development of the female sex organs and also stimulates bodily functions such as the menstrual cycle. A small amount of testosterone is released in women to cause sex drive.
Brain Lateralisation is also believed to responsible for gender development. In males the brain is strongly lateralised to the right side. This may suggest why males have a lower emotional intelligence than males as emotional intelligence is associated with the left side of the brain.
Females have more activity in the corpus callosum that males which means there is more communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain in females than in males, which explain why females have better language skills than males.
Finally chromosomes can influence gender development. A female will have XX chromosomes and a male with have XY chromosomes. The Y chromosome in males stimulates the release of the Mullerian duct inhibitor which prevents the formation of ovaries and results in formation of ovaries and results in testes growing.
Evaluation of the Biological Explanation for Gender Development
The Biological explanation for gender development tends to be reliable because many different research methods are used throughout the approach such as brain scans, lab experiments and twin studies etc which have all lead to similar findings, suggesting that the results are reliable. In addition to this explanations based on test results can easily be replicated and therefore reliability can be assessed.
A disadvantage of the biological approach however is that it does not consider other explanations of gender. One explanation is that of the learning approach which suggests that we can learn our gender through strategies of upbringing and nurture as well as environmental factors and culture, for example social learning, which suggests that we learn our gender behaviour by observing a role model, remembering what we observe and imitating it in a similar situation.
Finally most of the experiments are carried out on animals due to the ethical constraints with humans. This is considered a disadvantage because animals do not carry the same hormones as us and therefore results may not be generalizable to humans.