Fagot (1978) studied parents at home with toddlers aged 20 – 24 months and found girls were encouraged and praised for activities like dancing, helping and dressing up. Boys were praised for more physical activities and using construction toys like blocks. Boys were often discouraged from playing with ‘girls’ toys such as dolls. Further research has shown it is fathers, rather than mothers, who are most likely to discourage boys from playing with feminine toys and that this tendency continues throughout childhood. This study, as Oakley’s both show the differences we are set for our gender roles from an early age.
Lamb et al (1980) also studied 3 –5 year olds at play. They found boys and girls tended to play with sex-appropriate toys e.g. cars for boys and dolls for girls. They were critical of each other for playing with toys seen as more appropriate for the opposite sex. They were also critical of they saw a girl using girls;’ toys in a ‘boyish’ way or boys using boys’ toys in a ‘girlish’ way. Parents set out these rules usually, so it is again socialisation that is teaching us how to act.
These gender differences are not only taught by our adult piers but through other forms in today’s society such as books, media, television, school, families, friends and so forth. This is all taken in from a very early age.
An example of this is the study conducted by Taris and Offir (1977). They found that gender differences were being taught at from a young age largely through the characters that were portrayed by men and women in story books, typically being that the males would show bravery, courage and perseverance whilst the women were weaker, fearful and dependant, therefore giving the immediate impression of there being a difference.
Collins et al (1984) found:
- There are twice as many male characters as female characters in children’s books
- Male and female characters in leading roles were as active and adventurous as each other but there were far fewer females leads overall.
- Where males and female characters had supporting roles, these tended to be much more sex-stereotypical. E.g. boys active and independent, girls passive and dependent.
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Children are still read traditional children’s literature, such as fairy stories; Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Snow White all have beautiful helpless heroines who are rescued by strong adventurous princes. History books too are filled with male models: heroes, kings, explorers, adventurers, and scientists. These illustrate stereotypical male behaviors as well as showing women to be unimportant historically.
Media has a huge effect on how we portray and view things, to what we accept and the way we should be and act. The study conducted by Liesbet van Zoonen (1994) found that male and females are portrayed very differently through the media. Females were often viewed as beautiful, young and fragile. Portrayed as the weaker, submissive sex, emotional and dependant on man.
Research throughout the 1950’s to 1970’s showed that there were twice as many male characters on TV as female characters. Also there are very few female cartoon characters. Females tended to be shown as dependent, over-emotional and less intelligent or able than men. Davis (1990) found that this picture had not changed . In addition:
- Female’s marital status is made more obvious than men’s
- Women are four times more likely than men to be shown provocatively dressed.
- 20% of female characters are shown engaging in domestic activities as compared to 3% of men
- Females are more likely to be shown as victims of violent crime than as violent criminals; males are just as likely to be victims as criminals.
In TV advertisements Harris and Stobart (1986) showed that females are typically shown in domestic roles, producing arguments based on opinion rather than fact and advertising products to do with beautifying self or home. Men tended to be shown in roles outside the home, producing scientific arguments for products and advertising products such as cars and financial services.
Aletha Huston (1983) noted that adverts for boys’ toys were loud and fast, whereas those for girls’ toys were soft and fuzzy. When six-year olds were shown adverts for a ‘neutral’ toy but in either the ‘fast’ or the ’fuzzy’ style, they could tell which sex the advert was aimed at.
Laura Mulvey (1975) argues the film industry portray women as sex objects. Typical roles being that of a prostitute, mistress or wife. Using the female body as that one of desire, play and object for man.
Dworkin (1981) also supports this and says it reinforces the myth that women are the domineered sex and promotes sexual violence against women. Women are viewed as weak, are humiliated, and degraded by what appears to be the higher and more domineering male sex. This can b assumed that men and women have different sexual personalities.
The question to be asked is “Why”? And how did this all begin? How is it that the world has always belonged to man until of late where women have begun to make a change? One answer to this is evolutionary adaptations and our fight for survival. This theory goes against the socialisation theory. Giving the opinion that it is not society that conforms us, but rather our genes. Over long stretches of time, revolution of the ‘successful genes’ will determine that these are the dominant genes and therefore determine that men and women will be programmed to act masculine or feminine. For survival for the early stages of man, man was always the strongest, which is still true in most cases today. Man was the one who went out to hunt and kill for food, and who protected his family. Women were dependant on the man for this, and were the one’s that stayed at home and nurtured the children and took loving care of her family. The female is therefore determined to be the more caring and loving one. She has only limited amount of time she can produce children, where as the male is the more aggressive and less nurturing, with the fact that he also instinctively has the need to ‘sow his seed’ to pass our genes on and ensure our survival as a race.
Evidence of this has been found through a number of studies. The study of Imperato-McGinley et al. (1974) was the study of a group of childrenin Santo Domingo who were all born with insensitivity to the male hormone, which during pre-birth leads to the formation of male external genitalia. This meant they were born female but once they reached puberty they changed sex. These children were all raised as females up until this point. All of the children accepted their new gender identities and Imperato-McGinley was able to argue the fact that as they could do this, it meant that gender differences were determined by biological factors. All the socialisation the children had been through to make them behave a certain way seemed to be able to be forgotton therefore suggesting that it is biologically determined by our genes to act differently.
This could however be due to the fact that as this was known to happen in this country that it was not such a shock to the families and could be considered as normal, and not socially outcast. Another factor would be that males were also more highly desired than females in Santo Domingo therefore ‘changing’ to male from female would be seen as a good thing.
A similar study conducted by Money and Erhardy (1972) was that of the same genetic default, but the study was one that was in America. The children in this study were quite traumatised when this happened to them, and they wanted to remain female and could not come to terms easily with changing gender identity. This suggesting that socialisation plays a large part in our gender roles.
This would be in keeping with the theory of Money (1955) until he was proved horribly wrong. Money’s theory was that babies are born neutral to masculinity or feminity, that children were born psychosexually undifferentiated, and that nurture and social surroundings will influence the behaviour. His theory was based on countless successful gender reassignment operations he had performed. Money’s only provisos were that such “sex assignments” be done as early as possible – preferably within weeks of birth – and that once the sex was decided on, it was to be kept a secret from the child, for fear of introducing dangerous ambiguities into the child’s mind.
Money was advancing the view that all children form a sense of themselves as male or female according to whether they are dressed in blue or pink, given a masculine or feminine name, clothed in trousers or dresses, given guns or dolls to play with. This was proof to Money that his theory was correct.
Money’s theory seemed well proved for years and he wrote several famous and well-read books that many scientists followed. That is until it came to the case of ‘John and Joan’. Joan, was born male, but brought up to believe he was female after a routine operation for circumcisions had gone horribly wrong, and he had been left with a burnt off penis. He was not told of the circumstances of what had happened to him. He wore girls clothes, was given girls toys to play with, did ‘girly’ things such as bake cookies with his mum. There was no reason to think that he was not a girl. However, his genetic makeup determined his behaviour. He would use the ‘girls’ toys and play with them in a conventionally ‘boyish’ manner, using dolls as aeroplanes to crash, and cars to race round in. He was a loner at school. He didn’t want to play with the girls as he felt out of place and did not enjoy the same activities as they did, and the boy’s did not accept him, as he was a girl. He became increasingly depressed and felt like he wanted to die. His father, distraught at this, told him the truth about himself. From then on he begged for the transformation to make him a boy again. This sad story would seemed to have proved Money wrong, and even though socialisation has a big effect on how we act as male and females, it can not wholly determine or override what essentially is in our genes.
It should be appreciated that there are indeed valid arguments within both views of what differentiates between men and women. Neither is entirely right nor wrong – the answer lies somewhere between. We are pre-determined to a degree, to act in different ways as we have different hormones, different physical attributes inclining us towards different roles. While society exaggerates gender differences, initially biological differences will have lead society to have developed in this way. However, as we have evolved, society has magnified these distinctions whereby the sexes are encouraged to display differences more obviously than genetically determined.
