Kohlberg's Cognitive Developmental Theory of Gender

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Influenced by earlier theories of cognitive development that saw children as actively progressing through developmental stages, Kohlberg’s theory of gender development works on three principles: maturation (children can only progress to the next stage with adequate cognitive ability and maturity), universality (all children go through the same stages, albeit at different times) and socialisation (children are more likely to observe and imitate same-sex role models.) Kohlberg suggests that children understand gender differently at different ages, actively developing an understanding of gender from the environment, with three different stages.

 

Gender identity – around age 2 to 3 ½, children understand the concept of their own sex, using the labels “boy” and “girl” in reference to themselves or others, but do not understand that gender is stable for life, and have very little understanding of what it means.

 

Gender stability – around age 3 ½, the child realises that their sex will not change, knowing that they will grow up to be a “mummy” or a “daddy”. However, they are still easily misled by superficial appearances – believing that a woman cutting her hair will turn her into a man.

 

Gender constancy – between the ages 4 ½ to 7, the child realises that gender is constant – people stay the same despite superficial appearance changes. This final stage is based on Piaget’s principle of “conservation” – the ability to know that things remain the same even after changes in appearance.

 

Thompson (1975) found that by 2 year, children given pictures of boys and girls could select same-sex pictures, demonstrating that children could self-label and identify the gender of others. By 3 years, 90% showed gender identity, compared to only 76% of 2 year olds, showing the developmental nature of the concept. Supports the age ranges  that Kohlberg suggested for each stage – Kohlberg suggested that children develop gender identity aged 2 ½, and this is supported by the vast majority of children having reached this stage by 3 years old – far more than had reached this stage at 2 years.

 

McConaghy (1979) found that if a doll was dressed in transparent clothing so its genitals were visible, children of 3 to 5 years judged its gender by its clothes, not its genitals, supporting the idea of children of this age using superficial physical indicators to determine gender. This supports Kohlberg’s suggestion that until age 4 ½ to 7, most children are in a stage of gender stability – they realise that gender does not change, but are still misled by superficial appearances such as clothing.

 

Rabban (1950) found that children’s thinking changes as they age. 3 year olds demonstrated gender identity but don’t know what gender they will grow into. By age 5, 97% demonstrated gender stability. This supports the ages Kohlberg suggested at which a child progresses to the stage of gender stability – around 3 ½ to 4 ½, as well as the concept of gender development as being due to increasingly sophisticated cognitive processes with age.

Kohlberg’s theory is more holistic than certain explanations for gender development such as the evolutionary approach (explaining the social prevalence of gendered behaviour as purely a result of our evolutionary history), as Kohlberg’s theory takes into account both cognitive factors (developmental stages requiring the cognitive ability to progress past them) and social factors (observing and imitating same-sex models as a form of social learning. However, it can be considered reductionist through ignoring certain aspects of human biology that have shown to be responsible for gender development – in the case study of David Reimer, genetic biological sex was the deciding factor in his final gender identity despite overwhelming social factors aiming to change this.

 

This theory may be gender biased, as some critics claim that females are being judged using a male standard. This is largely because Kohlberg's original research, which he used as a basis for this model, was done only on males. However, gender development happens differently in males than it does in females, for example – the greater willingness of girls to participate in masculine activities than boys to participate in feminine activities.  Slaby and Frey’s research evidence supports the suggestion that Kohlberg’s theory is gender biased – the gender constant girls observed the opposite sex model more than the same sex model, while the gender constant boys did not, suggesting that it is beta bias to assume equivalency of development between sexes.

 

While Kohlberg’s theory of gender development suggests that gender development is primarily a cognitive process, albeit with social learning from same-sex models, other theories challenge this, suggesting other primary factors that influence gender development. For example, the biological approach suggests that hormones and genes are the two most important factors in gender development – two factors of which Kohlberg’s theory makes no mention, suggesting that gender behaviour and identity are determined by thought processes. Additionally, the social approach to gender explains it as a result of social reinforcement processes – seeing the child as a passive product of the society around it rather than the active figure that Kohlberg suggests – these theories are not completely mutually compatible, and vary hugely in their approach to how we develop gender.