Does Biological Or Social Influence Affect Gender Identity?
Within this essay I shall write about whether biological or social influences can contribute to the overall gender identity and which has the biggest impact or if it is both. Many people often mistake sex and gender to mean the same thing; this is untrue however sometimes they can be interchangeable. Gender is referred to the expectations and cultural constructions associated with their biological status of being female or male which is their sex. In more simple words Unger (1979) suggested the term gender for the traits and behaviours regarded by the culture of what is deemed to be appropriate for men and women and what is considered masculine or feminine whereas sex is what biologically categorises men and women.
One of the argued contributions …show more content…
The biosocial approach (Money & Ehrhardt, 1972) is an interactionist approach where by nature and nurture both play a role in gender development. John Money’s (1972) theory was that once a biological male or female is born, social labelling and differential treatment of boys and girls interact with biological factors to steer development. They suggested that prenatal hormones are what determine the sex of a child along with the postnatal labels and interactions from agents of society identity. The child’s gender is determined by the way they are treated socially in combination with their biological sex. (Rubin et al, 1974) interviewed 30 parents and asked them to use adjective pairs to describe their babies. His results indicated that there were no measurable differences in size between the babies, parents consistently described boy babies as better coordinated, stronger and more alert than daughters. This shows that parents label their babies. The approach presumes that gender identity is neutral before the age of 3, and can be altered, e.g. a biological girl raised as a boy will develop the gender identity of a boy. This is known as the theory of
One of the argued contributions …show more content…
The biosocial approach (Money & Ehrhardt, 1972) is an interactionist approach where by nature and nurture both play a role in gender development. John Money’s (1972) theory was that once a biological male or female is born, social labelling and differential treatment of boys and girls interact with biological factors to steer development. They suggested that prenatal hormones are what determine the sex of a child along with the postnatal labels and interactions from agents of society identity. The child’s gender is determined by the way they are treated socially in combination with their biological sex. (Rubin et al, 1974) interviewed 30 parents and asked them to use adjective pairs to describe their babies. His results indicated that there were no measurable differences in size between the babies, parents consistently described boy babies as better coordinated, stronger and more alert than daughters. This shows that parents label their babies. The approach presumes that gender identity is neutral before the age of 3, and can be altered, e.g. a biological girl raised as a boy will develop the gender identity of a boy. This is known as the theory of