Gender Development and Stereotyping

Gender Development and Stereotyping

Gender typing refers to the process through which a child starts becoming aware of their gender and hence starts behaving accordingly through adoption of values and attributes which are associated with members of the sex which they identify as being the one they belong to . This is a very important step to the social and personality development of a child as it has an impact on their understanding of the behaviors that are accepted socially as well as being influential when it comes to their social judgments. The responses that a child gets from their social group mold their identity thus they become more masculine or feminine and hence impact their view of the world. Whether a child develops cross-gender identities, shared traits or androgyny their decisions are based on identification of a gender and models they choose to copy. The behaviors which they adopt will shape their identity and knowledge for who they are and how they are expected to behave.

We can look at gender stereotyping under three theories. We can look at how the biological, social learning and cognitive theories attempt to give an explanation on critical changes that have an effect on the gender development of a child. The theory which interests me among this three is cognitive development theory. The cognitive theory focusses on thought processes which underlie learning.it gives importance to cognition when it comes to understanding and explaining behavior. This approach puts emphasis on thoughts, feelings, thinking, values and expectation. Children have an understanding of gender just like they have of any other thing. children have experiences with people from both genders, they have a though of these experiences, with some sort of mental notes which they make of what males and females do they end up adopting the behaviors which have been performed by those in their own sex. They classify themselves and others as females or males and organize their behavior on the basis of these classifications. The gender roles adopted by a child are on the basis of these classifications. Those behaviors that are consistent with their gender are the ones which are adopted ( Open learn,2005).

According to the cognitive development theory, the acquisition of gender roles sis a s a result of gender constancy this means that the understanding a child has and the awareness that their sex is something permanent, constant and will never change .Gender appropriate behaviors are taken in once a child realize that sex is a feature of a person that never changes. According to this theory gender constancy takes place in three stages Gender identity where a child becomes aware of their gender; gender stability where boys and girls come to the realization that they will grow up as men and women i.e. gender is permanent and Gender consistency where gender awareness is same no matter how one behaves, what they wear and so on. When a child is able to have a gender consistent understanding of themselves normally at the ages of five and seven they are motivated to master their orientation and socializing allows them seek out same sex models in order for them to learn about the behaviors which are related to gender stereotyping. This theory has helped to confirm any assumptions you I about gender identification and stereotyping. This is because the cognitive approach is based on the idea that an individual's thinking determines their perception of the world and how they act upon these perceptions (Open learn,2005).