Toward a Broader Understanding of Gender Development

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

Gender is perhaps the most fundamental social category -both in how we classify and think about other people and in how we define ourselves. Gender plays a central role in human experience throughout the lifespan and especially during childhood. A great deal of research has explored how children begin to understand what gender is and learn which gender typical behaviors, preferences and attitudes are indicated by societal stereotypes of gender roles. Several theories exist to explain the development of gender understanding, from toddlers' ability to identify their own gender to older children's and adolescents' ability to incorporate gender into their own self-concepts. Although the study of gender development has been central to developmental psychology for decades, nearly all research has focused on children who experience "typical" gender development. The goal of this project is investigate how culture, biology, and cognition interact to explain the development of gender understanding by exploring both typical and atypical gender experiences in childhood. This project is based on the premise that understanding the full range of variability in children's gender experiences is necessary to achieve a complete understanding of gender development. Specifically, this research focuses on three major research questions: (1) What is the role of social input in gender development? (2) Is an understanding that gender is stable across time necessary to develop more complex understandings of gender, such as gender stereotypes?, and (3) Do children with less common gender identities show patterns of gender development similar to those of children with more common gender identities? To answer these questions the researchers will present children with a battery of gender development measures including implicit and explicit measures, relying on both parental and child report, and will compare responses among those with both typical and atypical gender identities. The investigators predict that current models of gender development will not adequately describe gender development across all children, and anticipate that these findings will yield insights into how to revise these theories to better explain gender cognition and behavior in all children.