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What are your thoughts on this passage ? “Social Influences…
What are your thoughts on this passage ?
“Social Influences
Social scientists recognize that psychological gender differences are not due only to dispositions but also to social experiences. Two theories that reflect this view have been influentialsocial role theory and social cognitive theory.
Alice Eagly proposed social role theory, which states that gender differences result from the contrasting roles of women and men (Eagly & Wood, 2016). In most cultures around the world, women have less power and status than men do and they control fewer resources (OECD, 2017). Compared with men, women perform more domestic work, spend fewer hours in paid employment, receive lower pay, and are more thinly represented in the highest levels of organizations. In Eagly’s view, as women adapted to roles with less power and less status in society, they showed more cooperative, less dominant profiles than men. Thus, the social hierarchy and division of labor are important causes of gender differences in power, assertiveness, and nurture (Eagly & Wood, 2016).Page 333
“”The social cognitive approach provides an alternative explanation of how children develop gender-typed behavior (see Figure 1). According to the social cognitive theory of gender, children’s gender development occurs through observation and imitation, and through the rewards and punishments children experience for gender-appropriate and gender-inappropriate behavior (Spinner, Cameron, & Calogero, 2018). Social cognitive theory emphasizes the importance of social contextssuch as parenting, peer relationships, schools, and the mediain gender development.
“”Parental Influences
Parents, by action and example, influence their children’s and adolescents’ gender development (Liben, 2017). As soon as the label girl or boy is assigned, virtually everyone, from parents to siblings to strangers, begins treating the infant in gender-specific ways (see Figure 2). Parents often use rewards and punishments to teach their daughters to be feminine (“Karen, you are such a good mommy with your dolls”) and their sons to be masculine (“C’mon now, Keith, big boys don’t cry”).
“”Mothers and fathers often interact differently with their children and adolescents. Mothers are more involved with their children and adolescents than are fathers, although fathers increase the time they spend in parenting when they have sons and are less likely to become divorced when they have sons (Galambos, Berenbaum, & McHale, 2009). Historically, mothers’ interactions with their children and adolescents often have centered on caregiving and teaching activities, while fathers’ interactions often have involved leisure activities (Galambos, Berenbaum, & McHale, 2009).
Mothers and fathers often interact differently with sons and daughters, and these gendered interactions that begin in infancy usually continue through childhood and adolescence. In reviewing research on this topic, Phyllis Bronstein (2006) provided these conclusions:
Mothers’ socialization strategies. In many cultures mothers socialize their daughters to be more obedient and responsible than their sons. They also place more restrictions on daughters’ autonomy.
Fathers’ socialization strategies. Fathers show more attention to sons than daughters, engage in more activities with sons, and put forth more effort to promote sons’ intellectual development.
Thus, according to Bronstein (2006, pp. 269-270), “Despite an increased awareness in the United States and other Western cultures of the detrimental effects of gender stereotyping, many parents continue to foster behaviors and perceptions that are consonant with traditional gender role norms.”
Peers
As children get older, peers become increasingly important. Peers extensively reward and punish gender behavior (Leaper, 2018). For example, when children play in ways that the culture views as sex-appropriate, they tend to be rewarded by their peers. Those who engage in activities that are considered sex-inappropriate tend to be criticized or abandoned by their peers. It is generally more accepted for girls to act more like boys than it is for boys to act more like girls; thus, use of the term tomboy to describe masculine girls is often thought of as less derogatory than the term sissy to describe feminine boys (Pasterski, Golombok, & Hines, 2011).Page 334
Children show a clear preference for being with and liking same-sex peers, and this tendency usually becomes stronger during the middle and late childhood years (Maccoby, 2002) (see Figure 3). What kind of socialization takes place in these same-sex play groups? In one study, researchers observed preschoolers over a period of six months (Martin & Fabes, 2001). The more time boys spent interacting with other boys, the more their activity level, rough-and-tumble play, and sex-typed choice of toys and games increased, and the less time boys spent near adults. By contrast, the more time preschool girls spent interacting with other girls, the more their activity level and aggression decreased, and the more their girl-type play activities and time spent near adults increased. The preference for interacting in same-gender dyads is more pronounced for girls than for boys (Gasparini & others, 2015).
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” DEVELOPMENTAL CHANGES IN PERCENTAGE OF TIME SPENT IN SAME-SEX AND MIXED-GROUP SETTINGS. Observations of children show that they are more likely to play in same-sex than mixed-sex groups. This tendency increases between 4 and 6 years of age.
In adolescence, peer approval or disapproval is a powerful influence on gender attitudes and behavior (Shin, 2017). Peer groups in adolescence are more likely to be a mix of boys and girls than they were in childhood. However, even into adolescence and adulthood, gender segregation continues to characterize some aspects of social life (Mehta & Smith, 2019). In this study, even adults reported preferring and feeling closer to their same-gender friends than their cross-gender friends.
“”Schools and Teachers
Some observers have expressed concerns that schools and teachers have biases against both boys and girls (Glock & Kleen, 2017). What evidence might indicate that the classroom is biased against boys? Here are some factors to consider (DeZolt & Hull, 2001):
Compliance, following rules, and being neat and orderly are valued and reinforced in many classrooms. These are behaviors that usually characterize girls more than boys.
A large majority of teachers are female, especially in elementary schools. This trend may make it more difficult for boys than for girls to identify with their teachers and model their teachers’ behavior. One study revealed that male teachers perceived boys more positively and saw them as being more educationally competent than did female teachers (Mullola & others, 2012).
Boys are more likely than girls to have a learning disability or ADHD and to drop out of school.
Boys are more likely than girls to be criticized.
School personnel tend to ignore the fact that many boys are clearly having academic problems, especially in the language arts.
School personnel tend to stereotype boys’ behavior as problematic.
What evidence suggests that the classroom is biased against girls? Consider the following (Sadker & Sadker, 2005):
In a typical classroom, girls are more compliant, boys more rambunctious. Boys demand more attention, girls are more likely to quietly wait their turn. Teachers are more likely to scold and reprimand boys, as well as send boys to school authorities for disciplinary action. Educators worry that girls’ tendency to be compliant and quiet comes at a cost: diminished assertiveness.
In many classrooms, teachers spend more time watching and interacting with boys, whereas girls work and play quietly on their own. Most teachers don’t intentionally favor boys by spending more time with them, yet somehow the classroom frequently ends up with this type of gendered profile.
Boys get more instruction than girls and more help when they have trouble with a question. Teachers often give boys more time to answer a question, provide more hints regarding the correct answer, and allow further tries if they give the wrong answer.
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Boys are more likely than girls to get lower grades and to be grade repeaters, yet girls are less likely to believe that they will be successful in college work.
Girls and boys enter first grade with roughly equal levels of self-esteem. Yet by the middle school years, girls’ self-esteem is lower than boys’.
When elementary school children are asked to list what they want to do when they grow up, boys describe more career options than girls do.
Thus, there is evidence of gender bias against both males and females in schools. Many school personnel are not aware of their gender-biased attitudes. These attitudes are deeply entrenched in and supported by the general culture. Increasing awareness of gender bias in schools is clearly an important strategy for reducing such bias.
Might single-sex education be better for children than coed schooling? An argument in favor of single-sex education is that it eliminates distraction from the other sex and reduces sexual harassment. Single-sex public education has increased dramatically in recent decades. In 2002, only 12 public schools in the United States provided same-sex education; in the 2014-2015 school year, there were 170 public schools for boys and 113 for girls, with 21,000 girls and 17,000 boys enrolled (Mitchell & others, 2017).
Despite the increase in single-sex education, a review of 184 studies that included 1.6 million students from 21 countries concluded that the highest-quality studies showed that same-sex education did not provide benefits absent from mixed-sex education (Pahlke & others, 2014). In one review, titled “The Pseudoscience of
Single-Sex Schooling,” Diane Halpern and her colleagues (2011)
concluded that same-sex education is highly misguided, misconstrued, and unsupported by any valid scientific evidence. They emphasize that among the many arguments against same-sex education, the strongest is its reduction of opportunities for boys and girls to work together in a supervised, purposeful environment.”
“There has been a special call for same-sex public education for one group of adolescentsAfrican American boysbecause of their historically poor academic achievement and high dropout rate from school (Mitchell & Stewart, 2013). In 2010, the Urban Prep Academy for Young Men became the first all-male, all African American public charter school. Every year since 2010, 100 percent of graduating seniors have been accepted into four-year colleges and universities. Currently Urban Prep Academies operates three open-enrollment public charter high schools in high-need communities in Chicago. Students are admitted via random lottery, and the three campuses have a total capacity of 2,000 students.
Media Influences
The messages about gender roles carried by the mass media also are important influences on children’s and adolescents’ gender development (Coyne & others, 2016). Men are portrayed as more powerful than women on many TV shows. A review of 135 studies found that in laboratory settings as well as in everyday life, exposure to media portrayals that sexually objectify women are related to men’s and women’s views of women as being less competent and less moral and to increased tolerance of sexual violence against women (Ward, 2016). The media influence adolescents’ body images, and some studies reveal gender differences in this area (Tatangelo & Ricciardelli, 2017). For example, two studies of 10- to 15-year-old girls found that the more they internalized sexualized images from the media, the more likely they were to wear sexualized clothing, to feel shame about their bodies, and to regard their bodies as objects to be looked at and evaluated by others (McKenney & Bigler, 2016). Another study revealed that the more time that adolescent girls and boys spent using social media, the more negative their body images were (Fardouly & Vartanian, 2016). Adolescent boys are exposed to a highly muscular body ideal for males in media outlets, especially in advertisements that include professional athletes and in video games (Near, 2013).Page 336
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