Gender, sex and androgyny

• sex is a biological fact that cannot change and is determined by our chromosomes
• gender is a persons sense of maleness or femaleness, partly influenced by our environment and is open to change
• sex stereotypes are shared expectations that people within society and cultures hold about what is acceptable behaviour for males and females
• concepts of masculine and feminine behaviours that make up stereotypes are learnt through socialisation (SLT) and reinforced by parents, peers, media etc
• an evaluation of sex stereotypes in psychology are that it is a cognitive shortcut, allowing us to quickly work how how we should approach or treat someone - however this can lead to discrimination
• Madhura et al provides biological evidence to sex stereotypes - brain scans were conducted on 949 men and women, found that women's brains had better connections between the left and right hemispheres, mens brains had more intense activity in each hemisphere, concluding the stereotype that women are better multi taskers
• androgyny - displaying a balance of both masculine and feminine behaviours/attitudes - both men and women can be androgynous
• Bem et al. - believed that high androgyny is associated with psychological wellbeing because a person is then better equipped to adapt to a range of situations - non androgynous people would find this challenging as they have a narrower range of traits to draw on 
• supporting research of androgyny improving wellbeing: Serbin et al: found androgynous females scored lower for depression and social introversion than feminine females this supporting research adds internal validity to the theory that being androgynous Is positively correlated with good mental health however, this assumption has since been challenged, some researchers believe individuals with more masculine traits are better adjusted as these traits are highly valued in individualistic cultures.

   
• a limitation of Bem sex role inventory is that it was developed in America this is a limitation because it means that the method is culture bound to American gender traits and therefore it would be inappropriate to use in other countries to measure androgyny it is also therefore ungeneralisable so has low external/population validity outside of the usa 
• • Androcentrism- considering male thinking / behaviour as normal and so regarding female and non-binary thinking / behaviour as deviant and abnormal when it is different from the male norm
• • Alpha bias- overemphasising the differences between men and women
• • Beta bias- underestimate the differences between men and women - findings from studies carried out on men can be generalised to women  e.g - Milgram 

   
• • Freud's theories are androcentric and alpha bias - oedipus and electra complex - androcentric because he focused on male participants, so male behaviour is seen as the norm and female behaviour is abnormal - alpha bias because girls do not suffer the same oedipal conflict as boys, they do not identify with their mothers as strongly as boys identify with their fathers so develop weak supergos- the difference between male and female pps is overestimated. 
• • Bem Sex Role Inventory. 20 items represent typically male characteristics, the next 20 represent typically female characteristics and the final 20 represent neutral characteristics. Through a self-report 7-point Likert scale, participants rate their own personality, which is then measured across the two dimensions of androgyny (or undifferentiated) and masculinity (or femininity).
• there is evidence supporting the reliability and validity of the BSRI scale. For example, the BSM underwent a pilot study with 1000 students who rated their personality according the masculine, feminine and neutral characteristics, and found that the classification given by the BSM mostly agreed with the student’s own gender
• Bem’s BSRI may be considered an over-simplification of such a complex and subjective social construct as gender