Female Gender Identity from Childhood to Adulthood

Introduction: Defining Gender Identity

In A Room of One's Own, feminist author Virginia Woolf decries the lack of true women of letters in modern society (Lewis, 2003). This essay, however, is not a diatribe against society or the male gender, but a genuine assessment of the gender identity of women as their lives evolve from childhood to adolescence to adulthood.

Gender identity involves not only sexuality and sexual proclivities — as in the establishment of identity for the transgendered — but also how a woman interacts in and with society. Traditionally, conformity to society's norms was considered paramount. Society holds that a young woman should be assigned female at birth, be feminine, see herself as a woman, and be attracted to men. It is therefore useful to establish definitions of some basic concepts. Gender refers to the sociocultural dimension of being male or female. Sex refers to the biological dimension. Gender identity is an individual's internal sense of being male or female. Gender role is the set of expectations that prescribes how females or males should think, feel, and behave.

Even from childhood, male identity tends to focus on separation and autonomy, while female identity is focused not so much on separation as on attachment — that is, on intimate relationships. Masculinity is defined through separation, while femininity is defined through attachment; male gender identity is threatened by intimacy, while female gender identity is threatened by separation. A young girl is rarely encouraged to separate from her primary caregiver. This pattern assumes that a female should become "more invested and more competent at forming intimate relationships" (Steinberg, 1996, p. 321). As a result, many girls come to obtain their identity through attachment relationships, which may lead to difficulties with separation later in life.

Gender Socialization in Childhood

Society shapes gender identities from the earliest years of childhood. Little girls are trained, both explicitly and implicitly, how to be women. Some behavioral patterns are adopted from their mothers, who are themselves operating within society's expectations of adult womanhood. Toy advertisements on television, for example, show girls playing with dolls, with the entire commercial filmed in soft shades of pink and pastel. A girl-child will often carry a baby doll, and the maternal nurturing she practices on that doll mirrors the nurturing shown to her by her own mother. Boys' toys, by contrast, tend to be more rugged, and advertisers often call dolls "action figures." In these subtle ways, gender roles are fostered and cemented from a very early age.

One of the earliest means by which a child becomes socialized into a culture is through the observation and imitation of the people around them. Girls have a ready source of imitation within the family because they can identify with their mothers. At an early stage of social development, girls tend to imitate the form of their mother's life — cooking, cleaning, washing — without necessarily understanding why these tasks are performed. The idea of normality is significant here: girls learn female behavior through constant repetition, and the rules of behavior become internalized. Girls identify with their mothers on the basis of shared biological sex. At a very early age, gender identification is encouraged and reinforced in many subtle ways: girls are praised for being neat, helpful, and pretty, and criticized for engaging in behaviors deemed unladylike, such as shouting or fighting. This is gender socialization, wherein a child's behavior is shaped through punishment and reward.

The little girl who is encouraged to act in a feminine way will feel increasingly feminine as she grows up. This observation invites consideration of the nature versus nurture debate. Many scholars have challenged the notion that every child is born a so-called "blank slate" (Dewing et al., 2003), and the truth is likely a combination of both influences. Religion also plays a role in most societies, to varying degrees, and gender identities — especially for children — may be shaped significantly by religio-cultural and moral traditions.

To illustrate how dramatically expectations of women have been defined historically, consider this statement by Queen Victoria, which would today be widely condemned: "I am most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of 'Women's Rights,' with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feelings and propriety. Feminists ought to get a good whipping. Were woman to 'unsex' herself by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male protection" (Victoria, 2003). The contrast between this statement and contemporary views on gender reflects how far societal expectations have shifted — and how far gender norms have been contested.

Adolescence and the Formation of Female Identity

Adolescence marks a transitory point for every child becoming an adult, characterized by emotional and physiological upheaval. From biological, religious, moral, and cultural standpoints, many argue that a woman's primary role is to be a mother, and the changes adolescence brings are largely connected to the development of this capacity. But adolescence also marks the point at which cultural notions of womanhood become more firmly established and carried into adulthood.

From an identity standpoint, a girl reaching adolescence begins questioning herself and others about what it means to be a woman. These questions are complicated by adolescent egocentrism — the belief that every other person is as absorbed with her as she is with herself. The obvious differences between her identity and that of her male peers prompt an evaluation of the pros and cons of her own sexuality and femaleness. This period is marked by heightened attention to appearance and behavior. The female adolescent also experiences embarrassingly obvious physical changes and the unfamiliar discomfort of menstruation. She begins to absorb the differences in how her parents treat her compared to her male sibling — differences in curfews, clothing choices, freedom, and acceptable behavior. Common feelings during this period include guilt, confusion, hopefulness, fear, and problems with self-esteem.

Although self-esteem tends to decline for both sexes during the teenage years, a number of studies have found that adolescent girls report lower self-esteem than adolescent boys (Branden, 1992). Negative feelings about body image lead to anxiety about one's body, one's self, and one's life. Girls in particular face pressure to be thin; one out of every 350 adolescents has an eating disorder. Girls with negative body image tend to worry that they are not physically normal, and they may demonstrate instability, low problem-solving ability, and a diminished sense of personal efficacy. Additionally, early-maturing females may face rejection from their age-peers and seek the company of older groups. The risk in associating with older peers is that female adolescents may copy the sexual and cultural behaviors of this new group without being physically or emotionally prepared for them. Early-maturing females have less time to form a solid sense of self, which can create difficulty in making sound decisions both in the present and for the future.

Conclusion

While many may argue that traditional values will hold strong given the conflicts surrounding what it means to be a woman, it may be more productive to recognize that rather than confining women to traditional societal notions, women should have the freedom to define themselves as they see fit — from birth, through adolescence, and into adulthood. The evolution of female gender identity is not a fixed trajectory imposed from outside, but a dynamic process shaped by biology, culture, relationships, and individual agency.

References

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Dewing, P., et al. "Sexually Dimorphic Gene Expression in Mouse Brain Precedes Gonadal Differentiation." Brain Research: Molecular Brain Research 118.1-2 (2003): 82–90.

Harper, J.F., and Marshall, E. "Adolescents' Problems and Their Relationship to Self-Esteem." Adolescence 26.104 (1991): 799–808.

Lewis, J.J. Magdalene Sisters. 2003. About.com.

Pinker, S. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking, 2002.

Schneider, W.H. Feminism? You Want Feminism? Which Brand Would You Like? 2003. Fathersforlife.org.

Steinberg, L.D. Adolescence. 4th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996.

Victoria. Promoting Beautiful Womanhood. 2003. Ladiesagainstfeminism.com.

Whitbourne, S.K. Identity Development in Adult Women and Men, 1980–82. Cambridge, MA: Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Murray Research Center, Harvard University, 1989.

Woolf, V., and Smith, J. A Room of One's Own. Cambridge Literature. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.