Social Influences on Gender

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Blue: AO2 - Research
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Gender roles are learned through observation and imitation of live and symbolic models - for example, parents, teachers, peers and the media, who convey social messages about the importance of gender role-appropriate behaviour. We observe their examples of gender-appropriate behaviour and then seek to imitate them in the social learning process. Based on learning theory principles of operant conditioning, children are seen as being positively reinforced for behaving in gender-appropriate ways.

Socialising agents model examples of appropriate and inappropriate behaviour, and also the consequences of conforming or not conforming to gender norms.

Through observational learning, children acquire knowledge regarding gender roles without actually ‘doing’ anything; children observe gender role models being reinforced or punished for gender-appropriate and gender-inappropriate behaviour (vicarious reinforcement) and will imitate behaviours that they saw being reinforced and not imitate those they saw being punished. SLT therefore explains the acquisition of gender role stereotypes in this manner.

Gender appropriate behaviour is reinforced by parents giving praise and toys. Fathers have been shown to reinforce gender-appropriate behaviour more than mothers (especially in sons)

Supporting evidence comes from Lytton & Romney (1991), who found that parents reinforced with praise and attention stereotypical gender behaviours in both boys and girls – for example, what activities they participated in – suggesting that social environmental factors are important in determining gender behaviour. However, children were also raised similarly in many ways, suggesting that reinforcement alone cannot account for the development of gender behaviours.

Further supporting evidence comes from Fagot & Leinbach (1995), who compared children raised in ‘traditional’ families, where dad went to work and mum cared for children, with children raised in ‘alternative’ families, where mum and dad shared child care. At age 4, children were given gender-labelling tasks as a means of testing gender schemas. The ‘traditional’ family children displayed more gender role stereotyping and use gender labels earlier, suggesting that parents do act as gender role models for their children.

TV, cinemas, magazines, music play a role in the acquisition, shaping and maintenance of gender roles. Males tend to be more represented on TV and tend to be in higher-status roles. Males and females portrayed in gender stereotypical ways. Media is invasive and persistent.

Supporting evidence for the role of the media comes from Pierce (1993) who conducted a content analysis of teenage girls’ magazines. Girls tended to be portrayed as weak and reliant on others, with a focus on being in a relationship rather than having independent aspirations, demonstrating the influence of the media in establishing gender attitudes and behaviours, and supporting social learning theory’s explanation.

Peers have a strong influence, especially when children are slightly older. Children show preferences for same-gender playmates and segregate into same-sex groups. Peers are intolerant of gender-inappropriate behaviour, regulating one another! Young children’s gender role stereotypes are very rigid, but become less so as children mature.

Supporting the influence of peers in gender development, Archer & Lloyd reported that 3-year-old children who played the opposite sex’s games were ridiculed by their peers and ostracised, supporting the idea that peers police gender roles. This supports the idea that children develop an idea of what constitutes gender-appropriate behaviour from how their peers react to behaviour, supporting the role of peers in the social learning process.

Challenging the idea that gendered behaviour is directly learnt from peers, Lamb & Roopnarine observed preschool children at play and found that when male-type behaviour was reinforced in girls the behaviour continued for a shorter time than when male-type behaviour was reinforced in boys. This suggests that peer reinforcement mainly acts as a reminder, rather than as a way of learning gender appropriate behaviour – the children had already learnt the behaviours from their parents.

Compared to other explanations such as the evolutionary and the biological approaches, theories of social influences on gender fall firmly on the nurture side of the nature-nurture debate, explaining gendered behaviour as a direct result of learning processes – mainly through social learning from parents, peers and the media. This sharply opposes the biological approach, for example, which claims that gender development results from the influences of hormones, genetics and neuroanatomy – strongly backing the role of nature in the debate. Both explanations have significant research evidence to support them – for example, the case study of David Reimer for the biological approach, the research of Lytton and Romney for the influence of society. This has led to the increasing popularity of the interactionalist biosocial approach, which explains gender development as an interaction between environmental and biological processes.

Theories of social influence are primarily based around the learning approach, ignoring other factors such as cognitions (as suggested by Kohlberg’s cognitive developmental approach), neuroanatomy and behaviour-influencing hormones such as testosterone (as suggested by the biological approach) and genetics over the course of our evolutionary history (as suggested by the evolutionary approach.) With a significant level of research support, social influence theory can be considered strong in its own right, but fails to account for many other factors shown to affect gender, being reductionist in its attempt to simplify such a complex area such as gender development into the result of simple behavioural learning processes.

Research into the effects of social influence on gender has important real-world application in challenging certain regressive or outdated gender stereotypes in society – changing social norms and expectations through the portrayal of non-traditional gender stereotypes in the media. For example, Pingree (1978) found that stereotyping was reduced when children were shown advertisements with women in non-traditional gender roles, leading to pressure on programme makers to use this information to challenge attitudes. However, not all research supports the effectiveness of this technique – Pingree found that pre-adolescent boys experienced stronger stereotypes after being presented with examples of non-traditional gender roles, perhaps a backlash which occurs due to boys of this age wanting to take a view counter to that of views held by adults. Similarly, this conflicts with gender schema theory’s suggestion that information inconsistent with our rigid gender schemas is misremembered or ignored.