Psychology

Psyc 3331 Psychology of Gender Notes 02.02.05

Chapter 1 Key Terms
• Androcentric bias: discipline of psychology that is largely focused on men and describes men as superior and women as inferior.
• Bias in Research Methods: bias occurs in every part of the research process-from question formulation and research design to data analysis and interpretation
• Blatant sexism: occurs when women are treated in a transparently harmful and unequal way.
• Covert sexism: form of sexism that's intentional, hidden, and often hostile.
• Cultural approach: origins of gender stereotyping from a sociocultural perspective where children are socialized to act according to their culture.
• Cultural feminism: emphasizes characteristics and qualities of women that are devolved and ignored in society.
• Division 35: APA's division of the psychology of women (est.1973)
• Engendering psychology: a psychology which gender considerations are mainstreamed throughout the discipline.
• Evolutionary psychology: developed by Wilson; psychological traits are selected through evolution
• Feminism: belief that women and men are equal and should be equally valued and have equal rights.
• 1st wave feminism: began in 1903 with the founding of women's social and political union
• gender: different between boys and girls and women and men are averaged in society's social interact; based on a composed set of traits, interests, and behaviors.
• Gender schema: structures that allow a person to organize information related to gender by linking gender labels to objects, traits, and behaviors.
• Gender stereotypes: cognitive representation of males and females; organized set of beliefs of psychological traits and characteristics as well as activities appropriate to men or women.
• Liberal feminism: focuses on equality of women and men
• Men's movement: includes military, political, religion, and economic events that have benefited men
• Radical feminism: focuses on control of women by men; based on belief that men's oppression of women is primary and serves as a model for all other oppression
• Science: knowledge based activity that depends on facts accumulated through systematic and objective questioning, hypothesis testing, methodological study, analysis, and presentation.
• Sex: biological difference in the genetic composition and reproductive structures and functions of men and women
• Sex discrimination: harmful and unequal treatment of individuals due to their sex.
• Sexism: differential treatment of individuals based on their sex; subordination of women and assumption of the superiority of men solely on the basis of sex or gender
• Social constructionism: view by Foucault that human behavior determined by historical, cultural, and social conditions
• Socialist feminism: focuses on social relations and how social institutions preserve and promote male dominance.
• Sociobiology (Evolutionary Psychology): theory by Wilson that holds that psychological traits are selected through an evolutionary process; adaptive traits are selected because they serve to perpetuate the species.
• Stereotypes: generalized and oversimplified beliefs about groups of people.
• Stereotyping: cognitive perspective used to describe gender difference; people learn to streamline information processing by grouping people into categories based on members' similarity
• Structured approach: emphasizes common positions that certain groups occupy within social structure; focuses on structural constraints that channel our experience, from family to societal level
• Subtle sexism: harmful and unequal treatment of women that is less apparent and less visible to others and ourselves

Discussion Questions:
1. Difference between sex and gender?
 Sex: biological difference in chromosomes, genes, hormones, and neurology; gender comprised of traits, interests, and behaviors that society placed on each sex
2. What processes underlie the development of beliefs regarding gender?
 Cultural approach
 Structural approach
 Stereotyping-> gender schemas
3. Problems with research focusing in gender difference:
 Sex discrimination
 Sexism: blatant, subtle, and covert
 In science, most research experiments used male subjects due to the variability hypothesis (males are more variable than females on many dimensions -> indicating higher status and greater potential)
4. Ways that sexism interacts with ageism/classism/racism:
 Young, Hispanic, and poor:
 Old, black, and middle class:
5. Feminism's impact on psychology research:
 Socialist feminism
 Radical feminism
 Cultural feminism
 Liberal feminism
6. Positive Aspects of Evolutionary Psychology:
 Banging up the importance of ethnicity, race, and class
 Wave of feminism
 Redefining the difference between gender and sex
 Production of different approaches of beliefs regarding gender
7. Negative Aspects of Evolutionary Psychology:
 Strength in techniques for changing negative behavior is not enough to change an individual alone.
 Problems that are inclined in society's structural fabric require more than modifications in behaviors and attitudes to solve them
 Women are still being victimized and treated unequally in some societies…this needs to be changed