Introduction to sex and gender

• The word "sex" refers to whether a person's body is male or female, based on their biology or anatomy and anatomy or biology.
• The word "gender" refers to whether a person is a man or a woman, based on their appearance, behaviour, and psychological traits
• what is gender identity?

  Gender Identity is someone's personal, internal sense of their gender.
• What are stereotypes?


  Where society's beliefs about a particular type of person, have become rigid and oversimplified
• What are Gender stereotypes, or sex-role stereotypes?

  Rigid and overly simplified beliefs about men and women.
• Sex-role stereotypes change over time, as society changes.
• What does Androgynous stand for?


  Andro = male

  Gyny = Female

  the combination of male and female
• what is androgyny?


  Having high levels of male and female behavioural or personality traits.
• In the 1970s, Sandra Bem described people with high levels of both feminine and masculine traits as androgynous.
• What does the Bem Sex Role Inventory measure?

  How many people conform to sex-role stereotypes and how androgynous are people.
• How can you test external reliability?

  Test-retest method and inter-rater reliability
• How can you test the internal reliability?

  Slit-half method
• Strengths of the BSRI

  • It has high external reliability
  • It has high internal reliability
• Limitations of the BSRI

  • Lacks temporal validity
  • Lack internal validity (people interpret the scale differently)
• Flaherty and Dusek conducted a study showing that people who are androgynous , according to the BSRI , tend to have higher well-being than those who are not androgynous.
• (Flaherty and Dusek) ... More recent studies have shown that masculine traits are also correlated with happiness. Therefore androgynous people may be happier because they have high masculine traits.