Gender Schema Theory

• Martin and Halveson's Gender Schema theory agrees with Kohlberg that children are active in developing their understanding of gender, but claims that it starts much earlier.
• Children become aware of their own gender and establish gender identity at about 2 years old.
• At around 3 years old children develop gender schemas which are mental representations about the characteristics of each gender and of gender appropriate behaviour.
• At 4-6 years old children have developed a complex but rigid concept of their own gender, which tends to be stereotypical and fixed. Children at this age have little.understanding of schemas appropriate to the opposite sex as this is less relevant to their own identity
• Children will tend to positively evaluate their own group and negatively evaluate the other sex, this enhances self esteem
• Gender schemas are resilient and resistant to change because children tend to pay attention to only information that is consistent with their stereotyped beliefs, they reject information that is inconsistent with their schemas
• By 8 to 10 years they also have a sophisticated understanding of the opposite gender and their schemas become more flexible
• AO3 - Martin and Halveson

  Showed children pictures o man and women engaged in stereotypical or counter stereotypical pictures and later asked them to describe the pictures.

  They found that children gender schemas had distorted their memories so that they tended to describe the firefighter being male and the nurse being female. Supports gender schema theory and consistent schemas
• AO3 - resistant to change gender schema

  This shows why children often have very gender stereotyped beliefs despite attempts by parents and the media to challenge these.

  The use of counter stereotypes may not be the best way to reduce stereotypes
• AO3 - Bussey and Bandura

  They suggested that gender appropriate behaviour starts much earlier than Kohlberg suggested. Four year old children said they felt good about plain with gender appropriate toys and bad about playing with gender inappropriate toys, supporting schema theory
• AO3 - social learning theory

  Gender schema theory is challenged by SLT which would suggest that parental influence and rewards and punishments a child receives for certain behaviours are very important in gender development. Gender Schema theory does not consider social factors
• AO3 - ignores other factors like social and biological influences