Evaluation of differences between sex and gender
Strengths
- Sex-role stereotypes can differ substantially cross-culturally (Mead, 1935), suggesting that the characteristics associated with sex roles are culturally and socially learned and so negative sex-role stereotyping could be addressed by providing learning experiences for children that reinforce the idea of positive sex roles
- Research and day-to-day experience demonstrates that sex-role stereotypes are reinforced by the media and so supports the theory that sex-role expectations are transmitted through sex-role stereotypes
Weaknesses
- Categorising behaviours, and qualities as either masculine or feminine may restrict the positive roles that both males and females could play in society, like male child minders or female scientists
- Does not explain how individuals resist being socialised into traditional sex roles
Link to Issues & Debates:
The difference between sex and gender can be seen as an example of the nature/nurture debate. While sex is determined from the moment of conception and assigned at birth, gender could be argued to be socially constructed through gender schemas composed of sex-role expectations.
Biological psychologists argue that gender is innate, because, for example, women tend to be smaller and less muscular than men, have higher-pitched voices and less body hair, as well as of course the differences in genitalia. This sexual dimorphism is believed by psychologists of the biological approach to determine the psychological traits associated with each gender. Therefore, the biological approach argues that, in the same way that chromosomes and hormones determine an individual’s sex, they also determine whether a person will behave in a more feminine or masculine way.
However, if gender is determined by sex this would mean that there would be none of the cross-cultural differences in masculine or feminine behaviour, identified by Mead (1935) and others after her. Of course, nature and nurture interact and there is no behaviour that can be exclusively one or the other, but sex owes more to nature and gender is created through sex-role stereotyping, which is more nurture.