Sex, Gender, Androgyny & BRSI

Sex
Refers to biological sex which is determined by our chromosomes.  Humans have 23 pairs with the final pair determining sex.  XX female, XY male.  Women therefore always pass on an X chromosome so it’s the male sperm that determines sex of offspring.  Passing on an X produces a girl and a Y a boy.  This is a 50:50 process.

In Biblical terms: XY: Adam, XX: Eve and YYY: Delilah lol

The sex chromosomes we inherit determines the nature of the hormones we secrete and the development of both our primary and secondary sexual characteristics.

Gender
Although we use the terms sex and gender interchangeably in everyday use, in psychology they each mean something specific.  Gender refers to how a person perceives themselves, their psychological status.  Gender is therefore masculine or feminine, rather than male or female.  It comprises our attitudes, emotions, expected roles and our outlook.

Although sex is clearly determined by nature, our gender is also a product of our culture and of social expectations.

Gender reassignment surgery
Commonly and incorrectly called ‘sex change’ is surgery to alter external primary and secondary sexual characteristics such as genitalia and breasts.  Strictly speaking it does not alter the person’s sex.  Chromosomally they are still either male or female.

Gender Identity Disorder
Results from a mismatch between sex and gender.  Most males feel masculine and most females feminine.  When this does not occur the person feels uncomfortable and anxious.  GID may result in gender reassignment surgery to bring outward physical appearance in line with sexuality.

Sex role stereotypes
These are the shared ideas of people in specific group or culture, relating to gender-specific behaviours, roles and characteristics.  These lead to expectations about how each sex should behave.  In turn these expectations are reinforced by peers and parents to shape behaviour and produce norms.

What makes men better at making financial decisions and DIY and women better at cooking and remembering birthdays?  There seems to be no obvious biological reason for such a division of labour within a family.  However, even the most modern and forward thinking nuclear families still seem to maintain this division.  A recent survey found that even in families were men do their fair share of housework it is still the woman who allocates tasks.

Stereotypes about the roles of the sexes are entrenched within societies and, although there may be some cultural differences (see Mead later), most cultures do chivvy out the tasks in a similar way.  From an early age we have these stereotypes reinforced.  We expect nurses to be women and plumbers to be men.  Media portrayal is important, though it can be argued that they are merely reflecting reality.  Pressure on boys to engage in traditionally masculine ways is particularly powerful.  I well remember my father’s disdain when, at the age of about five, I wanted to do needlework at school.  Social learning theory (SLT) clearly plays a role here.  Role models, imitation, identification and internalisation.  Much more on this later.

Grain of truth hypothesis
The idea that stereotypes and prejudices often have a basis in fact.

There are brain differences between men and women.  The two hemispheres in women seem to be better connected perhaps helping to explain the multi-tasking.  Men, on the other hand tend to show more overall activity in the brain, especially in the cerebellum that regulates motor coordination.

In evolutionary terms it would be adaptive for men to be aggressive.  Men were the hunters and defenders.  We know that men have a much greater fight or flight response.

Women on the other hand, as child bearers, would need to be more caring and be protected from the damage of the stress response which could be damaging to the unborn child.

True sex differences
According to Maccoby & Jacklin’s (1974) metal analysis of over 1500 previous studies there are only four genuine sex differences:

Girls have better verbal ability
Boys have better visual and spatial ability
Boys are better at maths (after age 11)
Boys are more aggressive (verbally and physically).

Later research by Maccoby added that girls are more likely to obey authority figures such as parents and teaches, and they prefer verbal methods of gaining influence, for example through flattery.

Schaffer (1999) found that girls were more emotionally sensitive (from age 5 onwards) and [refer playing with babies.

Ever noticed the scrummage of female teachers at reception if a maternity leave teacher brings in her newly born?

Androgyny

“Androgyny is not trying to manage the relationship between the opposites, it is simply flowing between them”
Dr June Singer (1976)

A combination of andro (from the Greek for male) and gyny (from the Greek for female).

Be careful here.  Androgynous means something different when used in every day language.  We normally use it to mean a person who’s outward physical appearance is neither obviously masculine nor feminine.

In psychology on the other hand, it refers to a balance between masculine and feminine characteristics.  For example, a combination of caring and competitive or assertiveness and loyalty.

Sandra Bem, who designed the BSRI, believed androgyny to be a sign of good psychological health.  Tie this in with Jahoda’s model of Deviation from Ideal Mental Health as a sign of psychological abnormality.  Adaptability is one of her characteristics that determine good mental health.  For Bem, androgyny enables the individual to adapt better to a wider range of situations.  It allows for a greater flexibility of responses.  Some would also consider this to be a sign of intelligence.

Crucially, androgyny is not a man with feminine characteristics or a woman with masculine.  It is a balance of each characteristic in either sex.

Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI)
According to Wikipedia:
“The Bem Sex-Role Inventory was created by Sandra Bem in an effort to measure androgyny. It was published in 1974. Stereotypical masculine and feminine traits were found by surveying 100 Stanford undergraduate students on which traits they found to be socially desirable for each sex.  The original list of 200 traits was narrowed down to the 40 masculine and feminine traits that appear on the present test.  Normative data was found from a 1973 sample for 444 males and 279 females and a 1978 sample of 340 females and 476 males all also from Stanford University undergraduates.’

Participants are faced with 60 characteristics, 20 masculine, 20 feminine and 20 neutral and rate themselves on each one using a likert scale.

Validity and reliability
Having been developed using 100 university students it was tested on over 1000 participants.  The results gained were then checked against a description by those participants of their own gender, a form of construct validity.  Bem found that the results of her test broadly conformed with the participants own descriptions of themselves.

When tested and retested a month later, the test has high test-retest reliability.

Is androgyny desirable?
Bem’s original contention that androgyny is a sign of ideal mental health has been questioned in recent years.  High self-esteem is essential for psychological well-being.  Allgood-Merton and Stockland (1991) that androgyny increases levels of self-esteem, making people more popular and better adjusted all round. But masculinity is generally seen as more positive that femininity.  You only need to look at Bem’s choice of characteristics on the scale.  Feminine characteristics include gullible, shy, yielding and childlike.  Certainly in an ever more competitive, westernised world masculine characteristics such as assertiveness, ambition and independent are seen as more appropriate.

Culture bias
Perhaps in collectivist societies where community is seen as more important, traditional female characteristics may still be seen as positive.  The scale was also devised in the USA, asking American students for their views of traditional gender characteristics.  Using it outside of this context, an example perhaps of an imposed etic?

Reductionist
Can gender really be expressed effectively by a number calculated in response to  series of characteristics?  As we shall see, gender is a complex concept, both in its nature and its determinants.
Later methods of measuring gender such as The Personal Attribute Questionnaire (PAQ) still attempt a quantitative method of measurement.

Child of its time
The scale uses ideas of masculinity and femininity rooted in a more sexist past, the early 1970s.  Its relevance to the 21st century, in which there is a much greater blurring of gender boundaries, has to be questioned.  The BSRI lacks temporal validity.

In the 1990s we saw terms such as metrosexual and ladettes introduced into the language.  The former are well-groomed, heterosexual men, very much in tune with their feminine side.  Ladettes on the hand are lager swigging, soccer loving girl racers.

Is androgyny always desirable?
Rathus (2005) reported evidence that the correlation between androgyny and self-esteem is not due to the healthy mix of masculine and feminine as Bem had assumed but is in fact entirely due to the masculine component of androgyny, for example characteristics such as assertiveness and independence.

These mixed findings could be due to older studies not considering the positive and negative components of each gender-specific characteristics.