Psychology of

Gender

Name: Andreas Pitziolis

Reg. Number: F20121902

Gender is one of the most important categories, if not the most

important in human social life. Gender is what distinguishes whether
someone is male or female. You can distinguish peoples gender from a wide
range of options starting with his name. Of course this is not always true
since there are a number of names that are unisex such as Alex, Angel and
Coby. Another option that is used to distinguish a persons gender in most
countries is that if the person wears a skirt and high heels for example, the
person is assumed both psychologically and biologically female.
Gender is a synonym to sex. It should be noted that gender and sex
are not the same things although they are synonyms to each other. Sex
refers to the biological categories of males and females which are
distinguished by genes, chromosomes and hormones. Sex is also defined in
the same way across cultures. Gender, on the other hand, has features that
are thought to be as labels which are assigned to women and men. For
example, emotionality is a trait we ascribe to women whereas
competitiveness is a trait assigned to men. It is determined by biological,
psychological and sociological factors. Gender also differs from sex because
each society has its own prescriptions for how men and women ought to
behave.
Parents play a vital role in gender. This is because right from the time
of birth, parents start differentiating between boys and girls like buying blue
clothes for boys and pink clothes for girls. Many more things that parents buy
to their children are different including their toys for example since parents
prefer to buy trucks for their sons to play with and dolls for their daughters.
They also encourage masculine behavior in boys and feminine behavior in
girls. Some may ask: how can toys affect a childrens gender? Well, the
answer is simple. Boys toys (truck, cars, building blocks, machines) foster
the development of spatial skills, whereas girls toys (dolls, dress-up clothes,
make-up boxes) foster the development of verbal skills.
An individuals personality is made up of several elements that shape
his/hers personality. Three of these elements which include gender role,
identity and sexual orientation will be discussed in the following paragraphs.

Gender role refers to the expectations that go along being male versus
female. For example, men are expected to be strong, independent and
competitive whereas women to be caring, emotionally expressive, polite and
helpful. These are features of the male and female gender respectively. We
can sometimes face males that have female features and vice versa. When
females for example dress like a man and work in traditionally male jobs it is
acceptable, but when males do the same thing though, meaning that they
dress like women it is unacceptable. Women who take on the characteristics
of male gender roles are moving towards a higher position in the status
ladder, whereas, males that dress like women move downwards the
status ladder. By status ladder I mean the position the society sets you to
depending on your gender mainly, or how well you serve society (good
deeds, helping other, volunteering, no criminal convictions etc.).
Gender identity is ones perception of his/her self as psychologically
male or female. This may be seem pretty straight forward but there are some
people that are male for example but feel as if they are female and vice
versa. Transgenderism is the name given to the above phenomenon.
Transgendered individuals are said to have a gender identity problem. This is
because their biological sex is different with their psychological sex.
Sometimes people seek to have surgery in order for them to change their
biological sex. People such as these are called transsexuals.
Sexual orientation is the erotic desire for people of the same or of
different sex. It refers to whether people prefer to have other-sex or samesex persons as partners of love, affection and sex. There are three categories
of sexual orientation which are heterosexuals, homosexuals and bisexuals.
Heterosexuals are people that prefer other-sex partners whereas
homosexuals prefer same-sex partners and bisexuals are accepting of other
and same sex partners.

References

1. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender
2. Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex
3. Psychology of gender and transgenderism (2009), Google essays
4. Movie: A league of their own (1992)